Dr. Claire Kaye (Being Busy)
Dr Claire Kaye is an executive coach specialising in career development and has spent 20 years developing, changing and expanding her portfolio career. She has learnt to create opp...
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What is busyness?
So busyness, as you would expect, is when you feel busy, but overwhelmed in that sense of there's too much going on, almost like your brain is full. You can't stop thinking about all the things you've got to do, and it can feel very challenging when you are busy to actually focus or know what you need to do first.
Can busyness lead to burnout?
So busyness can definitely lead to burnout. And that tends to come when people feel overwhelmed, anxious, stressed, like they're not being productive, that they're not valued, that their life is overtaken by a to-do list that is never ending. And that can lead into feels feelings of moral injury, which can then lead into feelings and symptoms of burnout. And when somebody is experiencing burnout, which is multifaceted, is really vital that they get the support and the space and the time to recover. So if you would like your team and yourself as an individual not to burn out, it's vital that you look at busyness and think about what you need to put in place to make things feel more balanced. And what will be balanced for you will be very different for somebody else. So busyness is fine as long as it's, it's in a way that works for you. It isn't fine if you're feeling stressed and out of control. And if you're feeling like that, take a step back. Take a moment to think about how you're feeling and what you need to put in place to make a change so that you don't burn out.
My life is so busy it's exhausting, what can I do?
So I think today that's a really common statement, and it's something that makes me sad because there are lots of things that we can all do that make a big difference. I think one of the easiest things to do that I do on a regular basis is to do, first of all, a brain dump of all the things that you need to do on a day-to-day basis. So that could be things at work, that could be walking the dog, making dinner, literally everything, and then take a seven day planner, which you can buy online or you can make yourself, it just has the days of the week on it. And actually then take the tasks that you have to do and to allocate them into different sections of your week. So you'll find that actually by doing that, by time blocking is what it's called. What will happen is that you'll have time that's allocated for your emails, time that's allocated for walking the dog time allocated to create a presentation or whatever it is. So rather than things going round and round in your brain and making you feel exhausted and overwhelmed the whole time, which adds to that sense of busyness and overwhelm, actually what happens is you have your seven day plan and actually building in a bit of flexibility to each day means that if things overrun or underrun, you've got that time to take up the flex. So what I would strongly suggest is a really simple tip is to brain dump, get a seven day planner, and try seven day planning because it makes a big difference to that sense of busyness.