Is Incredibly "Busy" an excuse for not developing?

After the market crash in late 2008 a normal workday, workweek or month seems to be at a pace that is unreal or unsustainable. Are you experiencing the same thing? I do expect people to be busy, I am not talking about not being busy, I think a better descriptor would be deluged or inundated. The reason why I bring this up is because I have been thinking about ways to work more efficiently when things are busy or frantic. I also want to tie this to Career Development as well because I think development time is lost or excused in the rush to get things done that are not necessarily development.

Let’s think this through, you work hard and you have deadlines and you have due dates. You may even have more work than you can possibly manage in a year and it doesn’t seem to be going away, there is no getting the work out. You have had your opening performance discussion and you and your supervisor have agreed to a development objective that you feel you can reasonably accomplish. It is going to take some effort on your part, it may even take some time outside of the office, but it is really where you have a passionate interest. So after agreeing to this, you get to your mid-year performance review and prepare for the discussion and try to figure out what happened to your work on your development agreement? Where did the time go, you ask yourself.  In the mad rush to accomplish the urgent and important, the not urgent and important is left in the pile of things left undone. Does this sound familiar? Are you hearing the same thing from others?

Another five months goes by and what happens at the end of  the year? Your supervisor nods in agreement that there was no way you were able to finish your development agreements and writes in the justification for why you didn’t increase in your ability to…fill in the blank. Who excused whom for not completing your development agreements?

I have seen it excused for business needs, but how long should it or can it go on where we are excusing development for urgent business needs? My concern with pushing off development is that it has unintended consequences for engagement and retention and an elusive work-family life balance.

I honestly don’t know the answer but I have some questions that help me figure just how much I want to develop that I want to share with you. I know I am responsible for my development and I personally agreed to those areas that I need to develop in February of 2012. With that in mind, here is my personal self-examination that I would challenge you with.

• What am I doing that can be delegated or not done at all? If you only have 80-90 hours in a work week, what is important?
• Can I change my development goal to something that is a part of my regular work or a new project I’ve been assigned?
• Of the really value added work that is asked of me, what is busy work? Can I eliminate any of the busy work?
• Can I streamline any of my other work?
• Can I learn to be more efficient by multi-tasking less? Hat-tip to any lean-sigma folks out there.
• What is going to have the biggest impact on my long-term career goals?
• Is no, or not now, an option?
• If I set aside time for my development as agreed upon, would it make me more efficient?

I would be interested if you have any more ideas on how you think through ways to reduce the busy or frantic pace and allow you margin to continue to develop.