Written by: Aaron Hayslip | Productivity, Work

Many of us are in danger of spending our days being hopelessly busy and unavailable to the important people and moments in our lives.

According to The Guardian, the greatest regret of the dying is having spent too much time working. The extra hours seem necessary now, but they’re far more expensive than we realize. We sacrifice relationships for financial success and status.

For some of us it’s not just “work” but it’s everything else we seem to pile onto our schedules in hopes of finding meaning in the busyness.

We act like time is indispensable.

In his book, “Crazy Busy”, Kevin DeYoung writes, “We don’t expect to be able to buy anything we want, because we know there is a limit to our money. But somehow we live as if time knew no bounds, when in fact time is much more limited than money. Wealth can be created, but no one has the ability to grow more time.”

In what ways would our lives be different if instead of being chronically busy, we were radically available?

What if we were emotionally available for our families, if our schedules were open to lunch in the middle of the week with friends, and we were free to fly anywhere at a moments notice for the important events in our friends and family’s lives - like weddings and funerals. And What if you could say yes to all your kid’s events and family vacations?

I have a “Life Plan” which outlines how I want to be remembered after I die by all the most important people in my life. To achieve this (or for their memory of me to be fond) I have to be available, as living a meaningful life requires that we be available for its meaningful moments.

Too Successful to Hang Out With

We’re crazy busy, and we don’t have a problem with it. In fact, we shoot for it.

In a 2017 Atlantic article, Joe Pinsker called “busy” the status symbol of our time. He referenced a paper in the Journal of Consumer Research where the authors discovered that, “many of us want to seem busy so that others would perceive us as having desirable human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and thus we are scarce and in demand on the job market”.

In other words, we’re busy because we’re successful, and successful people have more important things to do and more important people to be with.

This isn’t any more obvious than in the awkward arena of male friendships. We’re scared to death of asking another guy to hang out, only to be rejected and then reminded that we are in fact not as busy (and thus not as successful) as the rejector. We play the game of “hard to get a hold of”.

A May 2021 poll from the Survey Center on American Life revealed the number of American men who view themselves as having “no close friends” quintupled over the last 30 years, increasing from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2021. What’s more, just 15 percent of men consider themselves as having 10 or more close friends, a steep drop from the 40 percent of men who reported such bromances in 1990.

Instead of trying to appear successful and busy, what if we had the confidence and security to appear radically available and were even willing to come across as uncool?

And then instead of pursuing friendships for social status and progress, we instead cultivated genuine deep friendships - the kind that can only be built if we’re fully present and available.

But We Are Actually Too Busy

Even if we could be so secure as to throw off the need to appear busy, all of this appearing has made us actually busy and unavailable.

I’m an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurs abide by a “code of hustle”. It’s this idea that if you can just grit and grid for a little bit now, then later you can sit back and relax - your relationships can wait. You can hear this in the intro for a popular entrepreneurship podcast I frequently listen to (Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn) which says, “work hard now so you can reap the benefits later!”.

But this “code of hustle” isn’t unique to entrepreneurs. America’s favorite financial advisor, Dave Ramsey, is known for saying “If you will live today like no one else, later you can live like no one else”.

Dave is speaking to retirement. But when I’m 59 1/2, my youngest kid will be 30 and if I’d spent the last 30 years “hustling”, it won’t matter how nice the beach house that I’m renting for our 2048 family trip is if we don’t have the relationship to enjoy it.

The Double Win

So is the answer to just be less ambitious and settle for less at work so that we can prioritize relationships and be more available?

As Michael Hyatt argues, I believe there is a 3rd option which he calls, “The Double Win”. Hyatt argues that The Double Win, “sees work and life in partnership, not opposition. They complement and fuel each other. Winning at work gives us the confidence, joy and financial support necessary to support our personal priorities. Succeeding at life fosters a clear mind, creativity, and a rested body so we can focus on the work that matters most”.

In other words, you’re one person. There isn’t a “work” version of you and a “home” version of you. If you’re a jerk at work, it’s probably because you’re a jerk and you’re going to be one at home too (and vice versa).

Physically There, Emotionally Unavailable

For the longest time, I thought that being “radically available” meant that I’m always physically present for my family. I’d leave the house around 8am and be home at 5:20pm. My workday was far shorter than my own father’s, who would be out of the house before 6am and home after 7pm - when he wasn’t traveling.

But it’s possible to be there without actually being there. For example, when the kids were taking a bath, I was on Slack. Something would be on fire at work and then if one of my kids screamed, which would inevitably cause my already high blood pressure to spike, I’d snap.

At one point I thought I’d solved this by just deleting email and Slack from my phone. But to be honest, it was just a band-aid. It didn’t make the problems at work go away or relieve my anxiety. The only thing worse than your house being on fire is knowing that your house probably is on fire but you’re just not going to do anything about it - at least until tomorrow.

So we can’t fake it. We have to actually become less busy.

Delegating

At some point, to become less busy, we literally need to do less.

Regardless of where we are in our careers, we should always be thinking about how to delegate - and not just at work. You probably spend hours each week working on things that you’re not good at that someone else could do who’s better at it, and they could probably do it for cheaper.

To identify these things, Michael Hyatt has a helpful tool called the “Freedom Compass”:

We want most of our time to be spent in the “desire zone” - where our passions meet our proficiencies. Here we are the most effective and efficient with our time.

Things in our “drudgery zone” are items that are ripe for delegation. We’re not good at things in our “drudgery zone” which means they take us more time, are not done well and are actually costing us money to do them (you can figure out just how much money by calculating how much your time is worth).

One of the most efficient ways to delegate items in your “drudgery zone” is by hiring contractors - people that are uniquely skilled to do what you’re not skilled to do. You can hire contractors to take on tasks in any part of your life, not just work tasks. After all, as we’ve stated, you’re one person. If you’re overwhelmed with house projects on the weekend and don’t get the rest you need, you’ll be less effective at work on Monday.

If your job doesn’t allow you to delegate tasks in your “drudgery zone” to contractors or other employees at work, or if you cannot afford contractors at home (or at work if you’re an entrepreneur), hopefully eventually, you will.

As your life progresses forward and you stay faithfully consistent to show up and master your craft, while doing what you can to do less of what you’re not good at and more of what you are good at, you will inevitably become more effective and financially successful, and thus be able to delegate more to contractors which will in turn make you more effective and financially successful.

In fact, as soon as you can barely afford it, it’s worth hiring a virtual assistant for a few hours a week, even if you have to pay out of your own pocket. They will be able to do what takes you 2 hours in 1 hour, do it better and do it for less money than you’d be willing to do it for.

Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s law is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Somehow you were able to bust out research papers the night before in High School.

So if you add constraints to your work week by setting reasonable hours and committing to not taking your work home, then you’ll probably find a way to be more focused while you’re at work. If you work from home, you can of course do this by setting up a home office or boundaries around your time.

Start by shaving an hour off each work day. If you usually leave work at 5pm, try leaving at 4pm for a whole week. You might mess some things up and drop some balls at first (how much damage can your really do in a week…) but you’re surely smart enough to figure out how to make it work. And if you do, you may find that you suddenly have 5 extra hours a week to be available. And surely you’ll stop taking breaks to watch YouTube videos or check Facebook (I’m looking at myself here).

What’s Best Next

The worst reason for being busy is being busy because you’re wasting your time. In a given week, how many of the hours you spend at work actually move the needle? My guess is less than 5.

To spend your time on what’s most important, you have to answer this essential question: “what’s best next?”

For most of us, this is a task that is nearly impossible because we have no idea what we want or where we’re headed, long term.

They key here is to know where you want to be 10 years from now, and to work backward. Ultimately, what you’re doing today should be informed by where you want to go long term.

I’ve organized the next 10 years of my life using the following tools which allow me to know what I should prioritize today:

• A Life Plan: outlines what I want in the next 10, 5, 3 and 1 years.
• Annual Planning: I set aside a day each year to set annual goals, based on my Life Plan.
• Quarterly Planning: I set aside a day each quarter to plan my quarterly goals based on my annual goals.
• Weekly Review: I set aside time each Friday afternoon to plan my top 3 items based on my quarterly goals.
• Daily Review: I set aside time at the end of each day to plan my top 3 items for the next day based on my top 3 weekly items.

A Commitment to Radical Availability

Recently a friend of mine posted on Facebook about his 34th birthday. Essentially, he had hoped he’d had accomplished more at this point in his life. He proceeded to list the accomplishments of famous people and what they’d done by 34.

But how many of those famous people have happy marriages and strong relationships with their kids and close friends?

Radical availability means that you’re committed to spending your most valuable resource (time) on the people in your life that matter most. Doing so will require that you skill-up and become a student of focus, productivity and delegation.

Additionally, you’ll need to ween yourself off your addiction to “busy”, and risk appearing less rare, scarce and successful.

What you’ll get in return is far more rare and valuable than the illusion of success - a meaningful life.