Guest Opinion: The dangers of being busy, and what to do about it
BY KATHLEEN RIESSEN | Partner, Measured Intentions
A weird thing happened in the month of September. It was busy. And I don’t mean sort of busy, I mean packed full of meetings, networking events, social events, kids’ activities, school and more. In fact, I thought my calendar might actually stop allowing me to add more events. Maybe a message would pop up saying, “Nope. Not a good idea.”However, the only thing worse than the month of September is the month of October.
As I talk to my peers, they say the same thing. We are all happy with the progress of our businesses, the success in ourselves, our families and our communities. But the pace! How do we keep up with the pace?
While being busy can mean success in some aspects of our lives, busyness can also lead to stress, sickness and dysfunction. Use these three tips to manage your business busyness.
1. Eliminate unnecessary or undesirable agenda items. Write down everything you do over the course of the next week. OK, OK. I get that just adds one more item to your calendar, but give it a try. Even doing this exercise for two days will help. Then review your list and determine what is important that you do, what someone else can do and what just doesn’t need to get done. What remains on your list should fall under one of two categories: things you enjoy doing or things you absolutely have to do — because sometimes we just have to put our big-girl pants on and get things done.
2. Allocate how many hours you are willing to give to each area of your life on a weekly basis. How many hours are you willing to spend working (including travel and events), with your family, volunteering, on yourself (at the gym, reading a book, twiddling your thumbs, etc.) and any other buckets you may have?
3. Put 20 minutes on the calendar for yourself each day. Seems ironic that I’m asking you to put yet another thing on your calendar when we are trying to un-busy our lives. But this exercise focuses on resetting your pace and giving yourself a few minutes to take a couple of deep breaths. When I make time to do this each day, I get through my other tasks much faster and have a clearer head both in and out of the office.
Busy isn’t just a state of mind — it affects your physical, mental and emotional outcomes. As women leaders, people look to us to guide the pace, so we owe it to ourselves and to our peers to take a deep breath and look at our own level of busyness. Do you have other suggestions on how to change your pace? I’d love to hear.
Kathleen Riessen is a partner at Measured Intentions, a strategic marketing firm in Des Moines that develops strategic marketing plans to align both sales and marketing initiatives. Kathleen and her husband own the Beaverdale, Waukee and West Des Moines-E.P. True franchises of Farrell’s eXtreme Bodyshaping and own Farrell’s U.S. Marital Arts offering Taekwondo and judo programs. Kathleen is a part of the 2016-2017 Leadership Iowa class, and Measured Intentions serves on the Advisory Council for the Iowa Association of Business and Industry. She holds a certified public accountant license, although she begs you not to ask her anything about taxes. Kathleen speaks locally and nationally on the sales and marketing divide and leadership topics.
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Riessen can be reached at 515-868-0240 or by email.
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