Suffering from busylepsy?

In order for leaders to demonstrate innovative excellence in the business world today, the term ‘busy’ should be treated as a clinical condition as we must be able to cope ‘instantly’ with the evolving aspects of advancements in order to ‘constantly’ create world-class performances. Mediocrity lingered everywhere in the ‘age of scarcity’ but has no room in the ‘age of abundance’ of today, where for every great idea there are hundreds of better ones.

Let’s get clinical

Busylepsy is a self-inflicted mental state where one desperately craves overloading oneself with unnecessary processes. This state can become addictive and leads to a state of numbness and incompetence.

“How could I possibly have seen the train coming head on as I was extremely busy measuring inch by inch of the entire railway tracks… holy moly?”

FACT: The head-on trains happen every day, everywhere in the world, in each and every single office. There are always some serious mishaps occurring when a key person admits a gross negligence because of being too focused on another activity. All too frequently that other activity was a totally irrelevant activity. Simply put, “busylepsy” is self-afflicted and results in traffic jams of the insecure minds.

Here is one example

Millions of taxi company owners around the world were ‘simply too busy’ on dispatch calls and missed out on the creation of the multi-multi-billion dollar enterprises like Uber. Every second around the globe there is a serious wake-up call to many overly busy executive teams who are missing their boats. They are too busy to see the so many hidden opportunities around them.

The fashionable notion of being ‘extremely busy’ as a status symbol is dragged from the horse-and-buggy era. Once upon a time, there was only one method of getting places. Now with massive technological tools and new cutting-edge processes, we can reach a desired destination either by horse, car, sending another person, using a video conference, or even eliminate the trip. The many choices become the improved skill sets. If we become too busy horse-whispering or reading manuals to determine how the car engine works, how will the new options ever be discovered?

© Ilya Glovatskiy – 123RF.com

To have busy agendas is not a bad thing as most professional executives proudly detail their full plates. Having super-tight timelines, crazy and unpredictable deadlines with extreme complexity are all indications of extreme performance. However, there is something seriously wrong when heavy agendas are in reality routine issues and clinging addictions to block the inner and deeper super-performance skill sets. Suffering from busylepsy is a serious situation in need of intervention with whatever the doctors prescribes, be it isolation or straight.

Fact: An office manager and a president of every major country are both allocated 24 hours in a day

Prosperity is simply not created with just hard work, but with smart work and smart workers are extremely organised and fully aware of their surrounding situations all so critical for advancement. Global age awareness is ever so critical to navigate in turbulent times where being overly busy with old issues is often very suicidal.

Here is another example…

Fact: Air-mattresses were invented decades ago
Fact: There are some one billion air mattresses in use around the world
Fact: Airbnb slept on a few air-mattresses and in 36 months acquired USD$30 billion evaluation

The big question: Were the Airbnb founders who were sleeping on air-mattresses just lucky or were they taking the time from their busy schedules to problem-solve and reach new solutions? The important point is as they did this, the remaining billions others were just too busy being dumb and dumber… possibly both.

Let’s go jump on some air-mattresses

Some of the best ideas lay rotting and collecting dust. There are millions of very smart folks out there, each with exceptional ideas. The reason why many of these great ideas stay in dust is because someone lacked the time to figure smart execution. This is busylepsy and it is seriously hindering the exploration and creativity that is needed in this global age, where expansion and success is all about speed and action.

So where is the magic hidden?

The reason Airbnb became a legend and the reason behind other super success stories, present and past, is because they all were focused on excellent and perpetual execution curves. There is a crystal clear reason why great teams end up playing in the dust; the difference is that extremely well-executed teams with clear agendas and great ideas move out of the dust and execute like trapeze artists.

The critical demands on global age style execution agendas automatically disqualify people for carrying such a damaging and contagious disease.

Here’s the beef:

Execution comes in all shapes, be it the snapping of fingers or slow-motion engagements. All critical actions need available time to think; thinking results in the segregating the disorganised mental garbage that takes immense energy and replacing the trash with highly structured and enlightened thinking. This type of thinking leads to bold and competent decisions.

This is only possible with the discovery of two types of corporate thinking styles; free flow mindless drifts or structured trajectories perpetually advancing towards unknown and uncertain factors. The freedom of time to explore repetitive encounters with unknowns clears the bushes and reveals possible pathways. The number one problem with too busy people is the lack of confidence to make decisions; this is often created by the lack of repeated visits to the unknowns or uncertain pending issues. This lack of confidence is directly related to the lack of time given to good and nurtured thinking needed to foster new knowledge and targeted navigation. Without the needed time for exploratory thinking, inhibition, insecurity and delayed reactions prevail. Advance cases lead to disillusionment, panic, depression and breakdowns. Today’s global age is about mandatory advancement to justify ongoing participation or there will be risk of rejection or elimination. To achieve this level of competency, cerebral organisation is far too critical and will lead to win over the shuffling of traditional routines and procedures or politically correct mundane mentality in order to not rock the boat. With this type of unexciting and commonplace thinking, busylepsy becomes the norm and progress is stymied.

Today’s triumph is all about new global age mental capacity. This competence is the ability to understand time and apply relentless pursuits towards a state of being ‘never busy’ but always ready to think in a fresh, fully charged, and open minded way; it also means that the mind is open and ready to receive. Busylepsy shuts the mind in its own irrelevant chase.

In all matters, the mind never stops; corporate minds on a decision mission typically start out as a small garbage bin, and the lack of confidence creates insecurities and the need to acquire all kinds of irrelevant and unnecessary knowledge in order to figure out what’s happening and how that something works. The garbage bin turns into an industrial dumpster and gets larger and larger. Decisions are brought to a standstill and the constant crawl out frame of mind becomes a complex routine creating indecisive attitude and a false aura of being “extremely busy”.

Spot any overly busy person and now you will be able to identify a huge garbage dumpster being hauled with an obvious disconnect with reality and lack of skills to cope with the global age issues of progress.

During print society when the printed word was power, literacy was a prerequisite; today in the new global age of technocalamity, global age skills and a new definition of literacy is a prerequisite. Literacy today is more than being educated, knowledgeable, or well read. It means discarding accepted wisdom and requires imagination and the exploration of what could be.

Quick test: Danger signs:

When managing constant mobile phone calls are not replaced with highly articulate junior staff.

When daily driving to work is not eliminated or replaced by a chauffeur, jogging or public transit.

When endless meetings are not integrated with high quality communication systems in order to eliminate and filter repeated mundane explanations to each small or major decision.

When the need to manage the managers is not eliminated; when managers themselves are not eliminated with motivated entrepreneurial multi-tasking thinkers, and philosophers with all connected in real time.

When the real work only involves ‘real deep thinking’ resulting in global age style execution with the rest getting delegated, automated or eliminated.

Masterclass routine

Isolate exactly one single hour, hide in an absolute quiet place and carefully plan out the ‘next 23 hours’.

Strive to slice all issues by minutes consumed and results expectancy during the next 23 hours and seek faster and better alternate solutions.

Objective is not to find more time to take on an extra load, but to save all extra time for new reserve energy in order to use advance mental capacity for deeper thinking of powerfully exceptional ideas and strategies. It is essential to use technocalamity and eliminate or delegate.

Create an organisation of thinkers and not glorified clerks; the goal is to create thoroughbred champions for races and not donkey caravans.

Become a new global age alpha dreamer and leave others in the dust of chaos and destruction.

Repeat this exercise for the next 30 days; Amazing things will happen. You will find ways to create more deep thinking time. You will find that every day some new discoveries will create extra time for inspired and productive thinking.

Caution; do not fill that extra free time with other stuff; cherish this time, save it and use it as a valuable asset to purify thinking and discover deeper thinking and the powerful energy of recharged brain power.

A year of this practice will eliminate the majority of your work and transform you into a deeply organised thinker, using maximum technology to take care of your distractions, becoming more driven and result oriented with maximum delegation and control. Reach your peak performance by reducing ‘work’ to at least less than 20% and aim for 80% plus for deeper thinking. By this time you will have quadrupled your performance and personal development. Your work would be widely noticed.

This is a guarantee.

Beneficiaries: Not the hard-working slave mentality but the free and liberated smart alpha dreamers, not the social media addicts but the global age smart cyber-trotters, not the dumb down ‘breaking news’ fix junkies but the global age informed truth-seekers.

Enemies: Punch-card dependent mediocrity slowing down innovative excellence and refusing to monster changes and the booming bureaucracies from the past but now suffocating establishments.

Adjustment: Leave your desk right now, walk away, go home and do not come back unless armed with a dozen great revolutionary ideas to quadruple your own mandates plus the performance of your organisation. If you can’t come up with revolutionary ideas, just resign from your mandate and join the punch-card dependent boredom or mobile phone-glued busylepsy cadre.