We live in a world that values productivity above all else. People desire multi-tasking, even if it is less effective in reality. Most of us wear a badge of being busy as a symbol of pride. Chronic illness becomes an obstacle to reaching this pinnacle of life we see from everyone around us. It forces us to slow down and often question our worth, as we are less able to stay as busy as we used to be. Here are some tips to abandon the badge of busy-ness and all the guilt that comes along with it.
Your worth and productivity have no connection.
It took me some time in therapy to get this truth through my head. It’s no wonder when we live in a very capitalist world that values you by your ability to make money. This makes it easy to forget that you have value that has nothing to do with your ability to make money or add value to the world. Look at Elon Musk. He takes a lot of credit for great inventions and businesses, but recent developments around Twitter/X proves that he isn’t the amazing guy many believed him to be. Dude is still a billionaire, but that doesn’t make him a god. He’s a man and very much just extremely lucky with his wealth and his ability to take credit for other people’s work.
If that doesn’t help sever the wrongful attribution of productivity to value, then look at children in your life. These could be siblings, your own kids, nieces and nephews, or any other kid you see running around in your life. Do you judge any of them by what they provide to society? No, they’re children. They are just valuable because they exist. The same principle is true for you, although you have grown up.
Work Smarter Not Harder
Many people’s busy schedules come from dancing around the important things they need to do. We check email throughout the day, scroll through social media, and often do things in more laborious ways because that’s how it’s always been done. A great way to work smarter is to examine what really has priority. If you have executive function issues like I do, this step can be really daunting. How in the world am I supposed to figure out what is most important and what’s noise? Especially with all these badges on my phone begging for my attention now. A good place to start is to imagine not finishing each task. What would happen if you didn’t finish? If the answer is nothing, it’s not that important. Looking at the consequence can also help gauge how important that task actually is. If the wrath of gods is coming down on you for not doing it, it’s pretty damn important.
Once you have determined what can be safely cut or pushed to the back burner, the next step is to look at your process. Are you in a job where following processes means the difference between life and death? Do you work with the government or children? If the answer is no to all these questions, you can safely put aside any process you should work by. You aren’t abandoning it yet, just setting it to the side so you can look at what really needs to get done. What do you hope to achieve with the process? What parts have to get done somewhere? How much time do you have available? Once you have the answer to these questions, think about how you would complete the task. What steps would you take if you answered to no one to do the job? When you have figured out the list, compare it to the process they ask you to do. Are there any minor modifications? Are there any big changes? Do any of those changes pertain to accommodations you require? Use this to inform how you look at the task and take any important take aways to your manager or if you have more leniency, apply it to your work and see how it goes. You may find you have a gem that changes your work dramatically.
Do it good enough
This is a point I have issues with a lot with my perfectionist tendencies. We often get absorbed in putting our best work out into the world so that we can become caught up (or overwhelmed) with making it perfect. We can take a lot off our plate if we take a step back and decide what work is good enough. When I was working in the tech world, we called this the minimum viable product. What is good enough so that your performance is good enough to be what it says on the tin and what is your wishlist of cool things you want to add? Developers often do this so that they can actually release whatever it is they are putting into the world. But you can take this approach to remove wishlist items from your life and work. While it’s nice to hit some when you can, trying to make all of those items happen depletes spoons at a rate that is alarming when you step back to look at it.
Those are some of my ideas to help you abandon the badge of busy-ness without guilt. Do you have any ideas to add? Put them in the comments below.
