The Crazy Busy Cure

Being too busy can damage your health and stymie your progress toward your goals.

Humans today are facing cognitive overload, the result of an accelerated lifestyle, cultural busyness in organizations, and digitization. The constant overwhelm leads to feelings of stress, frustration and loneliness. And busyness can have profound impacts on your career. For one thing, overly busy people tend to spend too much time on mundane tasks and not enough time on big-picture thinking; they put excessive effort into tasks that are already in the works rather than creating something new. Moreover, crazy busyness can limit managers’ ability to do their job well, as they lack time to anticipate roadblocks, build relationships with their employees and help their workers develop their careers.

Being “crazy busy” robs you of valuable head space – the time left over after you’ve completed your core duties, necessary administrative work and unexpected but important tasks. Head space gives you a precious window of time for strategizing, innovating, learning and building relationships. Yet many people neglect these activities because busyness inundates their head space.