Why Wearing the Busy Badge is Burning You Out (And What to Do Instead)

[00:00:00] Rachel: I have children at home at the moment doing A Levels and it’s quite annoying ’cause. I have to work at home, I record my podcasts at home, and I’m used to it being my space.

[00:00:09] Rachel: Now, some days I’m pretty busy. I have back-to-back meetings. I literally don’t stop all day, and it was like that the other day. And one of my pet bug bears is when my children eat, they have their snacks and then they just leave their stuff all over the kitchen. And I was moaning about this. I said, why didn’t anybody put their plates in the dishwasher? And my son turned round to me and said, yeah, but mom, the other day you had lunch. You just left your stuff all over the kitchen, you didn’t clear it up. I said, ah, yes, but darling, I was very busy that day. I had back to back meetings and I just didn’t get time. And he looked at me and said, Mum, who’s in charge of your diary?

[00:00:45] Rachel: And I listened to myself and it sounded really, really stupid. And I realized that I was using busy as an excuse for lots of different things. So today on the podcast, we are diving into something that many doctors won’t admit out loud, but almost all of us feel, and that’s the belief that busy makes us important.

[00:01:07] Rachel: This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we talk about on our full podcast episodes. I’ve chosen today’s topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you’re up to feeling energized and inspired. For more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work, don’t forget to subscribe to You Are Not a Frog wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:01:33] Rachel: So if you ask any doctor or healthcare professional how they’re doing, you’ll probably get one of three answers. Either I’m completely rammed at the moment. I just have no capacity for anything else. Or they say, the work is just relentless. I’m getting home later and later. I’m so busy, there’s just no let up in what I’m doing.

[00:01:50] Rachel: And even though this might be true, I know that in the past when I’ve said that, I’m not just saying it to update people, I’m often saying it just to sort of signal. But I’m contributing, I’m earning my place in society and, and my work really is important.

[00:02:05] Rachel: And i’ve had an incredibly busy month of it. I’ve done lots and lots of conferences. I’ve been all over the country. I’ve been away with my daughters, we’ve had master classes on, And I’ve been pretty overscheduled. This week. I’m not overscheduled and you know, it’s wonderful, but it does feel a bit weird. And when people say, you know what’s happening this week? I can say to them, actually, yeah, I’ve got a really nice spacious week. But even though that I really, really love the week I’m gonna have, that does fit a bit weird to me saying that it feels like, well, maybe i’m not working hard enough. Maybe the fact that I’ve got space in my week means that I’m failing in some way.

[00:02:42] Rachel: Now, on the face of it, we know that this is total nonsense, don’t we? But maybe there’s just one little bit of us that thinks, well, if I’m not really busy, maybe I’m not worth anything. Because somewhere along the way, busy stopped being just a state and it became a status symbol. But what if that belief that busyness equals important just isn’t helping us anymore? And what if it’s actually quietly burning us out?

[00:03:07] Rachel: I think for some of us, busy has become a substitute for self-worth, and it’s costing us much more than we realize. We wear busy like a badge of honor, and we fill every single gap in the diary. We apologize for resting, we convince ourselves that the more we do, the more we actually matter.

[00:03:23] Rachel: But here’s the truth. Being busy all the time is not a sustainable way to feel significant. I heard a quote recently and I can’t remember where I got it from, but I had this list on my phone of quotes, when I hear them, I write them down so I can share them with you on the podcast. And this quote was, A busy life is a poor proxy for a significant life. Wow. That stuck me in my tracks.

[00:03:46] Rachel: And that was closely followed by the quote busy is a lie, which tells you your significant. Ouch, right? And in fact, the problem is busy might be the very thing that’s actually stopping you showing up as a doctor, the colleague, the leader, the family member, the partner that you want to be.

[00:04:05] Rachel: And I think this really, really matters because if we keep believing that busyness equals importance, We will eventually burn out because we’ll just chase more and more importance. We know that that’s not sustainable. We’ll lose sight of what actually matters in our lives. We’ll keep saying yes out fear, out of guilt, or just out of habit, and we’ll also become quite fearful of resting, and I’ve found that when I’m very, very busy, it actually becomes quite hard to rest.

[00:04:34] Rachel: A bit like when you’re driving really fast, you can’t just stop in a car. You have to decelerate. And in fact, when I was away recently, when I got on the plane and I didn’t have anything to do, I felt a bit sort of antsy. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself, so I was, I was reading, I was listening to podcasts, I was writing lots of stuff down. But when I was away for a week, gradually my nervous system settled down. And as I was coming home, we had a, a long train ride and I found myself just looking out of the window and resting and thinking. But it took about a week to decelerate.

[00:05:06] Rachel: And the problem with being constantly busy is we end up just becoming resentful of the work, even if the busyness is something that we have maintained ourselves. Because we are not doing it for the love of the work, but we’re more doing it to prove how important we are.

[00:05:22] Rachel: And I know that in the past I have done things just because it’s got a bit of status attached to it, perhaps, or just because I was really flattered to be asked but if that’s the only reason you’re doing it, it’s really a rubbish reason and you don’t gain any satisfaction from the work itself. So we become resentful and we eventually become unwell when just overworking and overworking.

[00:05:43] Rachel: But if we choose to, to reexamine where we get our significance from, realizing that actually the way to significance is through depth, not through busyness, then we can consider a whole different way of working. We will get our time back. We will be much more present, we’ll feel much more peaceful. We’ll be able to lead ourselves and other people from our intentions, like what we want to do and where we want to go, not just be buffered by the next task that needs to be done. And we’ll find ourselves reconnecting with joy and purpose in life. And not only that, but we will end up role modeling a sustainable way of working for other people too.

[00:06:22] Rachel: Now this isn’t easy, and I’m sure lots of you have got loads of things going through your head like, but there’s so much stuff to be done. Who’s gonna do it if I don’t do it? It is possible, however, and it does start by understanding just why we are so attached to busy in the first place.

[00:06:38] Rachel: So why is it so hard just to let go of busyness? I don’t know about you, but at medical school I had lectures nine till five on most of the weeks of the year. We had a couple of weeks in the summer to go away and that was it. And once we’d done our preclinical, we were on the wards. And then I’ve just worked ever since. And getting into medical school wasn’t that easy, so that’s worked really, really hard.

[00:07:00] Rachel: So this sort of hard work equals success has been ingrained in me all of my life. And we are just taught that effort equals excellence. And I know that all the people in my year that got first, well, they were in the library probably five or six nights a week. So the harder you work, the higher your grades and the bigger the accolade.

[00:07:21] Rachel: So we end up thinking, well, if I’m not busy, then who am I? Particularly if we are only ever judged by our output and the work that we do. And we’ve talked about identity a lot in other podcasts. One reframe that I found has been very, very helpful that instead of saying, I am a doctor, I say, I work as a doctor, or I worked as a doctor, instead of saying I am a podcaster, I’ll say, well, I work as a podcaster, I work as a trainer, I work as a speaker, not I am it.

[00:07:53] Rachel: Right, no, I am a mother and a friend, but I’m no more defined by my job than I am defined by the house that I live in or the car that I drive, both of which incidentally can be other traps for us, can’t they? So if I start to define myself by, I work as then actually how I show up when I work as that person is much, much more important than just the fact that I’m doing that in the first place.

[00:08:19] Rachel: The next reason why we find it so hard to let go of busyness, and I’m sure this will ring true for probably most of you, is that we, I. Just don’t like letting people down. We are really frightened of it. Now, I have a friend, I love her to bit, but she says yes to everything. She constantly over schedules herself, so that means she’s constantly late to things and then is constantly running off to do something else halfway through when we’ve all decided to meet up.

[00:08:44] Rachel: And she’s the kindest person in the world, but it’s got to the point where I don’t feel like I can ask her to do anything because I know she’ll say yes. She’s so worried about letting people down and she genuinely wants to help that she will over commit.

[00:08:59] Rachel: Now, I contrast this with somebody I was talking to the other day and she said to me, listen, if you need some help, just call me at any point. She said, I will say no. If I can’t help at that point, don’t worry. I’ll be really clear. And it just felt so much better and so much easier, and I’m much, much more likely to ask that second person for some help then the first person. Why? Because I know that they will be able to say no to me. They’re happy letting me down in inverted commas. But they’re happy with the fact that they’re not omnipresent. They can’t please everybody all the time, and that is so much more helpful as Brene Brown says, clear is kind.

[00:09:36] Rachel: So if you are that person that can’t let anybody down and says yes to everybody, believe me, you’ll be saying an unconscious no to lots and lots of people who will just feel that it’s very, very hard to ask you anything because they know that you will overstretch and overcommit and you end up not being a great friend anyway.

[00:09:52] Rachel: And as doctors and healthcare professionals, well, we say yes because we care. We don’t want to disappoint, but we do need to just to get it into our heads at boundaries don’t mean I don’t care. They mean I care sustainably. Others will feel much freer to ask you to do things if they know you can say no, and if they know that, you’re just gonna weigh it up and decide if that’s the right thing for you or not.

[00:10:17] Rachel: Thirdly, it’s very hard to let go of busyness because the system just rewards over functioning and then it becomes normalized just like that frog in boiling water. And when I was at GP Registrar, I used to go swimming at lunchtime, we had enough time. Fast forward 20 years, you couldn’t do that anymore. Just like that frog in the morning water, the overwork and the busyness has crept up and up and up. But now it just feels normal.

[00:10:43] Rachel: And if you are the one who always says yes, who always does everything, then yes, you are seen as reliable. But then people just take that for granted and that’s what they expect of you. It doesn’t become abnormal anymore. It doesn’t become generous anymore. It’s just what they expect from you. And the system adapts and expects more and more from everybody with less and less.

[00:11:03] Rachel: And people just accept it because being busy is a bit of a badge of honor, and they don’t call it out or they do whinge about it, but nobody’s setting any boundaries. And so if you carry on doing what you’ve always done, you are always gonna get what you’ve always got.

[00:11:16] Rachel: So yes, you may be seen as reliable. You may be seen as a superstar by your organization, but you’re gonna start to lack joy. And that’s one of the signs of burnout, isn’t it? You’re gonna get cynical, you’re gonna be overextended, and actually rather than doing a few things really well, you’ll end up doing everything pretty badly or being pretty mediocre.

[00:11:36] Rachel: So you need to practice stopping over functioning. That’s a double negative there, but you know, create some little small wins. Protect one hour a week or cancel one meeting because you don’t have the capacity, and that’s enough for now. But just practice putting boundaries in and saying, no, enough is enough. This can’t just keep going up and up and up.

[00:11:55] Rachel: Now, the fourth reason why we find it really hard to let go of busy is because we’re ashamed. We feel that we’re not good enough if we’re struggling or we can’t handle everything. And I’ve talked about this hundreds of times on the podcast. We’ve talked about seeing your to-do list, not as a bucket that you have to get to the bottom of, but seeing all those tasks as a river where you can choose what you take out of it.

[00:12:16] Rachel: But we really beat ourselves up if we can’t do everything on the list. And when everyone else looks like they’re coping, we feel ashamed to admit that we are not or that we’re struggling. We don’t want to appear like we’re snowflakes. We just can’t cope.

[00:12:30] Rachel: And even worse, sometimes when we do stop being busy, we get some space, we have to confront ourselves, and then the whole thing just comes crashing down. So keeping ourselves busy is almost the easy option. So everyone else looks busy, so we pretend that it’s all fine with us as well, even when we’re barely holding it together.

[00:12:48] Rachel: So we need to remember that it’s not a personal failure to need some rest and some time off. It’s just human. And I talked about the stress curve a lot, but under increasing pressure, you will start to slip down the stress curve. Your performance will go down.

[00:13:03] Rachel: And finally, and this is a huge reason for me, why I find it really difficult to ditch busy. I get fomo, fear of missing out. Like there are loads of opportunities I think. Wow, that’d be so interesting. That’d be so brilliant. I’d love to do that. And I haven’t embraced my finite humanness, the fact that I can do anything, but I cannot do everything.

[00:13:22] Rachel: When someone asks me to write an article with them, I say yes. When someone asks me just to pop along and do a talk there, I’m often thinking, oh, I’d love to, because the fear of missing out on opportunities, on meeting people. but I’ve got this post-it and it’s been on my wall over there in my room for a while now, and it says, opportunities are just obligations wearing a mask. And I try to remember that like, are there things that seem like really good opportunities, but in the future they’re just gonna feel like real obligations? Is my future self gonna really thank me now for taking that on or not?

[00:13:59] Rachel: And one of the things I found really helpful is when I do turn stuff down, I write in the diary the fact that I’ve turned it down. Maybe it’s an, an evening out with somebody or it’s writing something or contributing to something that I just don’t have time for. And that reminds me of the space and time that I’ve got just by not doing it. So it’s my no yay entry in the diary.

[00:14:20] Rachel: So those are five reasons why I find it really, really difficult to let go of busy and bottom line. It’s because we find so much significance in our work and our identity is really wrapped up in what we do.

[00:14:32] Rachel: So that that begs the question, are there better ways to find significance? And what other ways can I really matter? Because if being busy isn’t where our worth comes from, then what is? And that question stops a lot of us in our tracks.

[00:14:46] Rachel: So long we’ve been taught and shown that significance only comes from output, from being constantly available and from doing more than seems humanly possible. But what if that’s not true? What if they’re a quieter and stronger ways to matter that don’t require. Us to sacrifice ourselves in the process?

[00:15:04] Rachel: So here are some perhaps more helpful places where we can look for our significance. Ones that won’t burn you out and won’t cause you to drown in tasks and expectations, and I like to think of these as alternative to that busy badge that just might give you some more peace and some more pride in yourself.

[00:15:22] Rachel: So firstly, focus on impact, not volume. So instead of saying, well, how many people did I see? How many patients did I see? How many tasks have I got done? Ask yourself, what difference did I make today? Even if it was just for one person. Because significance doesn’t really come from, like, marking a tally of all the tasks that you’ve done. It does actually come from moments that matter.

[00:15:45] Rachel: I don’t know about you, but I can spend the whole day kicking off tasks for other people that don’t really matter to me and feel like I haven’t really got anything significant done all day.

[00:15:54] Rachel: Secondly, we can start to live a little bit more aligned with our values. So if you start saying no because that is the kind thing to do, not just for you, but for other people as well, or you choose to rest rather than it overextending yourself, or even just speaking up for what’s right or, or challenging somebody or, or, or having a lot of courage and giving somebody some feedback about their behavior. Well, that is when you are living your values and that’s really deeply significant. So you’re actually living your worth through integrity Saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

[00:16:31] Rachel: Next, you can use your experience to guide people, not just to grind through the tasks, and particularly as we get older and we get into maybe the later half of our careers, you’ve got so much experience and wisdom that you can use to guide people. You don’t just need to be grinding through the tasks.

[00:16:48] Rachel: But so often those of us who are more experienced are just grinding through everything rather than giving them to somebody else and teaching them how to do it, and supporting them along the way. We feel really guilty when we delegate, don’t we? And in training sessions, people always say that delegation is one of the most difficult things. But actually I think it’s a really, really important skill that we need to get better at, and we’ll do a podcast on that soon.

[00:17:12] Rachel: So you are more than just a pair of hands on a rotor. You’ve got wisdom, you’ve got insight, you’ve got leadership experience. So sorting out processes, creating clarity or mentoring somebody, it has many more ripple effects rather than just grinding through the workload.

[00:17:28] Rachel: Because if you step back, and you delegate and you let other people grow, then that is significant. You’re saying I’m trusting you with this. You’re not being lazy, you are actually being generous there.

[00:17:40] Rachel: And one thing that’s often very difficult to do is to be present with somebody. When we’re trying to focus on our performance, how many things we can get through, how many tasks that we can get done, we often forget that just being with somebody in the moment can be incredibly significant for them and also for you as well.

[00:17:58] Rachel: So taking even just two minutes to really be with somebody, patient, a colleague, a friend, or just yourself, it’s really powerful. And it says to that person, you matter, and I matter and, and right now this matters and it doesn’t even need to be for that long.

[00:18:14] Rachel: And we’ve also got that thing about role modeling, and this is where I start to tear my hair out when I see the leaders in healthcare being so busy, so overscheduled, and I’m thinking to myself, what are you demonstrating to the more junior members of your team? You’re saying, this is the way you have to work. This is the only way to survive as a doctor, and that is simply not true. You’ve got to role model these boundaries, the self-compassion, the saying no, the self preservation and protection. That means you can be sustainable in your work.

[00:18:49] Rachel: And so if you treat yourself with the same care that you’re giving other people, you’re not just surviving, you are leading, and you are showing what healthy professionalism looks like. And that is now one of the GMC duties of adopted to demonstrate that you are caring for yourself.

[00:19:04] Rachel: And then when you take the time to, to be present and to role model you, you’re actually building something that really lasts. So if you’re running a debrief that goes really well, or you are teaching something in the moment, or you have a conversation that shifts something for, for people, well these things might feel really small, but that’s where culture is being built and that’s really significant and has staying power.

[00:19:25] Rachel: So here’s the question that you can ask yourself to, to determine whether you are doing something because of its significance or because of the output. It’s, would I be proud of this if no one saw me doing it? If no one logged the output? You can also ask, ask, am I living like the kind of doctor I’d want to work with, or I’d want to see as a patient?

[00:19:45] Rachel: You know what? I don’t want to have a surgeon operating on me who’s knackered and stressed. And I don’t want to see a GP who’s barely holding it together and, and just got no capacity to listen. You know, I know what it’s like to be at six 30 in the evening with five more patients left to see and feel like you are absolutely running on empty. Knowing that you are living like the kind of doctor you would like to see, well that is real significance and it is available to you even if you stop being busy all the time.

[00:20:16] Rachel: So let’s call busy something different. I love the quote from Bill Gates, which is busy is the new stupid. And so now if I am busy, I’m starting to say overschedule because that means that I take responsibility for overbooking my diary. I am actually owning my part in it and taking responsibility.

[00:20:34] Rachel: And then instead of asking myself, well, am I busy enough to matter? I can start to ask, am I being who I want to be? Because then when your significance is from living out your values in alignment with presence and real purpose about what you are doing, you no longer have to then earn your worth through exhaustion, and that that is a radical act of leadership.

[00:20:57] Rachel: But it’s not easy. It is really not easy, and I have fallen into all of these traps myself and there are these really common mistakes that we make.

[00:21:17] Rachel: Firstly, we can swap one kind of busy for another kind of busy, you know, wherever I am, I take myself with me. So whether I’m working in a clinical setting, whether I’m doing talks and podcasts and creating courses, I can get really, really busy. I take myself with me.

[00:21:20] Rachel: And I think that’s because silence just feels unsafe and productivity addiction is really, really hard to break. So what can be helpful there is just leaving some space intentionally empty. And you do not need to justify rest with more work. You do not need to earn your rest.

[00:21:37] Rachel: Secondly, we expect instant relief. We say, well, I said no once and I felt really, really guilty. So this clearly isn’t working. But of course that happened. You’ve had years and years of conditioning. So feeling guilty doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. It’s just a bit of a withdrawal symptom.

[00:21:53] Rachel: So recognize that when you are having some guilt over setting boundaries, it’s not that you’ve done anything wrong, it can be because you can’t please everybody all the time, and maybe we need to see it as a sign that you’re doing something new. And the more you do it, that guilt will slowly settle down a bit.

[00:22:08] Rachel: And sometimes when we do start setting boundaries, we’re like, okay, I’ve done it. I’ve set that boundary. I said no to that extra shift, tick box I’ve done. I’ve done my boundary. But you know, we all know you set the boundaries, you then have to tolerate the pushback, you push on through. You then need to set another one and another one on lots and lots of different fronts. Systems and people, they just test boundaries constantly.

[00:22:31] Rachel: Somebody said to me once that toddlers are like a night watchman in a building. What does a night watchman do? Well, he goes around the building, rattling the doors, rattling the windows, testing them, making sure that they’re intact. So people will test your boundaries. It’s just what happens. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong to set them. So think of it as ongoing practice. It’s not just one sort of brave moment, but there’s lots of small ones.

[00:22:54] Rachel: And don’t wait until you’ve got permission from anybody else. So don’t look to your colleagues for permission. They’re just as stressed and busy as you are. They’re probably not gonna give it. So don’t worry about asking them. Give yourself permission.

[00:23:08] Rachel: And medicine, it can be very hierarchical, and we do really worry about what our colleagues and what our bosses think of us. But if you’re waiting for approval and permission to set boundaries and take some rest and not be busy all the time, you’re probably not gonna get it because the system benefits with you being busy all the time, so you need to back yourself and back your initial decision. You don’t need permission to be well. Self-leadership means backing your own decision

[00:23:35] Rachel: first.

[00:23:37] Rachel: And sometimes we confuse slowing down with failing. So we feel, what if I stop pushing? I’ll lose some momentum, I’ll lose some respect. And we are just so worried about judgment, about losing that promotion or not getting that job, But we don’t look at what happens if we carry on, and actually how our performance will be going down and how we’re probably gonna burn out and not be able to do it anyway. So we need to reframe slowing down and being less busy as strategic, not a weakness. So self-leadership that involves pacing yourself.

[00:24:11] Rachel: And then, and I think this is the biggest mistake we can make in all of this, is waiting for the perfect time to start. You know, I’ll do it next week when things come down, or in six months time we’ve got another colleague starting, so I’ll be able to do it then. Believe me, that day will never come. Yes, the colleague will start, but someone else will be off sick.

[00:24:28] Rachel: Do not wait for things to change. The fantasy that there’s gonna be space in the future is very seductive, but often a lie. So, you need to start now, even if it’s just in very small ways. There’s no perfect time, there’s just today,

[00:24:41] Rachel: And I just want to leave you with a final quote about busyness. And this one has really affected me. It says that busy is lazy thinking, which avoids uncomfortable and critical actions. And so maybe our incessant busyness is just one of the ways in which we avoid dealing with our people, pleasing with our perfectionism and with our fear of failure. Keeping busy avoids us having to confront our anxiety and our worry, our guilt, and ultimately our shame, and this belief that we’re not actually good enough. But you are good enough and you are enough no matter what you are doing in life and what you work as.

[00:25:25] Rachel: So if this episode has struck a nerve for you, I just want you to do one thing. Look at your calendar this week, and find one time where you can choose significance over busyness and write down what you will do to increase the significance and decrease the busyness.

[00:25:43] Rachel: Because I believe that the only way to stay at peak performance in medicine is to protect our time, to protect our energy. And the more pressure we put on ourselves by being constantly busy, busy, busy, busy, the further we slip down the curve and into burnout. And the only way to do this is set boundaries, say no and do fewer things, but better.

[00:26:03] Rachel: It might be a 10 minute pause. It might be declining a meeting or a boundary, very respectfully held. And if you’re ready to take this work a little bit deeper, then do check out the Get Your Life Back course or our anti burnout system, because you are not a frog. You have more choices than just leaving or burning out. But let’s ditch busy, busy as a new stupid. Let’s search for significance instead. Let’s find our significance in other ways.