Squiggly Shortcut: Why We Need To Ban The Word Busy

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1:37When I ask people to describe their week at work in one word pretty much 90 % of people will say busy. It's our default, it's our go-to word now to describe what work feels like. but it is quite a vague term and being busy can mean lots of different things and I think when we say busy it doesn't really help us with what we might do differently or do more of the same so we want to be more specific if we're going to use a word that helps us to reflect that helps us to be more relevant and helps us to get better at the work that we do I think we want to challenge ourselves to go beyond busy. We also know from the work of a psychologist called Dan Siegel that if we want to work with words we need to name them to tame them.

2:27I always really like that phrase, really memorable, name it to tame it. So if you want to change those words, if busy for you means actually you're having a really difficult week and you're feeling really overwhelmed, the more specific we can be the more chance we have of kind of working with those words in a constructive and useful way so rather than saying busy maybe as you're watching this now think if I wasn't allowed to use busy how would I describe my work or this week in one word maybe you feel confused. Maybe you feel overloaded. Maybe it's progress. So you could start off with busy, but actually when we dive into what busy means, what that looks and feels like for all of us, it's probably quite different.

3:17It can be positive, it might be neutral, or it might be a more negative, a much more difficult word. But the more specific we are, we can then do something with those words so once you've got your words let's imagine it was progress we can then work with those words so if it feels like a positive word it is worth just pausing for a minute to notice well what am I doing well if I've made really good progress this week what has helped me um what could I do again next week what are the repeated habits that have been really helpful for me so that we are intentional about kind of continuing to kind of create an environment and ways of working that kind of really work for us so if your work is if your word is a really good one like why is that ask yourself that why question if your word is a more challenging one let's take a couple of examples let's imagine it's overwhelming i imagine we all we all have weeks where we feel overwhelmed what that then might do is to prompt you to ask a question like okay I do feel overwhelmed what's the one thing that matters most today or what's the one thing that matters most this week and so we force ourselves to prioritize and to turn that overwhelm into well I've got to make some choices I am overwhelmed there might be quite a lot of quantity um but I've got to make some choices so maybe we just ask ourselves some coach ourselves questions to help us to move forward.

4:48If you're feeling confused, slightly different to overwhelm, confused, maybe you're not sure where to start, or you feel like you're second guessing, maybe other people or what you're meant to be doing, you might ask yourself instead, what will help me to create clarity? Would a conversation help me to create clarity? Would a mind map, a one minute mind map help me to create clarity? Would just writing down what I don't know, doing a bit of a don't know notebook, would that help me to create clarity? And ask yourself what has helped me to create clarity in the past that might have been useful?

5:23Because we've all had those moments where we feel a bit confused about work. And so it will encourage you to ask some different questions, but also think about the tools and the techniques that can help you. We don't want to stay confused for too long. We don't want to stay overwhelmed this week and next week and the week after. And so there's a great quote from a philosopher, which I always like, which is the words that we use frame how we see the world. And so I think by just asking ourselves this question, how's my work been this week in one word, and then thinking about how do I work with that word to do more of what's good and to maybe make some changes if things are not working for me it is a much more kind of useful way of you know learning and growing in our squiggly careers if you want to dive a bit deeper into a squiggly careers episode episode 29 so that is at the start of the 500 plus episodes that we've done um so i'll be fascinated to hear if any of you do then listen to that one um whether we're very different or very similar to how we are today uh yeah episode 29 is all about managing stress so not directly on busy but if your one word perhaps is stress or i feel stressed that might be a good one to dive into i hope you found that helpful and please do email us we're helen and sarah at squigglycareers.com if you've got any feedback or if there's any ideas you've got for squiggly shortcuts that would be useful for you

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