A short monologue arguing that constant 'busyness' is often avoidance and a form of unexamined laziness. The speaker shares a personal experiment: reducing their McKinsey workload from full-time (100%) with heavy travel to a 70% schedule (36 hours/week), which improved health, clarity, meaningfulness of work, and maintained or increased client and team performance.
Chapters
They constantly inhabit a culture of busyness. So if. If you are listening to this and like, your standard response when somebody asks you is, how are you? Is busy? Absolutely. You know, I think that just recognize what you're creating for others, what you're creating for yourself, and from where you're operating. Busyness. As a dear friend once told me, busyness is a form of laziness that you are actually not. You're just busy because you're trying to. Because you're not stepping back to actually think about what matters and being able to make the choices. Look, I think personally I've shared this before, but like when I shifted at McKinsey from 100% on five days a week, four days on the road, to a 70% schedule, 36 hours a week I had the other two days, I was really. I created that environment of stability around me, and that 70% forced me to really think about where I was spending my time, because I didn't have an infinite amount of time anymore. Right. What shifted were so many things, of course. My health, my ability to think clearly, grounded, the work I was doing was obviously became a lot more meaningful. But most importantly, if I looked at all external markers for me of performance, you know, my client impact, my client billings, the impact on my team and their experience, the relationships with the client, new knowledge and innovation that I was creating, almost all of them were at the same, if not higher than when I was 100%.
