Nowadays, people have a lot of work to do. It can be a student who has to attend lectures, complete assignments and take part in extracurricular activities. It can be an officer who has to work day and night on his/her official duties. Everyone has one or other tasks to perform and the time just runs away. In this process, in turn, people are running away from their lives. So, it is high time for us to recognize whether we are being productive or being busy. Doing productive work makes you closer to your goals and you contribute something from it to your personal growth. But being busy just fills your day with work and more work without thinking where actually you are heading to.
Read on to find out the difference between what’s being busy and what’s being productive?
1. Busy people often talk about how busy they are. Productive people talk by showing good results.
How will you feel when you call a friend to discuss your personal problem? But he/she tell you that they can’t talk to you as they are too much busy with their work in the office and the deadline for the project is approaching. You might feel why you called that person at first point and later you might also feel taken on granted. Rather if your friend was productive he/she could have told you that they are doing important work and will call you in half an hour. You might feel good after hearing this. So, your productive friend not only does well at work but also can help you to sort your problems.
2. Busy people multitask but productive people do not adopt multitasking at times.
Imagine you are the manager of a company and you have told one of your employees to do certain tasks of multiple projects in 3 days. So, here if that employee is doing multi-tasking and juggling between all the tasks given to him/her, they will seem to get busy. This will hamper their work as more amount of pressure will be built upon them and they will tend to do mistakes in the work. Rather if he/she tries to be productive, they will focus on one work at a time, prioritize the work and effectively finish the tasks in the given timeframe.
3. Busy people pretend to look like they have a mission. Productive people really have a mission for their lives.
Have you ever faced a situation where you find your colleague is hiding something about their way of living life or way of doing work? It can be that your colleague is scared to share all the details about it but acts as they are confident enough to face anything even though they might be faking it. This quality signifies that your colleague is acting like being busy. Rather if he/she was being productive, they would share little details and stay confident at the same time that they can courageously fight all the obstacles which come through and move forward to reach their goal.
Do first things first and second things not at all. It doesn’t mean that let stuff remains undone rather it means that we shouldn’t be doing those “second” things.
4. Busy people have many priorities but productive people have limited priorities.
Sometimes, Have you found yourself end up doing things which you really don’t like? This makes us feel sad because we considered that in our priority list for sure and worked on it. Busy people often add unnecessary things as their priority and lose their focus on the other important tasks. But the reverse is the case for productive people. They know the difference between urgent, important, and irrelevant. When to do what and how to manage things is just a piece of cake. They also follow Pareto’s Principle which states that 80% of their desired results come from their 20% most prioritized things. After all, they live a peaceful life with this fact.
5. Busy people try to concentrate on the action but the productive unicorns concentrate on getting clarity before action.
Have you heard of people saying to you that they want to buy a house which is sea facing and luxurious? You might be thinking at that time what this person is dreaming about. Is he/she working hard to get that, why they want that, whether it is a necessity for them, and so on? Busy people focus on doing things but they lack clarity whether those things are really needed by them. Whereas, productive people have reasons for the things they are doing and are clear enough in their mind that their clarity will result into a conviction.
6. Busy people just keep talking about how they will change. Productive ones keep moving on the path of making changes.
You might have heard from your relatives, parents, colleagues, or friends that they want to change something to be a better person. But have you stressed upon the fact that are they really changing? Busy people usually have this habit. But when you see productive people, the case is totally different. You will see them actually making efforts to modify themselves, change when they are incorrect, accept the mistakes, and so on.
7. Busy people have a long to-do list but productive people have a sufficient set of tasks in their to-do list
Let’s take this pandemic situation, many students want to learn something and increase their skills sitting at home. If you are one of them, you have might have signed up for various webinars and online courses. Also, added many other things with this like cleaning home, cooking, and so on in your to-do list but not able to finish them properly or either procrastinate and shift it to the next day. Isn’t it? If yes, you are on the verge of getting busy! But productive people won’t do so because they are the believer of “Parkinson’s law” which tells the work gets expanded to fill the time which is scheduled for its completion. So, these kinds of people plan things effectively by allocating the right time to the right tasks.
By these simple examples, you might have understood that being productive is crucial than being busy. So, every day before you sleep ask yourself whether you are living a productive life to be happy or just feeling to get productive by being busy!