Are You Busy, Productive or Getting Results?

Time is the great equalizer. Whether you’re the CEO or working away in your cubicle, newly hired or nearly retired, all you have is today, the same 24 hours as everyone else. And we’re all required to fill that time with some activity, whether we like it or not. That’s our lot in life. What you do with that time matters. It matters how you feel about yourself, your current and future circumstances and your wellbeing. Fill that time well and you’ll feel a sense of pride, significance and be full of hope. Fill it poorly and you’ll feel despondent and tired. So what do we do with all this time?

There are three ways to fill time.

First, you can be busy. Being busy is pretty much anything that makes us move our hands or feet. It’s going here or there, pushing buttons and moving papers around on our desks. Being busy is just a necessity of life. We are busy getting groceries, picking up the kids, filing our taxes, writing that report. Life is made up of a string of busy activities. Being busy is neither good nor bad, as some time management experts would have you believe, but it consumes most of our day. It really doesn’t lead to much, you don’t feel pride or a sense of significance after picking up the mail or paying your bills. It just sort of...is.

Next, is being productive. To be productive is to produce, to make something out of nothing. To create. We produce reports, emails, presentations or plans. I’m producing right now, writing this article (or shooting this video). I think it’s better than being busy. I feel like I’m contributing in some small way, I’m active and adding something new to the world. But is this the best use of my time? What if no one wants what I’m producing?

The last way to use time is to get results. It’s actually doing something or creating something that causes another beneficial action by someone else or something else. It leads to something useful, a benefit. That could be in my finances, my family, my development, a project I’m working on or my career. This leads us to the feeling of being significant, that we matter. This is the culmination of the busy, produce, results chain.

Think about yesterday. Perhaps you came home exhausted, with nothing left in the tank, flopped on the couch and watched TV with a tub of Haagen Daaz. You were probably busy all day. Or you left the office with a sense of accomplishment, after all you fired off a lengthy report to a vast list of cc recipients. You were productive, but maybe you wondered if anyone will ever read that report?

The best days are the ones when we feel like we were busy, producing something that got a result. You made a difference, You moved something forward, Your work mattered. You mattered. Those are the days you come home exhausted and alive.

Too often we blindly follow this order of events without thinking. We start our day with a long list of busy activities, we get a bit frustrated that we haven’t really produced much to show for our efforts and we didn’t produce anything that showed a tangible result. We all do it. I do it. I can fill hours being busy on my business as a distraction for actually accomplishing anything. I can produce lots of great articles and videos that no one will ever read or watch. But the true test of the best use of my 24 hours in a day is if I got a result, even just one. Did I move toward accomplishing a goal? For me, did I help someone?

So, what if we reversed the order? What if we started with a focus on getting results first?

It would mean we’d have to get clear on what our goals were pretty fast. And then it would drive the activities that produce the things that will lead to results. Then we likely would get busy going about those important tasks. Sure the other things will get done, but would you sleep better at the end of the day if you knew you got a result that mattered?

How will you fill your 24 hours today? Think about it.