Being Busy is Boring.

Tonight's Pairing
🍸 An Extra Dirty Martini
🍟 Fries for the table
On the table: Busy isn't a personality trait.

“How are you?”

“I’m good!! Busy…”

How many times a day do we hear this? Is it that we’ve gotten so boring we can’t come up with anything better than being busy? Or is it that we’re all doing everything except actually living our lives?

I was 28 when I finally saw it. I’d spent years on a hamster wheel, chasing things I didn’t actually care about, so focused on succeeding that I never stopped to ask what success even meant to me. Turns out I’d been running after someone else’s version of it the whole time.

It’s not hard to see why. Everywhere I looked, hating your life in the name of working hard was the whole flex. It was what worked. It was how you got to the top. So I leaned all the way in, never once checking if the wheel I was running on was even headed anywhere I wanted to go.

For most of my twenties, I was in front of a screen. Working for a company, selling a product I didn’t even believe in, or building something for myself that gave me everything I thought I wanted and somehow still didn’t feel like enough.

My husband and I got married at 24. And for most of the remainder of my twenties, I barely saw him. Not because he wasn’t there. Because I wasn’t. My face was in my phone for twenty hours a day, chasing things that, even then if you'd asked me why, I wouldn't have had an answer for.

Whether I was working for someone else, or had the freedom to do literally anything I wanted by working for myself, I still chose to sit in a chair all day long building toward… what?

It was when I finally asked myself that question that things clicked.

I was 28. Not 65. Not 102. I was 28 when this realization struck. Thank goodness.

I’m hoping it lands for you a lot earlier than 65 or 102, too. That’s kind of the whole point of me writing this. I want to be the voice in your ear that gets there before the hamster wheel does.

So here's the question that started it all for me. What if my next quest was to just be?

What if the next big thing for me was turning my phone off on the weekends. Waking up, walking outside, grabbing a cup of coffee, getting some sun on my face. What if it was jumping in the lake whenever I damn well felt like it, because it brought me joy?

And yes, I’m saying all of this as a founder. Because somewhere along the way, we lost the plot entirely. We’ve built businesses with all of the wrong goals. Started brands just to sell them. Built products just to get acquired. Started studios just to grow to exponential lengths… and for what?

To be tied to our computers?

To have investors breathing down our necks?

To be stuck inside just like how we started our careers?

Cool, you’re busy. Frankly, I don’t care.

I don’t care about your work. I don’t care about the problems in your Slack channel. I don’t care what Google Meet calls you have today.

Here’s what I actually want to know. How did you take your coffee this morning? What did you do this weekend? How did the water feel when you jumped in at 6 am before the day woke up? What stories did you tell around the bonfire, making s’mores with your nieces and nephews? How did the sand feel between your toes, and how did the sunset look, because I know it’s never the same twice?

Being busy is boring.

That's literally the whole point.

1. I hired a team. First. Nothing changes if you’re still the only one holding the whole thing up. I have a corporate team of 5. Someone who handles client questions, someone who runs our social media, a GM of our 2 locations, myself and my co-founder. An incredible co-founder, by the way, who leads all of our training and development. This allows us to each stay in our lane instead of doing all of it alone. These hires took hours and hours off my plate.

2. I brick my phone on the weekends. I already don’t have any notifications on and haven’t for years, so the last step was to simply disarm the apps that can mindlessly become a time waste. The business survives. It always does. I promise.

3. I rewired my brain. My first instinct about myself isn't my career anymore, it's what makes me, me. I stopped answering 'what do you do' with my job title. I started answering with what I actually love. Jumping in the lake. Watching the wildlife from my deck with a crispy glass of Sancerre. The people I want to talk about, not the ones on my calendar. The book I'm currently reading. Fair warning, ask me about that one and I'll go on for hours. This answer typically stuns people, and they end up asking me what I do for work anyway. To which I reply, 'oh, I own Rêve,' and keep it moving on to much more interesting topics.

4. I stopped scheduling my worth around my inbox. Some days I build the business. Some days I don’t touch it at all, and I don’t apologize for either.

None of these are groundbreaking. That's kind of the point. Well, maybe that last one is. My point is, you don't need a retreat or a rebrand to stop glamorizing busy. You need to actually do the thing you keep saying you don't have time for.

Please, for the love of God, go jump off the dock. Read that book that's collecting dust on your bedside table. Go for a walk without anything in your ears. Book a vacation!!! Shut your laptop and silence your phone. Your business will not crumble.

If you’re a founder reading this and something in you just sat up a little straighter. Pick one thing this week. Not a life overhaul.

One weekend with your phone off.

One answer to “what do you do” that isn’t your job title.

One afternoon in the water instead of at your desk.

Being busy is boring. Stop performing it.

What are you still telling yourself you don't have time for? Say it in chat or leave a comment, I want to hear it.

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