Redwall Leadership Thought of the Week:
Busyness Brings Emptiness
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
~Socrates
Busyness is a lively, yet largely meaningless activity. It is easy for a leader to get busy and stay busy. Because, if you are like me, you would rather be busy than bored. If you don’t protect your time, then no one in your organization will. Now, protecting your time does not mean you are unavailable or unengaged. Protecting your time means that your preserve your time for the functions and facilitation that are the greatest investment of your time. The larger your team, your organization or your endeavor, the greater need to protect and preserve your time you will have. The larger the organization, the more demands on your time.
It’s absolute arrogance to try to be everything for everybody, just as much as it is complete arrogance to be be nothing to nobody.
Busyness often happens because you don’t let others help you. It’s easy in leadership to suspect the motives of others. Discernment is certainly important. However, there comes a time where you must ask for help and receive help that is offered. I struggled with this for years for two reasons: (1) I thought if it was done right, I should do it myself (arrogance) and (2) I thought it made me look weak to ask or receive the help of others (insecurity). Arrogance and insecurity are two sides of the same coin of pride. It was through humility I became less busy, because I became willing to ask others to help me do what they could do better than me.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Barrenness is what happens to your soul when you get busy if you are not careful. A barren place is an empty place. There are a ton of leaders who are crazy busy, yet completely barren. I don’t call this “me time” I call this boundaries. Your time has limits. You have limits. You can’t do everything. You can’t serve everyone all the time. The greater the scale and scope of your leadership responsibility, the bolder the lines of your boundaries must be. This does not mean you disappear from the scene, vacate your responsibilities or leave your followers wondering where you are and what your doing.
“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” Proverbs 25:28
Busyness often reflects not only poor boundaries, but the absence of them. Everything of value must be protected. This includes your time. Your time is only as valuable as you make it. Don’t over value your time, like “my time.” It has more to do with your calling. Jesus was the greatest leader to ever walk the earth and he had crystal clear boundaries, yet he spent a tremendous amount of his time with others. But, he didn’t let the work drive him, he drove the work.
How did he do this?
A clear calling makes a simple life. A simple life is a less busy life. Jesus’s calling was clear. He knew when to say yes and when to say no. He knew when to dive in and when to walk away. A clear calling gives you clear boundaries. The clearer my calling becomes, the more focused I can be. I am called to be a husband. I am called to be a father. These are more valuable and give more meaning to my soul than any amount of business success or recognition I can ever receive. The right relationships help restore the emptiness of your soul. The right relationships always have the right boundaries and they are simple.
(c) Alex Vann, 2018