Busy as a Beaver…
- Post By: Greg Crumpton
- Date:
- Category: Blog
Busy? Really?
8,760. That is how many hours each of us have in any given year. Plus or minus for the whole leap year deal, which I still haven’t totally understood at this point in life.
The difference between how you spend those precious hours is the difference in your through-put. At least that’s what I keep reading and hearing from thought leaders in our society.
Is through-put the goal?
I am thinking more of out-put and results. Through-put sounds like an acronym for being “busy”.
I was talking to a good friend the other evening, and by talking, yes, I do mean texting. We were hammering out a small project schedule we do together and I had fallen behind a bit on my deliverables to her. She was politely nudging me to help me stay on track. We were saying that we both had a lot going on, in other words we have been “busy”. No excuses, I was behind. I had to figure out where I could rob the hour bank to get my work done and shipped to her.
I apologized and said that I would get said task knocked out and delivered on schedule, albeit a tight one. She then told me there’s a sign on the refrigerator at her families’ home that says, “Busy is a B.S. word”. I thought that was a stellar tactic to remind yourself that everyone is busy, but yet we have to push through it and deliver, ship, hand-over or whatever it is you like to call delivering “your particular art”.
The very next morning I was reading @ThisIsSethsBlog, one of my favorite short reads to get my head right most mornings, and the topic? You guessed it… busy! Specifically, the two kinds of busy.
One kind of busy is when Seth describes himself giving a speech. He is all in, no texting during the speech, no checking e-mails, no nothing except a fully engaged commitment to the people who have usually paid the hear him.
The second kind of busy is doing all of the small tasks listed above, while feeding the kids, doing the dishes, talking to mom, etc.
His message? What kind of busy are you? If one isn’t working well, dig in and try the other.
What does this have to do with a mechanical service company that has an intent focus on taking good care of its customers? Everything, in my mind. It reminds me, and maybe you, that when we are in the heat of the battle, in the day to day grind of needing more time to get stuff done, that we have to ensure we are the “Right Kind of Busy for the Right Situation”.
Protect your hours the best that you can… they are only doled out once a day.
