Being Busy - Part II

Busy as a beaver - busy as a bee ... all pretty productive, all pretty positive. Being busy isn't a bad thing, as long as we have some control and are not wholly run by being busy. Are you more productive when you have a lot on your plate? Are you better able to prioritize when you can sort through multiple tasks, so that you do the most important ones first?

How we got so busy remains the crux of my concern and here are a few more possible reasons as to why we are:

• Two income families – change in roles and responsibilities - fragmentation
• Activities for children - soccer moms, after school activities, college preparations, helicopter parents
• Blue Laws relaxed - Sunday openings, 24 x 7 business and services, constant traffic on roads and highways, extended work day, play day, chores and activities day
• More data / less information – television crawl lines, sports scores, weather, sports, talking heads, and background slides, web content, magazines, CATV, satellite radio, telemarketers, iPODs, iPHONES, snail mail, e-mail, text messages, Twitter, etc.
• Workers don't do what they used to do - full vs. self serve gas station, post office, trash collection, banking, etc. - we do more ourselves
• Office Meetings - what do we accomplish, how much productive time is usurped, additional tasks are assigned in meetings, work not done while at a meeting needs to be completed, scheduling meetings for longer than necessary, longer meetings drain energy, if we are less energized and/or efiicient, we need to work longer or harder to make up for lost productivity

Part III - the conclusion follows.