Bad Busyness

The short 10 second takeaway:
Busyness is not a measure of importance. It’s often a symptom of broken systems, poor energy protection, and lack of strategic clarity. Learn how to reclaim your focus and lead from strength again.

There’s a silent epidemic no one talks about at leadership levels: Chronic, constant, low-grade busyness.

You know the feeling: Your calendar is stacked. Your inbox is overflowing. Your meetings are bleeding into each other. Your evenings disappear into work you didn’t get to finish during the day.

It’s easy to think,
"This is just what leadership looks like."

But it’s not. Not real leadership. Real leadership doesn’t feel like drowning every day. “Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action” says Tim Ferriss!

The real reason you're always busy? You’re trapped inside broken systems. And broken systems don’t fix themselves.

Why Busyness Takes Over

When you don't have a personal operating system for your time, energy, and decision-making, you’re left vulnerable to external noise:

• Urgent (but unimportant) fires

• Meeting requests without agendas

• Constant emails and Slack/MSTeams messages

• Endless task lists with no clear prioritization

• …..(complete the list with anything you complained about this week) ;-)

Instead of choosing what matters most, you react all day long. This costs you more than just hours. It costs you your strategic edge — your ability to see clearly, think ahead, and lead with calm power. And over time? It costs you your health, your fulfillment, and the very impact you're trying to make.

Breaking Free: A Smarter Way Forward

If you're tired of feeling like you're sprinting on a treadmill that’s speeding up without your permission, it’s time to change the game. Here’s how I see some of the highest performing executives and leaders I worked with regain control:

1. Protect Your Prime Energy: You have 3–4 hours per day when your brain is naturally at its best. If you give those hours away to meetings, emails, and reactive work, you’re mortgaging your leadership future. Block them. Defend them. Use them for strategic thinking, deep planning, key decisions.

Your calendar should reflect your true priorities — not everyone else's.

2. Build a Personal Operating System: Most leaders have operating systems for their teams, but not for themselves. You need clear frameworks for:

• How you prioritize each week

• How you handle incoming noise

• How you protect thinking time

• How you plan, review, and adapt quarterly

Without these, you'll always fall back into reaction mode, no matter how much willpower you try to muster.

3. Start Saying No (A Lot More): Every yes is a no to something else. The real strategic move isn’t adding more to your plate — it's aggressively protecting your bandwidth. Ask yourself daily: "Is this action moving me closer to my strategic goals — or just making me feel productive?"

The Leaders Who Win Long-Term

The executives and founders who lead sustainably over decades aren't the ones who work the most hours. They’re the ones who work the right hours — on the right things — with the right energy.

They think bigger.
They act with sharper focus.
They live by systems, not willpower.

And they build businesses, teams, and lives that don't burn them out in the process.

You can too.

If you’re tired of feeling stretched thin and want to explore how to install your own high-performance leadership system (without burning out), let’s talk. I’m offering a few free discovery calls this month to leaders who want to reclaim time, clarity, and calm power.

Click here to apply for a free session: DISCOVERY CALL (I’ll personally review each request.)

(And yes — in a few weeks, there’s something even bigger coming: a live workshop experience I can’t wait to share with you.)

Let's get ahead — the smart way. No more busy for busy’s sake.