65: Buffering with Busyness.
Episode Highlights
Busyness is a choice, not something that happens to you.
The reason why many entrepreneurs choose busyness is because of a habit called “Buffering.”
Buffering is a behavior that helps us (temporarily) avoid a negative emotion. But the emotion doesn’t go away for long, and the buffering behavior has negative consequences - so the result of buffering is more negative.
You can start to coach yourself away from busyness and get control over your time and energy again by uncovering what's really causing you to buffer, and then allowing that emotion instead of avoiding it.
We think that being busy is an uncontrollable facet of life.
“Life gets busy.”
“I’ve been so busy with work!”
But no, my friends, busyness doesn’t happen to you. It just seems that way because you’re not consciously choosing it.
But you are choosing it!
Which is great to know, because if you are feeling busy-and-exhausted, this is your ticket out. But first, you’ve got to understand it.
As entrepreneurs, we often pick up on this idea that busier = more successful. We wear busy like a badge of honor. But to be honest, it feels terrible being busy.
A few years ago, I heard someone say that busy-ness is the opposite of effectiveness. It was like someone handed me a giant permission slip to stop being busy.
Now I see it as busyness is sloppiness. Think about that. The busier I am, the sloppier I'm being with my time. Being busy means that I'm not clear on my priorities, I'm not planning my time very well, and/or I'm not following through on what I said I was going to do.
So today, here is your permission slip to stop being busy.
What is busyness?
Busyness is defined as “a state of being full of activity.” I would define it as habitual motion - moving from one activity to another with little conscious thought.
For many business owners, busyness is actually something I call a buffer.
A buffer is an action that we take in order to avoid an emotion.
We have lots of buffers in our life. We buffer with things like food, Instagram, checking your e-mail, gossiping, reading BuzzFeed articles, or watching TV. You can also buffer with healthy stuff such as working out and eating healthy food.
A buffer isn't really determined by what you're doing, it is about the feeling that you're trying to get away from.
Envision this:
You're doing the dishes after dinner. It's 8pm on a Thursday night, and out of nowhere you have this thought, “I didn't get anything done this week.”
Instantly you feel...disappointed. Disappointment doesn’t feel good so you want to do something about it. You march into your office, crack open your laptop, and start responding to emails.
You're thinking, “I'll just get a few more of these out, then I'll be able to relax.” But you look over at your to do list again and see all the other things that you didn't get done. Your internal critic goes off again, “Yep, didn't get anything done this week.”
All of a sudden, more todos start popping into your head, things that you didn't even have on your list.
“You really need to make that doctor appointment.” “Why do you keep forgetting to empty the recycle bin in your office?” And, by the way, “your desktop is a total disaster, you really need to clean that up.” On and on.
You scramble to check as many little things off the list as you can before you literally pass out at your desk. But no matter how much you do, that nagging disappointment is being fed with more todos, like a gremlin after midnight.
When you buffer with busyness, the end result is never what you really want.
What’s even worse, is that you’re training yourself to respond to your disappointment with busyness. Over the long term that simply isn’t sustainable - it will cause you to overwork and lead you straight to burnout.
You want to stop doing that, right? Okay, let's talk tools.
If you've done my program Power Thinking, you have learned an LCS tool called the model. The model breaks down everything that happens in the world (in your life) into one of five categories. By doing this, we're able to see exactly where problems start, where they end, and what to do about them.
How the model works:
Circumstances (Facts) trigger thoughts > Thoughts (the meaning you give to a fact) trigger feelings > Feelings (emotions) trigger actions > and then Actions create Results.
Are you with me so far? You are in control of everything except for the current Circumstances of your life. It’s all in response to your Thoughts.
The simplest way to look at this is that busyness is a re-Action to a negative emotion.
Step one is to uncover the thoughts and feelings you’re reacting to.
Step two is to stop reacting with your buffer.
You need to “disrupt” your model, which is a whole lot easier to do once you understand that it’s happening!
(It’s still challenging, let’s be honest. It takes practice just like breaking any other bad habit. But knowing what you’re working with gives you all the power back.)
In my example above, the model would be:
C - 8pm Thursday night, cleaning dishes
T - “I didn't get anything done this week.”
F - Disappointed
A - Check email, go down a todo rabbit hole, stay up too late.
R - Exhausted, still thinking about not getting enough done, still feeling disappointed.
A buffer always has a net-negative consequence. If this were your model, you’d end up more tired but no more satisfied. And as long as you keep feeding your feelings with busyness, you’ll keep stacking the consequences unless you disrupt the model.
BTW, burnout is a forced model disruption. But you can disrupt your model, on purpose, long before that happens!
Become aware of your thoughts and allow yourself to feel the emotion without reacting to it.
Instead of jumping into action when you feel disappointed, notice what it feels like in your body, and remember that it’s caused by a Thought - not a fact - it’s an optional opinion.
To summarize, busyness is habitual activity that is often caused by a negative emotion. You can change your habit by using the model to uncover the Thoughts and Feelings behind it, and then create a new intentional model that you are in control of.
If you want to learn how to overcome any problem and achieve any goal using the model, download the free Power Thinking Workbook inside Maverick HQ. This is a free resource library designed to help solopreneurs thrive.
Episode Links:
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Sound editing is provided by Erik Hulslander at hearnoevilmedia.com.
Linsi Brownson is a certified business and life coach, and seasoned small business owner. Over 15 years, she has owned ecommerce, services-based and agency businesses ranging from a team of 1 to 25.
Read The Transcript:
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Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to the show. Today, we are talking about busy-ness, and I'm gonna tell you why busy-ness is an action; it's not something that happens to you. You are not busy, you're choosing to do busy things. I'm also going to introduce you to the concept of buffering, which is actually what busy-ness is, and how it never creates the results that you want. So basically stop doing it. Then I'm going to tell you how to do that.
So, before we dive in, I want to tell you about my new program called The Dash Plan, which is my four-step process for taking your creative and business projects across the finish line. Now, I know that you have at least one, but I'm going to guess it's more like five great ideas that you are just not giving your attention to. I know, because we're busy, right? See how this all plays together. So maybe you want to write a book, but you're not sure where to even start with it. Or, maybe you've started to create a course, and you've got some things written, maybe even recorded. And then you get kind of caught up on the launch thing like, “What? Am I going to launch this? How do I launch this? There's some fuzzy details with it.” And that is making you think day after day, “Why bother, right? I can't make any progress on this, because I don't know those things.” I hear you. Or, maybe you've been nagging yourself for years to create some onboarding and some automation systems to make your daily business life, oh, you know, less busy. You want to make it simpler. You want a better experience for your clients. And then the idea of like mapping all of that out, figuring out what software to use, all of it just seems so daunting that you keep putting it off, keep choosing to do it the slow and hard way, because at least you already know what to expect.
Is this ringing any bells? Like my talking to you right now? Okay, good. These are just a few examples of who I have created The Dash Plan for. So whatever your idea is, if you want to make it happen, you know, you're going to need a strategy to get it done. Like really make it a thing that you're going to do. And the dash plan is designed exactly to help you do that. So, take a meaningful project across the finish line in the next 30 days. And through that process, you will learn how to set and achieve any goal no matter how big or small, because my real intention with this is to help you be brilliant. Your win with this is just the cherry on top.
So, along with those four simple steps in that process, I'm also doing bonus trainings on how to make fast and powerful decisions, how to overcome overwhelm, how to manage your time - no matter how many interruptions you get throughout your day - and how to overcome resistance without using willpower or force. So if you love the podcast, I really want you to go and check out The Dash Plan because it's so much of what I talk about here. And the process is so simple. It's so doable. I mean, it has to be, right, if you can achieve a goal in 30 days. And you know that I am not at all about busy-ness and burnout. So we're making it simple. We're making it doable. If you want more details on that, go to my website, www.linsibrownson.com/thedashplan. That's The Dash Plan.
Alright, speaking of busy-ness, let's talk about it. As I mentioned at the top busy is an action that you choose, it's not a thing that happens to you. But we don't think of it that way at all. We think that busy-ness is just an existence thing. So years ago as a new entrepreneur, I picked up on this idea that the busier I was the more successful I was. It was like this badge of honor to be busy. Hey, remember, I used to run this small networking group called Green Drinks. And when we would all show up, it was like this habitual activity where we would just shake hands with someone and be like, “How are things? You keepin’ busy?” “Oh, yeah, yeah, super busy.” “Okay, that's great.” And then you move on to the next person. “How you doing? You keepin’ busy.” “I am super busy.” It's so sad, but it's totally just what we all thought we were supposed to be doing.
And to be honest, it felt terrible being busy. Well, you know this, it feels terrible. So I remember how big of a relief it was to a few years later, I heard someone say that busy-ness is the opposite of effectiveness. Hmm. It was like someone handed me a giant permission slip to stop being busy, to never be busy again. I was like, "Yes, please, I will take that.” So today, one of my favorite things to say about it is that busy-ness is sloppiness. Hmm, think about that. The busier I am, the sloppier I'm being with my time. It means that I'm not clear on my priorities. I'm not planning my time very well. And/or, probably and, I'm not following through on what it is that I said I was going to do. I'm busy because I'm actually just being sloppy about what I'm doing. Because busy-ness doesn't happen to you, it is an action that you take. And if you've done my program Power Thinking, you have learned a tool called the Model. So the model was created by Brooke Castillo, and I'm going to give you the really quick and dirty rundown of exactly how it works right now. You ready? Alright.
So the Model breaks everything that happens in the world, everything that happens in your life, into one of five categories. And by doing this, we're able to see exactly where problems start, and where they end, and what to do about them. So it starts with circumstances. So circumstances are the things that basically happen outside of you. So as she defines it, “the circumstances are the facts of the world.” So they're the indisputable, non-subjective facts of the world, but they also include things like what other people think and say and do. It includes numbers and includes details. And it also includes your past. So, I like to think of it as the things that you don't really have control over. Those are the things that go into the circumstances. And then we have thoughts. So that's the next part of the model, the T. Thoughts are sentences in our brain. It's how we think about a circumstance. So in any given circumstance happens, we have a thought about it. Now, we do not control our circumstances, but we can control our thoughts about our circumstances, you see that difference? Okay. So our thoughts then trigger a feeling and emotion. So, that's the next part of the model. And emotions are vibrations that we feel in our body, every emotion has a specific vibration that rings through our body. And those emotions then drive our actions. I've talked about that on the podcast before. And our actions produce results. So the model is circumstances that trigger thoughts, thoughts trigger feelings, feelings trigger actions, and then actions create results. Are you with me so far?
Okay. So everything in the model, which is everything in your experience of the world, except for circumstances are actually within your control, which is so good to know. Because busy-ness is something that we think is our circumstance, we think that we just are busy, but it's actually an action. It goes into A line of the model. So we think that we don't have control over it, but we actually really do. And that's why I wanted to spell this out for you. Because when you do that, when you plug busy-ness into the action line of your model, then you know that there has to be a thought and a feeling that is driving that action. And we are in charge of those things. So good. Knowing this instantly gives you your power back, because now it's not happening to you. It's something that you are choosing, and you just need to go and figure out why you're choosing it. Right. So we're going to talk in a few minutes about how to get more specific with that and how to change your Model around it. But just that in and of itself is a way out of being stuck inside the hamster wheel of busy-ness.
So, what is busy-ness? Well, we know it's an action, but more specifically, it's a buffer. And a buffer is an action that we take in order to avoid an emotion. So, most of us have lots of buffers in our life. We buffer with things like food, and Instagram, and checking your email. We can buffer with things like gossiping, or reading BuzzFeed articles, or watching TV. You can also buffer with healthy stuff. A lot of us do this, like personal development, taking courses, working out, eating healthy food. Because a buffer isn't really about what you're doing, so much as it is about the feeling that you're trying to get away from.
So an example of a busy-ness buffer would be that, let's say it's Thursday night, it's 8pm. And you're doing the dishes after dinner, and then all of a sudden, you have this thought, “I didn't get anything done this week.” And then suddenly, you feel really disappointed. Now, disappointed is not an emotion that you like, right? It doesn't feel good. And you've probably made it mean pretty terrible things about yourself. And so, without even realizing what's happening, in just a split second, you march yourself into your office, crack open your laptop, and just start responding to emails. And you're thinking like, “I'll just get a few more of these out, and then I'll feel better. Then I'll be able to relax.” And then you look at your to do list; you see all the other things that you didn't get done. You're like, “Yep, didn't get anything done this week.” And then all of a sudden, new things start popping into your head. More things that you haven't gotten done, that you didn't even put on your to do list, because you probably should make that appointment this week, right? And then, why do you keep forgetting to empty the recycle bin in your office? And by the way, your desktop is a total disaster, you really need to clean that up. And on and on. And no matter how many nagging to do’s, you manage to actually check off the list before you seriously have to go to bed, it's like 10 o'clock, now, you haven't gotten rid of that disappointment. You just keep feeding the beast with your busy-ness. Right, because when you buffer with busy-ness, the end result is never what you really want. So let's just examine this using the model.
So in this example, the circumstance is that you didn't do things that you plan to do. So, that's what happened. That's sort of the facts, right? You had a to do list, you didn't do some of those things. And then you have the thought, “I didn't get anything done this week.” That thought triggers a feeling of disappointed, which you then try to solve by taking the action of buffering with busy-ness until 10pm. So doing all those little things, right. And then what's the result of that the result of buffering and being really busy until 10 is, first of all, that you're tired, right? You've mentally exhausted yourself by running through endless to do lists of things; of the things you should have done, the things that you should do right now, the things that you still need to do. That just sounds exhausting even seeing it. And then you're also probably physically exhausted, right? You just overworked yourself, you really cut into your downtime in the process that you need to be able to sleep well, you created more work for yourself by coming up with just new things to pile on to your to do list. And you've created this catch 22 for yourself, right? Because on the one hand, you're believing that if you can just get a little bit more done, then you won't feel so disappointed. You're trying to get away from that feeling of disappointed by doing the things. But now, you've just got to always be striving for more completion, and just chasing after those to do’s. But then you keep adding more to do’s and more things to chase after. That's the catch 22 of buffering, right? So every time you feel disappointed, then your reaction is to go and be busy. And let me just tell you, disappointment is a feeling that happens a lot in business. So if this is how you're reacting to that feeling of disappointment, you're going to be in trouble here.
So that's the result that you're currently creating with your business model. You want to stop doing that, right? Okay, let's talk about that. The simplest way to look at this is that your busy-ness is a reaction to a negative emotion. So, you've got to stop reacting to it. So we're not changing the circumstance of the things to be done the to do list, you've got to stop changing your A line. So, step one is that you need to uncover what you're actually reacting to. So it's the thoughts and the feelings that you're typically reacting with the form of busy-ness. Then, in the moment, you will have the ability to not react, right? It gives you the power of choice. But Step two is to allow yourself to feel that negative emotion without reacting to it. Right? So you've got to catch yourself, and then instead of doing something different, you just allow yourself to have that negative emotion. So instead of taking action when you feel disappointed, what would it be like to just feel disappointed? I talked about this in a previous episode. I think it was Episode 53: Your Feelings Create Your Future.
So if an emotion is just a vibration in your body, think about this like ringing a gong. The loudest, most intense part of ringing a gong is immediate. When you hit it, it makes a very loud sound. And then it sort of reverberates and kind of fills the room in a few moments, then it starts to dissipate. Now, if you keep hitting that gong with the same thought over and over, the same mallet over and over again, you'll keep feeling intensity, and then reverberation, and then dissipation. Right? So you can just keep doing that over and over, which is what happens when you jump into action, because you keep having those same perpetual thoughts over and over and over again. Or you can catch yourself and notice that thought, notice that you're hitting that gong, and then just don't hit it again. Just allow it to shake itself out. And then you become free to move on to something more intentional. So step one, is to uncover what's really causing you to do this busy-ness buffer. And step two, is to allow that emotion instead of trying to buffer your way out of it.
And that, my friends, is busy-ness. It's entirely your choice whether or not to be busy, there's nothing in your business, there's nothing in the world, that you actually have to do. It's just a bunch of thoughts. They're all optional. You get to decide how you want to show up in this world and what you want to accomplish for your business. And busy-ness is not going to ever support you in really getting there, at least not in a sustainable way. So recognizing this, and where you are in your specific cycle of busy-ness, it's going to bring you so much relief. And really and truly it will give you back your time and give you back your energy, which means that it will give you back your life.
Alright, I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you have any questions, come and connect with me on Instagram @LinsiBrownson. I'm totally happy to answer your questions in a DM if I can, or we can set up a coffee date if we have availability for that. But, definitely reach out and we will figure something out that works for you. I want to answer your questions here. And once again, I want to remind you to come and check out The Dash Plan, where I will take you step-by-step through my “get it done” formula without busy-ness I'm going to encourage you to choose one specific goal that you want to achieve within the next 30 days. And then in that process, you're going to learn how to achieve any goal, in any amount of time, and feel so good about it. So you can get more info on that at www.linsibrownson.com/thedashplan. Alright guys, have a fabulous week.