The Art of Leadership

Chapter 27. A Precious Hour

I am told that the manner by which others understand that I am busy is when my writing coherence suffers. This primarily occurs in emails, when whole words are dropped, sentences become jumbled, and logic falls on the floor. Rands, I literally did not understand what you were asking in that email.

Poorly written emails are an early warning of intense busyness. Yes, I lack the time to proofread an email, but the mail is sent. At least I accomplished something. The step beyond this is when s—t is truly falling on the floor, and while s—t on the floor is professionally unacceptable, there used to be a point of irrational pride in my head when this situation occurred: look at me, how important I must be, with all the…busy.

It’s this irrational pride I want to examine, because hidden inside of it is an insidious red alert situation.

The State of Busy Is Seductive

7:15 a.m. I sit down at my desk, fire up my calendar, and examine my day. Six meetings, starting in 45 minutes. All are compelling, all are likely to lead to progress. Good. Switch to Things and examine the backlog. I’ve got 45 minutes and 23 open tasks. Which of these should I prune? Which of these stay…Say, I’ve been meaning to call Joe for a week. I’ll call him now.

7:25 a.m. Joe and I are on similar morning caffeination plans, so the call is high bandwidth. We’re done with our three topics in 10 minutes, and I’m now sporting the rush of not just completing a task, but completing it at speed. ...