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What is #GoodBusy?

Stephen Shapiro  |   | 
 
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Starting January of this year I decided to try an experiment. The experiment is a very simple one. I work one hour a day. Now, I don’t always work an hour a day. Sometimes I don’t work at all, but I try to work an hour a day. Sometimes I work a little extra. The way to do that though, the only way that you can really work that little, is to become hyper focused on the things that matter most.

If I look at a lot of people, they’re just ridiculously busy. They’re running around working on things that aren’t important. They’re running around on things that aren’t urgent and they’re not really getting the most critical, differentiating things done.

Now if you want to work an hour a day, you’ve got to be good busy. During that hour you’ve got to really focus on the things that matter most. For me, first of all, I wake up each day and I ask myself “What’s the one thing I need to do today that’s going to have the greatest impact on my business that only I can do and it sets me apart from everyone else?” What I try to do then is figure out what else needs to be done and get other people to do it, so I’ll delegate it, or I might delete it, which means I just realize that it’s really not that important, or I’ll defer to tomorrow when I’ve got another hour to work on it.

To me, the difference between busy and good busy is that busy means you’re focusing on a lot of different things and you’re dissipating your energy. You’re really dispersing your energies. Whereas good busy means you’re like a laser, focused on the things that really have a major impact on your business.

When I think about it, most people when they work, they have a very linear mentality: an hour of work gives me an hour of result. If I’m going to work an hour a day, I’ve got to think differently. I’ve got to think exponentially. An hour of work has to somehow give me 8 hours, 10 hours, a hundred hours of result. This means I think very differently about the work I do, how I do it, who I partner with, and this, to me, is the key to good busy: when you’re focusing on those things that give you leverage and exponential growth.   

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