Squiggly Shortcut: Why We Need To Ban The Word Busy

Hi, my name's Sarah and in this squiggly career shortcut I'm going to be talking about why I think we should ban the word busy. When I ask people to describe their week at work in one word, pretty much 90% of people will say busy. It's our default it's our go-to word now to describe what work feels like but it is quite a vague term and being busy can mean lots of different things and I think when we say busy it doesn't really help us with what we might do differently or do more of the same. So we want to be more specific.

If we're going to use a word that helps us to reflect that helps us to be more relevant and helps us to get better at the work that we do, I think we want to challenge ourselves to go beyond busy. We also know from the work of a psychologist called Dan Siegel that if we want to work with words, we need to name them to tame them. I always really like that phrase, really memorable. Name it to tame it.

So if you want to change those words, if Busy for you means actually you're having a really difficult week and you're feeling really overwhelmed. The more specific we can be, the more chance we have of kind of working with those words in a constructive and useful way. So rather than saying busy, maybe as you're watching this now, think if I wasn't allowed to use busy, how would I describe my work or this week in one word? Maybe you feel confused.

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