Introduction
Oftentimes as individuals, we mistake being busy for being productive. This is why many take up certain jobs and engagements that they do not have interest in.
To them, they just have to get busy, one way or the other. In my teaching of Personal Growth, I always try as much as I can to emphasize productivity over “busy-ness”.
My Experience with a lady
Yesterday while at work, a lady walked in and we soon engaged in a conversation. While we talked, she made a remark,
“you are really a very busy person, I wish I could be as busy as you.”
Immediately I heard that, I asked her, “what do you mean?”
She replied, “look at you, you are at work, what could be busier than that. Me, I am just idle.”
I then told her, “being idle is busier than work.”
Are you really idle?
You may think you have no work and as such you are idle and not busy.
Well, understand this, being idle is the busiest state of life. Because in that state, you are not engaged in one activity but in several activities.
You are busy looking up into the sky.
You are busy counting the ceilings in your room.
You are busy staring into space.
You are busy playing candy crush.
You are busy viewing WhatsApp statuses of your friends.
You are busy watching funny skits.
But you are busy!
I don’t believe there is any idle person anywhere.
The challenge is that while someone who is working on something is producing visible and useful results, your own results aren’t useful to anyone.
In fact, your results may never be visible to anyone.
But, you are busy.
People actually use idle to mean “not engaged in anything”, but I don’t think there is anyone not engaged in anything. You are reading this now. You are not idle. You are busy reading this.
The difference
The difference between an idle person and the supposed busy person is the results being produced by each one within a specific period of time.
There’s a word for it, PRODUCTIVITY.
When you are productively engaged in something, people say you’re busy. But, when you are unproductively engaged in anything, you are idle.
So, idleness is not a state of ‘no work’ but a state of many works but unproductively engaged with none.
It is not a state of ‘no results’ but a state of ‘useless results’.
How to escape idleness
Each day, ask yourself what things you can engage yourself with in order to produce the results that will be useful to you, both in the now and in the long run.
It may not be paying you at the moment. And I believe that’s usually where people miss it. They always categorize being busy with financial income.
Understand this, you may not be engaged with what’s getting you income at the moment, but it is useless to you or anyone if you’re unengaged with other things productive.
And when you make up your mind to be productively engaged each time, you will become more happier with yourself and soon, the financial income will start coming in.
Notice that when I talked of productivity, I didn’t speak of money because you are not productive because you’ve made money. A lot of persons are paid even when they do not produce a thing. You are productive when you’ve produced results useful to you (or anyone who needs such result) in the now and in the long run.
Not sure how to keep yourself productive each day?
Here is a blog post I made on that,
https://pglcorner.com/personal-growth-corner/how-to-increase-your-productivity-and-keep-yourself-productive-always/
Find out more about what Personal Growth is and how you can create your personal Growth Plan
I also have a 27-paged easy-to-read ebook on 27 wisdom notes every young person should know. It is free for download.
If you have not downloaded it, here is the link:
https://pglcorner.com/27over27
Now, over to you…
Do you continue being “IDLE” or would you choose “PRODUCTIVITY”?