Busy.

You start your new job.

Not much work. Nobody knows you or your skills.

You’re almost bored.

You complete some tasks and if you do them well … more work comes in.

(If you don’t do them well, work fizzles because you add no value to others’ work.)

More good work begets more work. Until you’re doing so much work that you earn that badge of honour that, when people ask ‘How’s work?’ You qualify to answer:

‘Busy.’

You’ve made it.

And that’s where most of us stay.

Busy. So busy. Can’t-wait-for-the-weekend busy.

You’ve learned that Busy is the natural state of a good worker.

Ask around.

Everyone is busy.

Busy = success = good person = alibi for missing a child’s assembly. Busy.

Busy. Always busy.

You don’t want not to be busy - because, as explained above, it’s a sign of incompetence.

You’re wrong.

Not being busy is evidence of being outstanding at your job. You stand out. Exceptional. You are the exception. In the 1% of 1% of those who do your job.

Going from being flat out busy to not being busy - means you’ve given those who rely on you the greatest gift a person can give another in a workplace:

The confidence to do business.

You’ve exerted the extra time, intelligence, energy, creativity, and risk - to go upstream and work out why the bodies are falling in - while still hauling bodies out. Because you’re doing two things: hauling and going upstream - you’re super-busy for a time. You’re going beyond what you’re paid or acknowledged for. There’s a hump.

Whether it’s through mentoring, training, harnessing technology or removing gatekeepers and unnecessary bureaucracy - you have succeeded in transferring enough of your knowledge to others that they rarely need you to do their jobs.

Explaining why nobody sets out to reach this level of not busy in their work.

Not only is it hard and takes creativity and a period of super-busy. But because not being busy looks exactly the same as someone who’s incompetent or lazy.

It puts your job in jeopardy when the boss or HR come looking to cost cut.

It makes it hard to justify why you can’t help out at your child’s school.

Removing friction from the trajectory of another’s decision making should be the objective of every worker. It’s a remarkable act of selfless service.

Especially when that friction is you.