Our Limiting Beliefs About “Working Hard”

Have you ever blocked out time on your calendar…

Just to think?

Wait, let’s raise the stakes a bit…

Assuming your calendar details are visible to other people in your company, did you:

A) Label that appointment “thinking” or “brainstorming” or “problem solving” (or something similar)?

B) Go with something more stealthy and secretive, like “project focus” or “internal meeting”?

If you answered B (or if you never actually block out time to just think), here’s my guess as to why.

It’s because thinking doesn’t LOOK like hard work, and you need to LOOK like you’re working really hard, right?

• Meetings look like work (even if nothing actually gets accomplished).
• Responding to emails and Slack messages looks like work (even if few of those messages are about high-priority goals and projects).
• Staring at your computer screen, tapping the keyboard, and jiggling your mouse look like work (even if most of that staring and typing and jiggling make little difference to your sense of accomplishment at the end of the day).

Of course, thinking IS the real work. And to do it well, we need to start giving ourselves permission to do it wholeheartedly. We need to stop hiding behind busywork, allowing a toxic hustle-driven business culture to make us feel unworthy if we’re not constantly grinding ourselves down to a dull nub.

We have a choice. On one side, we can stay trapped by the status quo bias and groupthink that reward busyness over impact.

Or we can choose to take back control of our own moment-to-moment lives, and wake up to our true productive potential so we can start creating a future we actually want to live in.

What will you do today to spend a little more time doing the real work (thinking), and a little less time doing the stuff that just LOOKS like real work?

• Will you ask yourself if your workday is creatively fulfilling, or if you’re simply going through the motions to get through it intact?
• Will you be willing to feed your inspiration, to put your ideas out there, to start offering potential solutions to the bigger problems you see around you—rather than just repeat the same SOPs over and over?
• Will you be honest with yourself (and others) about your deep need to contribute more than just your time and compliance?