Stop Saying You're Busy. You're Overcommitted
Oh my! This vlog might gently step on a few toes! Contractors must be among the busiest people of any industry. The pace is relentless, and the idea that “it will slow down next month” is a non-starter for construction executives. A podcaster, Clarence Stowers (via my friend Arlin Sorenson), has some strong medicine for those of who lament how busy our days, weeks and months are. He says, in essence, we bring the pain of “busyness” on ourselves and, thereby, create tremendous opportunity costs.
Please tune in this week as Wayne relates Stowers’ stark philosophy, challenges a few commonly held beliefs about time and busyness, and offers Stowers’ six prescriptions for regaining control of your time and life. He even provides some words of wisdom from the great C.S. Lewis! What do you think? Does Stowers make sense to you, or is it more complicated than he claims? Please email us your views at [email protected].
Developing your nextgen rising leaders is the need of the hour. Help them learn the skills needed to work ON their business rather than IN their business by enrolling them to our unique leadership development program, The Contractor Business Boot Camp. If you have high-potential people on your team who are ready to grow, this is the opportunity to invest in them before your competition does. Our last new class for 2026 begins in November in Charlotte, NC. Please contact Charlotte at [email protected] to find out more.
(DESCRIPTION)
Logo, Performance Construction Advisors
Logo drops into the middle of a blue screen.
Host Wayne Rivers appears in front of a white screen and talks to the camera.
On screen text, Wayne Rivers, Performance Construction Advisors
(SPEECH)
WAYNE RIVERS: Hi, everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.
This week, I want to talk about stop saying you're busy. You're over committed. You are over committed. This comes via Arlin, of course, from a vlog from a gentleman named Clarence Stowers, Jr. And he's quite emphatic. This is a good article. This really got me going. "Busy is not a badge. It's a warning light. It's a symptom of the real problem. People talk about busyness like it's a badge of honor, like it proved that they matter. Once you see the difference, you can't unsee it. Busy is not a badge. It's a symptom. A symptom of overcommitment. And overcommitment is not a strategy. It's a trap." He starts off strong in this article.
Now, what about this bit is important to you? Golly, I just can't tell you how many thousands and thousands of times I've talked to contractors who complain. I mean, that's probably not a fair word. But they lament that there's just not enough hours in the day or week to get done all the things they need to get done. And Stowers here says, "It's on you, brothers and sisters. It's on you, not anyone else." He makes a great many points, a great many good points in the article. And he even gives you some to dos that may help alleviate some of that stress. He says that a busy isn't a strategy, it's a failure mode. High capacity people, on the other hand, protect their capacity. That makes sense.
In real estate, they talk about highest and best use. Dan Kennedy, I'm sorry, Dan Sullivan talks about your unique ability and how to maximize that in your business and in your life. Protect your capacity to do the things that you're uniquely good at. Number three, Stowers says you're not saying yes... I'm sorry. You're saying yes to fear, not opportunity. Fear of missing out. The fear of letting someone down. The fear of letting people make mistakes, which you know you have to do intellectually, but it's quite hard to do practically speaking.
He says, "Every yes commits you, costs you something you're not counting." Contractors are among the most brilliant people I've ever known. Super intelligent, super ambitious, super motivated, super kind. Just the greatest salt of the earth people you can imagine, but they're terrible at measuring opportunity costs, which is a real thing. We all studied econ and we all studied opportunity costs. But in your life, it's just so hard to measure if I do that, I'm closing the door on this other thing over here. And what's the opportunity cost for that? The only way to preserve your capacity is to learn to say no to things. We'll come to that.
Stowers says when you say yes to things, you are borrowing bandwidth from your future self and eventually, that bill comes due. Golly, this guy's tough. I think he's on point. He says it's about stewardship, not selfishness. Saying no to the wrong things allows you to say yes to the right ones. Who was the biggest advocate of that ever? Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was adamant that you had to say no in order to keep yourself available to the yeses that you need in your life and in your business. What do you do? What do you do if you're just overcommitted all the time and you realize it and now you want to do something about it? It's like going to the doctor. I'm sick. I need to do something different here.
What do you do? Number one, do a calendar audit. Pull out your calendar for the last month or two and go through it and see what inspires you, what motivates you, what sparks joy in you, what sparks energy in you, and then what saps all that. And find a way to delete at least one recurring meeting or task or something that just gets you down and doesn't get you excited anymore.
Number two, create a time log. We've done this many times. We've said, hey, we've got a paper time log. I'm sure there's some app or apps that are out there now that you can download on your phone to help you keep track of your time. When you do a time log, you are going to be shocked, kind of saddened in a way, to see how much of your time is wasted, unproductive, how much of your time is wasted by other people that you're allowing to waste your time. It's really, really an eye-opener. If you said, Wayne, what's the one recommendation you would have, the best thing you've ever heard in your whole life to make executives more fruitful and productive? I would say, do a time audit, do a time log. Keep a time log for one to two weeks, and you will be shocked and amazed at how much time you're able to free up for your future self.
Number three, check your email only at specific times. I had a peer group member, and he said he never checked his email before 10:00 AM. He would get into the office, get into the flow of the day, get his people going, organize, and meet and collaborate and all that stuff. And after that morning spurt of energy, so to speak, he would start checking his email about 10:00 AM. So, check it twice a day, three times a day, four times a day. Don't be responding. Back in the day, when I first started, it was telephones. People were on their telephones. It was landlines. I mean, I have to admit, it was a long time ago, but the phone was ringing constantly.
And then of course, Nextels came along, if you remember those, and cell phones. And people are on their phones all the time. Now it's not so much phones. It's email. Email is the big time suck. Oh, it was paperwork, phones and paperwork, phones and paperwork. Now it's electronic paperwork. It's just emails. Social media. Now, this is a personal thing. But look at your phone and you can see where you're spending your time on your screen. Hopefully, there's not too much social media stuff in there. I did that. And I realized I was spending a ton of time on Facebook.
Now, Facebook started as a way for me to keep up with my high school buddies and all that kind of stuff. And it's evolved over time. And when I saw how much time I was wasting, I deleted the app. I just got rid of the app. And people come up to me, "Hey, did you see that thing I posted on Facebook?" "No, I didn't. No, I didn't because I'm not ever going back because it was consuming so much time." So, cut out something that you're doing on social media, looking at the news, whatever it is. Find at least one task or meeting you can delegate. I think we got to that in the calendar audit piece, but find something that you can get rid of, delegate it to someone else.
You'll be doing them a service if you're appealing to their unique abilities and you'll be freeing up bandwidth for yourself. One of the great suggestions I saw was do a sprint. So, some people are morning people, some people are afternoon people. Pick your spot, but do a sprint. So, you've got this project that's really important and you've got to devote serious time to it. Close your door, turn off your phone, move your phone, leave your phone in the truck, for gosh's sake. Give yourself an hour. If you can't do an hour, do 30 minutes. Close your door, focus, focus, focus for 30 minutes. And as you build up those muscles, you'll get to an hour or an hour and a half that you can really focus on a single task and get it done.
And doing that every day over the course of a week, a month, a year, you're going to make a lot more progress in the high impact projects on which you need to focus. And then do a relationship audit. I thought this was good advice too. Do a relationship audit. Think about the people in your life that you're spending time with. Think about the people that inspire you, that give you energy. I saw this term one time. I think this was a book called Energy Vampires, people that just great on you, people you don't enjoy spending time with, people that seem to consume more of your time than perhaps they should. And that could be on the social side. It can also be at work, couldn't it?
So, think about a relationship audit. Never thought about that before. Let me read you this from C.S. Lewis. This came from James Clear's weekly blog, Profound. This is on the subject of time and where your commitment could be focused. "To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor. The sun looks down on nothing, half as positively as a household laughing together over a meal or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or time alone reading a book that interests you. All economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions are only valuable insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes." Wow. Hard to beat that. Tell me what you think. [email protected].
This is Wayne Rivers at PCA, where We Build Better Contractors.
(DESCRIPTION)
On screen text, Wayne Rivers, Performance Construction Advisors Performance Construction Advisors logo drops into the middle of a blue screen.
