Being busy and making progress are not the same thing.
I was thinking about this again these last weeks because I have been travelling a lot.
You ask someone how things are going and very often the answer starts with:
Busy.
Very busy.
And somehow we often say it with a little bit of pride.
I do it myself sometimes.
A full agenda, flights, meetings, calls, projects. It gives you the feeling that things are moving. That you are needed. That you must be doing something important.
But I have also had extremely busy weeks where, looking back, I wonder what I actually moved forward.
And then I know people who seem surprisingly relaxed. They have time for coffee, family, thinking, sometimes even doing nothing.
Yet somehow they get the important things done.
Maybe somewhere along the way, being busy became a status symbol.
“I don’t have time” almost started to sound like “I’m successful.”
And I think that is a strange way to measure our lives.
Of course sometimes life is genuinely busy. Mine definitely is.
But I am trying to become more critical about the difference between being busy and actually making progress.
Because a full calendar only tells me that my calendar is full.
It doesn’t tell me if I spent my time on the right things.
And maybe having control over your time is a bigger success than having no time at all.