I arrived at work, coffee and breakfast in hand, and immediately opened my email. There were always 80-100 unopened, waiting for me. This is the way I started my day for the 15 years that I worked in large companies. I would attend to these mostly unimportant emails until my first meeting, which usually began by 9am. A trail of back-to-back meetings would leave me exhausted before they were over. If I had time in between meetings, I would fight the most urgent fire or try to complete a few quick, urgent things just to feel like I had got something done. I thought something was wrong with me when my boss gave me a concerned look when I once told her that my brain was fried at 3:30pm.

At the end of the day, I would have no inspiration or energy to do the real work I was there to do. No time for visioning, strategy or creativity.

 Sound familiar? You are not alone. I have seen countless others trapped in this cycle.

While perhaps a few thrive on this kind of busy-ness, most of us want more time. More time not just for ourselves, but time at work to think, to strategize and to plan. Time to solve problems creatively and time to connect with our team.

You may think that you have too much work to manage, you’re in over your head, or that others are bringing problems that you need to keep solving. Sometimes these may be true causes, but for many of us, we are actually creating this busy cycle ourselves. Or at least that was what I finally realized I was doing.

Why would we do this to ourselves?

Many of us inadvertently create busy-ness to show our value. We are conditioned from an early age that our worth comes from how much we produce or the results we of our effort. If we can show that we put great effort into a project, it (and therefore ‘I’) have more value.

We get satisfaction from putting out fires, addressing emails, crossing things off the list – these things make us feel productive. We’ve shown our importance by doing something, even if it’s not the most important thing on our list.

This is one of the effects of patriarchy, and it impacts both men and women. It tells us that to be valuable, we need to ‘do’, and keep doing. So, we keep analyzing, reporting, reviewing and meeting because sitting and actually thinking is seen as lazy. Even when sitting and strategizing or just thinking about how to solve a problem is not seen as lazy by others (like our boss), deep down we often believe it ourselves.

This is how we self-regulate and keep ourselves trapped in a cycle of ‘doing’. We don’t even need anyone else to tell us – society constantly reminds us that being busy is a good thing. Here’s one way society told me to get busier:

My first role out of MBA school was a 9-5 job as a financial analyst, where I had support to get my work done well, and time for myself. Back then, I looked at my friends working 12-hour days and I wanted that. They poked fun at me for having a ‘cushy’ job and bragged about how many hours they had worked that week. And I believed that they were better than me for it. I began my journey to get busier.

Society has reinforced the belief that the busier we are, the more valuable.

Now, 20 years later, I know that to have more time and space to be strategic and creative, you have to stop doing. You may have been told this before, or taken time management or delegating courses. They may have helped for a while, but then you sunk back into your old busy patterns. 

So, how do you do less when there is so much to do? How do you break the pattern once and for all?

Here’s where the mind-set shift needs to happen.

What if – you didn’t need to prove your value by the quantity of things that get done?

What if you are already a great employee (or leader or mother or whatever). Could you do less? Could you start your day by working on the most important thing instead of trying to please everyone else first by answering their emails immediately? Better yet, could you start by working on the thing that most inspires you?

Here is why it is possible.

The more we ‘do’, the busier we are, the less in touch we are with our intuition and creativity. (Notice when you are most creative – usually when you are not trying to do anything, when you are just ‘being’. Like taking a shower, lying in bed, walking, meditating or just daydreaming). That is your spirit shining through.

When we are not in touch with our intuition, we can’t make decisions. So, we analyze, review, meet, meet again and debate. And soon, we have run out of time and energy. But when we stop, allow the problem to simmer at the back of our mind – not while doing something else, but by taking a break, we make faster decisions without over-analyzing. We have clarity.

If you are feeling like you cannot find enough time, I challenge you to catch yourself ‘doing’ for a week. Pay attention to when you feel overwhelmed, like you’re spinning your wheels, or sitting in a pointless meeting. Each time, ask yourself:

Does this need to be done?

Does it need to be done right now?

Does it need to be done by me?

If you catch yourself often, and still feel compelled to keep going, you may be caught in the cycle of trying to prove your value by being productive. Shifting the mindsets that underlie these behaviours is one of the ways I help professional women in my private consultations and in my upcoming course: From Doing to Delegating.

Reach out today or sign up for my newsletter for more practical tools that will help you find clarity and inspiration at work.