How To Be Less Busy

Apr 29

In 2018, I gave a talk in front of a room full of founders on how to be a great leader. I shared four key concepts in the talk, but what the audience most resonated with was my advice to “be less busy.” I got questions and emails afterwards from folks wanting to know more about how to develop practices that would allow them to make this seemingly impossible task a reality.

Something tells me that there are many more out there seeking help with this.

So I’m writing this for them, and for you.

I want to preface this by letting you know that this isn’t going to be about ‘tips and tricks’ on how to be less busy. This isn’t about ‘hacking’ your way to a better life. This is about you doing the work to examine the deeper reasons why you’re stuck in the loop of busyness, and to set up some habits that will pay off for years to come.

It’s about implementing sustainable practices that create space in your life so you can live from a place of clarity, freedom and calm.

Here you’ll find a recap of all the points I shared in my talk, plus everything else that I’ve used in my own life and with my clients. These ended up being 12 points, so you may want to treat them as a 12-week program, where you implement one per week.

Without further ado, here are my guiding points to help you live a life that “breathes” with more free time and space.

1. Get your house in order

I mean this literally, and also metaphorically.

Let me explain: To put it simply, mess = stress. You’d be surprised how much mental space a messy home/office takes up. Research also shows that a messy environment inhibits your cognitive abilities. So keep the clutter down and your space tidy.

How to implement this in your life: The best way I’ve found to do this is by using the Konmari method which, interestingly, I find myself applying not only to my physical space but also to non-tangibles. As in: “Does going to happy hour with those colleagues spark joy?” Just read (or Audible) the book on the Konmari method. It’s truly life-changing.

Bonus: Clean up conflicts in relationships so they don’t take up space in your heart and mind. When your carry regret / guilt / resentment in your psyche, it creates heaviness.

2. Create more space in your life and mind

You are the gatekeeper of your mental space.

And we all know that there is an infinite amount of useless chatter trying to infiltrate our brains 24/7.

How to implement this in your life (and get immediate bang for your buck):

Don’t check your email first thing in the morning.
Don’t scroll through Twitter / Instagram / Drug of choice, in bed before going to sleep. Instead, read an inspiring book or tell your sweetheart what you’re grateful for.
Be selective about the content you consume each day. Unsubscribe from every newsletter possible. Fill your mind with less. When you do fill it with something, make sure it’s nourishing, peace-inducing or purposeful.
Remove apps like FB and Instagram from your mobile phone. Do it now. You’re welcome.
Remove dings/notifications on your computer. Unless you’re in a role that requires a response within seconds to a request, you need to control when you read messages/Slack, not the other way around.

Don’t fill your mind with useless garbage, and then complain that you feel overwhelmed by how busy you are.

Bonus: Do an audit of how you use your time (for one week) and notice how much useless garbage you fill your days with. You’ll be shocked. Then enlightened.

3. Give away your Legos

Delegate everything that is not work in your Zone of Genius.

How to implement this in your life: Get into the habit of giving away your code, products, and projects, to the people you work with. Doing this will not only give others the opportunity to grow, but will create more space in your life to focus on what’s next or just take a breather. (Molly Graham calls this concept ‘giving away your legos’).

4. Learn to say No

If you want to be less busy, you’re going to have to learn to say no to people.

And be okay with that.

How to implement this in your life: I know this is hard for a lot of us, so the important thing here is to get clear on why you’re so attached to being someone who says yes to everything, and what you think it means about you when you say no to someone.

You resist saying no to things+people because there’s something you don’t want to give up, whether it’s the ownership of a project or an image you have about yourself.

What is it for you?

Another way to do this is to say to yourself: “If it’s not a ‘Hell Yeah’, then it’s a no.”

5. Notice your addiction to Busy

You’re a junkie.

I want you to notice how much you like saying, “I’m crazy busy,” and how much you enjoy having a bursting agenda, because you bought into the story that “important people” are very, very busy all the time.

I want you to notice the adrenaline rush you get when you need to put out a fire at work. Your addiction to that rush is keeping you stuck in a never-ending cycle of busyness. How is that working for you?

How to implement this in your life: Notice how your ego’s needs and your behaviors contribute to you staying stuck in Busyland, and write them down so you can shine a light on them.

6. Allow yourself to get bored

Our productivity-driven culture would wreak havoc on this advice, but I want you to give it a try. When you get bored is when your most creative and useful ideas will come up. When you let your mind be free for a bit, an astonishing happens: all the clutter and overwhelm in your head rearranges itself into cleaner and tidier content, kind of like Tetris happening in there.

How to implement this in your life: Block out times in your calendar where no one can book anything (I recommend at least one hour. Your brain needs time to first unplug before it can settle into feeling free). Have at least one block each week. During that time, go for a walk, daydream or just sit on a park bench and watch the people and squirrels for a few. When you get back to work, everything will seem more clear to you.

7. Get your health in order

A foggy head and a lethargic-feeling body add to feeling overwhelmed. Go see a naturopath to devise a personalized plan for your well-being.

How to implement this in your life: Do a full blood and food sensitivities panels with a naturopath. This will give you a complete picture of your health so that you can stop eating the things that are hurting you and take the supplements that you be be missing.

The goal here is to have your body and mind functioning optimally so you can be clear-headed and energized to take on your work and life. Mediocre health is such a time and energy vampire.

8. Do brain dumps every day, all day

You know that stuff that’s rolling around your brain, the stuff that’s not so important but is taking up important space? I’m talking about things like: “I need to call my accountant to discuss LLC taxes”, “I need to order new glasses + schedule a dentist appointment”, etc.

Those things that you’re trying to remember keep your mind feeling full and busy. They add to your stress levels.

How to implement this in your life: Get in the habit of gathering all those random thoughts down on a post-it, or in an app like Evernote. Your brain will rest once it knows those things went into a list, and that they’ll be taken care of. This practice alone will help you feel less frantically busy.

9. Get and pay for help

I am a meticulous house-cleaner and do a better job than most cleaning professionals I’ve hired through the years.

So why don’t I clean my own damn house?

Because that’s a really bad use of my precious time and talent. Same goes for you.

How to implement this in your life: You need to get help from others. Have your EA (or a TaskRabbit person) pick up your dry cleaning and screen your email inbox.

Your Nanny can go grocery shopping for the family. Your housekeeper will do the laundry and scrub your shower tiles. You can get help, it’s not that big of an expense, and it’s one of the investments that’ll yield the most ROI in your life, IMHO. Your job is to free yourself up to focus on your Zone of Genius.

10. Examine your beliefs

Think back to your childhood and the beliefs you heard around you. Beliefs about who gets what they want in life (such as “You have to be a hard worker”, “Nothing comes easy”). Where did those beliefs came from? Notice how much you’ve been living as if those beliefs were true.

What if you chose to live by another set of beliefs?

For example: “Success comes to those who work smart, not long and hard”, or “I can create systems to run my life / business with grace and ease.”

How to implement this in your life: If beliefs are running our choices in the background, then let’s make sure we’re being run by empowering beliefs that we chose, not the ones that were passed down from others.

If you want to have a breakthrough in this regard, go do the Landmark Forum. One weekend will transform your life.

11. Plan your day, the night before

The concept is simple: 5 minutes to plan your next day the night before, or before you leave the office.

This helps you regain control of your agenda, and more. Marie Forleo has great instructions on how to do this.

12. Meditate and sleep the hours you need

Don’t try to emulate those superhuman folks who get by on four hours of sleep per day. Most of us weren’t built like that, so, just stop trying. A well-rested human is focused and productive. Besides, what’s the ROI of working ourselves to death?

How to implement this in your life: If you don’t have a mindfulness practice yet, start with just a few minutes a day, it can be upon rising while you’re still in bed, or even at night before falling asleep. Apps like Headspace and Simple Habit are great for those just starting out.

There you have it. Any of these will be helpful. But if you really want to transform your life in regards to how busy you feel, I highly recommend that you do all 12, one by one, over three months. After that time, your life will be unrecognizable to you. And feeling stuck in the hamster wheel of “Busy” will no longer be a problem.

Go. Do. It.