Zena Everett's Blog

November 3, 2025

Find pre-holiday focus every day. Stop circling, start deciding.

It’s November and is crazy busy again.   Are you on track to achieve your goals?  Do you spend most of your time doing what’s most important to you?

Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.  Requiring a lot of time does not make it important either.  

Author Annie Dillard wrote that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.  

It’s an easy trap to measure those days as chunks of time.  I’ve got an hour to myself before this meeting.

The problem with this way of thinking is that tasks expand to fill the time available for them.  If we allow an hour, then that’s how long a job will take.   We measure time spent on activities (too much) rather than actual progress (not enough). We have the illusion of productivity but are just crazy busy instead.

Instead, measure your days in output: actual work. What do I absolutely need to get through today, no excuses? It’s an easy shift in thinking that leads to boundaries and results. 

You know how focused you are the day before you go on holiday?  That’s what I’m talking about.  You rip through your tasks so you can switch off.  If only every day was like that. 

Stop Circling, Start Deciding

AI has speeded everything up, except our ability to think clearly and make decisions.  More data and input has led to greater difficulty in making confident choices. 

In response to the demand for an objective sounding board to provide clarity, I’ve got a new coaching offer specifically for high stakes decision making here.  We’ll weigh up the risks, balance gut feeling and data, make the decision, then I’ll support you in communicating and executing it. 

Crazy Busy on Tour

Is your organisation bogged down with too many competing priorities, meetings, touch points and no time to think?  Are there too many cooks in the kitchen, slowing down decison making? Could accountability and communication be sharpened up?

Please get in touch with me or bob@thecloser.consulting to book a Crazy Busy keynote or masterclass to help you fix it.

I’m heading to Toronto and Montreal in May 2026, helping Canadians to be less crazy busy in this noisy AI world. Please share this with your Canadian colleagues.  And of do course, do get in touch, wherever you are.

Warmest wishes

Zena

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Published on November 03, 2025 01:33

October 1, 2025

Balls out everyone. Change the narrative from cotton wool to courage.

I’m loving Amazon’s All or Nothing sports documentaries, the behind-the-scenes stories of mental toughness under pressure. In the Arsenal series, manager Mikel Arteta strives to create a strong, psychologically safe team identity. He sees the coaching job as being like a cardiologist – entering the player in their hearts so that the message reaches them.

One of his players, England’s star Bukayo Saka, joined the Arsenal academy at just seven years old and has remained with the club ever since.  Now 24, he is regarded as one of the best players in the world. He’s smart, decisive and humble.

You’ll probably remember when Saka faced vile racist abuse after missing his first penalty kick when playing at senior level for England in a crucial match against Italy in the 2020 Euros.   When he stepped up to take his next penalty, playing for Arsenal in a high stakes away game against Chelsea, he showed his guts and composure.  He scored, securing Arsenal’s win.

As Arteta said, ‘if you have courage and big balls and you represent a club like this, you have to stand up in the next game and take it.’  Who knows what was going through Saka’s mind, but he had no time to drill into self-doubt.

There are inspiring stories of courage like this across all sports, from Sunday leagues to global arenas, with players stepping up in the moment and attacking a problem.  So why, in the competitive business world, do we tiptoe around the topic of courage?

We obsess about fixing individual mindsets, rather than creating psychologically safe environments where everyone has the gumption to take risks and succeed.

I sat in on a talk on imposter syndrome recently, for an audience of highly capable young women. Feelings of being out of our depth are certainly not exclusive to women, but imposter syndrome seems to be a topic for women’s groups, not men’s.

If these wonderful women weren’t anxious at the start of the talk, they were by the end of it.  It planted the idea that they should acknowledge feelings of inadequacy, of not being good enough.  Even that maybe they should have more realistic expectations until they grew in confidence.

What they weren’t told is that confidence is a rear-view construct.  We only get confident when we’ve done something so we know we can do it again.  If we wait for magic confidence, we’ll opt out of new challenges that cause us discomfort. Sometimes we must make a plan, then crack on.

Fortunately, Imposter Syndrome wasn’t a thing when 7,500 women were working in Bletchley Park breaking codes during World War II. They didn’t have time for introspection.  They stepped up with grit and got on with the job.

Instead of normalising imposter syndrome and other doubts, we should be normalising the expectation that we are all capable of a lot more. Otherwise, whilst we procrastinate, someone else with a pinch more courage will seize the opportunity.  Maybe that’s why only 12% of AI developers are women*… so far.

We need to shape the world, not sabotage our success.  There’s nothing wrong with any of us. We just need to be with people who believe in us and who lead by example.  It’s not the time to dither.

Get a great team around you, plan and research properly, then act. Do it. Find a purpose.  Fix a problem. Create an opportunity. Do it for the team, your customers, you.  Bring it on.

What’s that expression, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take?

Book me to speak about this in your business, perhaps around International Women’s Day on March 8th.

Or to coach your leaders and high potentials.  And a reminder that crazy busy distractions are a handy excuse for not having time to be brave, so eliminate them with a Crazy Busy masterclass or keynote.

Bookings in the next couple of months will receive at least 15 complimentary copies of The Crazy Cure or Badly Behaved People. Our London Business Forum’s Crazy Busy event is on 17 March next year: see here for booking information.

Do let me know what you think about Arteta, courage and imposter syndrome.

* The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates

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Published on October 01, 2025 23:51

September 2, 2025

Sprinting into September? Hold your horses. Slow down and find something more impactful to do.

Any pagans amongst you will be gently preparing for the autumn equinox, that midpoint between summer and winter which is a time of gratitude and reflection after the harvest.  

Most readers are more likely to be on full speed already.  The same old story.  Our days are already overstuffed with firefighting, emails, shallow work and an abundance of meetings.  It’ll be another mad sprint between now and Christmas, a tug of war between what’s urgent and what’s important.

Hold your horses.  Sprinting without purpose just makes us tired.  Being busy like everyone else isn’t the same as making real progress. Decide to be different from now on.

How to stand out and save time

Find a meaty project to do this quarter that’s over and above your job description and puts you in the spotlight. 

If you aren’t sure what to do, how about building some kind of roadmap to scale AI meaningfully, rather than just dabbling with it?   Another win would be to work out how to monetise some data you already have. 

Get senior level buy-in if you can.  Negotiate low value tasks off your to-do list to make space. Obviously keep them off for good.

These five changes will get you results more easily:

1.   Set boundaries. Block out chunks of time when you are available for others.  That’s a much better message than doing it the other way round, i.e. trying to block out time when you aren’t available, then feeling guilty about it.  Set boundaries about reading and responding to emails too.   Check your emails whenever you need to, but actively process them just once or twice a day.

2.   Ring-fence planning time. Wrap up each week with some planning time.  Even one hour of planning on Friday will keep you on the front foot and help you to relax over the weekend.  You need deep work time too –  schedule 90 minutes a couple of times a week at least.

3.  Fewer meetings are an obvious win. Set shorter, more focused agendas. Put a cap on the hours you spend in meetings each week.  How about piloting Focus Fridays, with no meetings, until the end of the year?  Here’s my article on how tech firms are cancelling meetings.

4.  Put your phone away.  Those 15 minutes scrolling could be spent far more productively.  Set yourself some learning goals for the time instead, some future-proofing.  August’s article was about finding 15 minutes to do one meaningful thing.   It’s here.  

5.  Double up.  Try some strategic multi-tasking.   Go for a walk and make a call.  Do your admin and listen to a podcast.  Did I say admin? Do yourself a big favour and delegate or automate it down to the bare minimum.  You have far bigger fish to fry.

I’m here to elevate your career above all the crazy busy noise.  My websitehas had a zhuzh up over the summer. Here’s my crazy busyfeedbackand career strategy talks (all suitable for keynotes or workshops for all audience levels) and my coaching programmes

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Published on September 02, 2025 06:27

August 5, 2025

No time? No problem. Take 15 minutes and do just one thing.

Think 15 minutes isn’t enough to get anything meaningful done?  Think again.   I was inspired to write this by Nicola Lutz of No Fluff who teaches sales techniques to international education institutions.  She asks her clients to block out 15 minutes a day to make one good sales call.  15 minutes, that’s it.    It got me thinking of the things I wanted to do and my excuses for not doing them.  There is never enough time, even when curing crazy busyness is your business.  I discovered that I could get far more done in 15 minutes than I first thought.  Here’s how:

1.   Use your phone timer. Set it for exactly 15 minutes.  You are less likely to procrastinate when the clock is ticking.

2.   Decide what matters most. What’s the most important thing you can do right now?  Book the trip, make the call, draft the report, make the doctor’s appointment, prep a meal, learn something. Best of all just hide your phone, sit quietly and reflect.  Spend your 15 minutes on just one thing.

3.   Be kind to yourself. Aim low. You can’t fit in a full workout, but you can do a heck of a lot of squats, planks or vinyasas in 15 minutes if you want to.  It can be tricky to find 90 minutes to do 10,000 steps, but a brisk 15 minute walk will make a dent in your target.

4.   Compound it. It takes about a minute to read a page.   If the average book is 400 pages, then just two x 15-minute chunks of reading a day will get you through a book in less than a fortnight.  That’s 26 books a year.   Five x 15-minute chats a week will go a long way to strengthening relationships, preventing problems from escalating, or whatever your goal is.  And not everything has to have a goal, does it?

5.   Give it a go. Those free three hours you dream of may never materialise, but 15 minutes?  You have that now. Start small and start now.  Do it for you.

Change how you think about time for good

Three minutes is all you need to watch my animation on lessons from Einstein to transform your relationship with time.

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Published on August 05, 2025 04:43

July 2, 2025

Instead of rigid career planning, develop your critical thinking skills,  curiosity and networks.  Create appealing opportunities.  

Careers theory used to be all about the importance of a plan. I’ve lost count of the number of career presentations I’ve seen over the years that warn of the dangers of drifting without one. Many warnings include a version of the popular Alice in Wonderland white rabbit misquote:

‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.’

Lewis Carroll never even wrote that. I’m told it’s from a George Harrison song, Any Road.

Your parents probably had sensible career plans. They had fewer options and grabbed opportunities for social mobility. They didn’t always have the luxury of questioning their choices.

Career choices are more ambiguous and bewildering now.  It’s hard to have a long-term plan when we can’t predict what tomorrow will hold. If we try to hang on to a rigid plan we risk missing out on exciting curve-balls.  It’s much more useful to keep noting what you enjoy doing, where you get your energy from and what you want to learn next, than to be overly specific about what you ‘should’ do next.  

Up to 1900 the knowledge in the world doubled every 100 years.  Now knowledge, or more realistically, ‘content’, doubles every single day.  The ability to analyse it critically is almost more desirable than the knowledge itself because that becomes out of date so quickly.  That’s one reason why we are all so crazy busy: we are overwhelmed trying to stay fresh.

Some of the jobs that people do today didn’t exist until recently. Space cadet used to be an insult but now it’s a realistic job option. Ten years ago no one had titles like crypto engineer, autonomous vehicle designer, app developer, content creator or big data analyst.

According to a report published by Dell Technologies and authored by the Institute for the Future (IFTF), an astonishing 85 per cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have yet to be created.  Many jobs will disappear because of AI, but it will also create exciting opportunities provided we have the energy and curiosity to capitalise on them.

Stop comparing yourself to others

Our perception of career and life success comes from many sources: our parents’ expectation, our peers, colleagues, classmates, neighbours, friends.  We benchmark our extrinsic success against theirs; where we think we ‘should’ be.   I love the saying that money doesn’t matter – as long as you earn more than your brother-in-law. 

Author and philosopher Alain de Botton believes we are all ‘job snobs’ now. We judge people by their job title, commonly with envy and some comparison with our own job.  We’re only imagining the real picture. People’s LinkedIn profiles are rarely an accurate reflection of their daily grind.

You do you

How you spend your days should fit your values and priorities.  If you are a parent who rarely shows up at the school gates, that’s  fine. If you choose to work part time to take care of your dog, that’s also fine. Some people give up corporate life to take a risk. Others stay on the corporate track because they like the security of the greasy pole. 

Do what feels right for you now. You can always change later. Just do it deliberately, not from fear of change.

My ‘scrappy careers’ theory
Careers are made up of a sequence of stages. Some stages are in work, some away from work to travel ortake on caring responsibilities or study. These stages might mean taking lateral moves in search of deeper expertise, straight up the ladder moves, or taking time out to do something radically different. There are many twists and turns instead of a straight line. We can expect at least eight or nine steps. You have probably had several pivots and reinventions yourself.  I certainly have.

We can remove the pressure if we see each career stage as a patch of safe ground where we accumulate as many skills, networks, and experiences as possible. Once we’ve outgrown a stage, we can move on to the next patch of safe ground. We keep doing this and usually can’t see more than a couple of patches ahead, but we aren’t worried about that. As we move, the fog clears and we can see a little further ahead. What’s important is that we keep moving, learning, connecting and growing.

It’s a more scrappy, entrepreneurial approach to work. We make the most of where we are, contributing as much as we can, then move on when the time is right and take our skills elsewhere. We may go back to previous employers once we have accumulated extra experience, something they might find valuable. That’s a far better approach than being stale and underproductive because we’ve outgrown our role.

Life is a team sport. The one thing that hasn’t changed about work is that who you know matters. We often underestimate the value of our networks for offering opportunities and vital feedback.   

Not everyone has found a calling or North Star, despite all the books and videos that tell us how. Some never do. But we all need some sense of purpose, where we get our meaning and sense of wellbeing from. Why do you get up in the morning?

Some questions to reflect on over the holidays:

If you made a career change, how would you know in a year’s time that you had made the right decision? How would you feel differently?

If success was guaranteed for you, what would you do next?

Where can I find time in my calendar for more in-person networking and who is on my list?

This is abridged from Jules’ story in Badly Behaved People, the only business book that will make you laugh on the plane.  If you are looking for more detail about career moves, then Mind Flip is your book for the beach.   

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Published on July 02, 2025 00:58

June 2, 2025

Does your leader create chaos? The toll of working for people who love drama

Hi Zena. Our Creative Director is notorious for producing high-stakes pitches. They mobilise teams to work all weekend and inevitably blow the clients’ socks off when they present on Monday. They get great glory for producing a rabbit out of the hat. The trouble is that the drama is entirely preventable. There’s no reason for everything to be done at the last minute.  And why do thirty slides when ten would do? 

This is well into my Crazy Busy territory.  Leaders like this don’t just respond to crises, they create them. Their team are worn out by lack of stability and constant shifts in priorities.  They’ve no time for strategy because they are constantly firefighting. Everything is short-term which obviously impacts growth, staff turnover and culture.

Why do some people make life more difficult than it needs to be? 

This isn’t just a case of poor time management. It’s got both practical and psychological roots.  In my book of coaching case studies, Badly Behaved People, I explain that most of the dysfunctional behaviour I come across stems from unresolved childhood issues playing out in the workplace, especially when we feel vulnerable. We behave in ways that made us feel safe as children but are no good to us now.

Psychotherapist Lorraine Trotman says that people can be drawn to drama and chaos because ‘they grew up in families where drama was a normal way of being.  It’s how they communicated and resolved conflict. They’ve learnt this way of getting their needs met and so continue the drama into their adult, working life’.   When they get glory for delivering results in a crisis, this validates the hero/dramatic behaviour. 

Lorraine says that other people use drama to take up more space for themselves due to their low self-esteem and their need for external validation.  They certainly get attention, but of course it’s not healthy behaviour – for them or their teams.

How do you cope with a chaotic leader?

I asked Coaching Psychologist Lucy Whitehall for her thoughts on how to survive working for a high-octane leader like this.   She stresses that it’s not your job to change their behaviour or ‘fix’ them, but you can control how you respond to them:

‘Set healthy boundaries. Don’t get drawn into their disorganised behaviour any more than strictly necessary to perform your role. 

Respond to messages and emails during reasonable working hours only.

Don’t be manipulated into agreeing to last minute demands. Bosses like these can be very charismatic and it’s not easy to say no to them.   Practice assertive negotiation skills.

Validation and recognition (in measured doses) can also help smooth relations but take care to avoid sycophancy.  This will only feed their need for adulation and create additional emotional demand on you.’ 

You might also try rewarding good behaviour. Celebrate non-dramatic wins when results come in an ‘easy busy’ way because of proper planning. 

Incidentally, if you are wondering what the difference is between a coach like me, a coaching psychologist like Lucy and a psychologist like Lorraine, then I explain it in the last chapter of Badly Behaved People.  I also lift the lid off the dark arts of the unregulated coaching profession and how some practitioners charge fortunes for common sense dressed up as spiritual lessons.  It’s my favourite chapter.  Email me for a pdf if you don’t want to buy/download the book.

I’m thrilled to be a finalist in this year’s Speakers’ Awards with Crazy Busy. If you haven’t booked a Crazy Busy talk yet then do get in touch.  We’ll get rid of chaos and time wasting.  There are 168 hours in the week, so why does it feel there’s never enough time?

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Published on June 02, 2025 05:12

May 1, 2025

Look before you Leap – the right way to do the first 100 days

The pressure to create a massive impact in the early months of a new role is largely confined to the history books.  Of course there is one person currently grabbing headlines for how he has spent his first 100 days in office. You may feel that his performance proves the point:  wading straight in without careful consideration is a blunt instrument at best.  You might solve one small problem but you cause plenty of collateral damage.
 
I’ve watched fresh leaders launch new and often unnecessary projects far too early, just to look good.  Crazy Busy right there. People were already working at full capacity and were angry that they weren’t listened to.  Those leaders were rumbled fairly quickly and exited.
 
Unless an organisation is in crisis, successful leaders spend their first months taking stock, asking what the company needs and discovering what they should put in place to maximise success. 
 
They listen to the people on the ground and get to the heart of the business. They ask ‘what is broken that needs fixing’ rather than acting for action’s sake.  They find out what really matters and aren’t distracted by shiny quick wins.
 
They respect the past and what’s working well. They articulate how they will accelerate a successful future and get people on board with their strategy. Then they take decisive action.
 
Short-term metrics like cash flow or revenue trends may not reflect the groundwork that the leader is putting in for sustainable growth. A more realistic measure in the early stages is if people know what the leader stands for, their values. Good talent will stick around. Weaker people may see the writing on the wall and go. That’s fine.  Retention is not always a good indicator of leadership effectiveness.
 
A psychologically safe culture is essential to strong performance. Leaders should build trust by being transparent in their expectations of others. The leader alone can’t fix everything, so we don’t want them to have the kind of ego that craves being perceived as a hero or saviour.  Their focus should be on elevating the problem-solving capability of everyone in the team.  They shouldn’t feel they need to know all the answers. That’s old school.  It’s much better if they surround themselves with strong people and know the right questions to ask them.
 
If leaders behave inconsistently with their stated values they’ll lose trust quickly.  That’s a big red flag. Boris Johnson’s Partygate was a prime example of this – do as I say, not as I do.  What’s that saying? Trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback.

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Published on May 01, 2025 00:57

April 22, 2025

Was Eddie Jones the most obnoxious boss ever – and are you too agreeable?

I’ve written about some bad bosses in my new book, but former England rugby coach Eddie Jones takes the biscuit.  In his autobiography scrum-half Danny Care said that under Jones’s leadership, players felt like characters in a dystopian novel.  Jones led by fear, he writes, the players were ‘bloody terrified of him.’

He describes one episode when Jones tore a strip off a staff member and then apologised, saying: “Here’s some steak for you and the missus, sorry about how I spoke to you yesterday.”  When the staff member got home and opened the bag it turned out to be sausages.  Jones then sent him a text saying, “Mate, you’re a f***ing sausage.  You don’t deserve steak yet.”

It goes without saying that managers can’t get away with treating people like this, even in sport.  Never try to desensitise yourself to a toxic work environment.  

Management styles that might once have been considered tough love, or clever mind games, are now totally discredited.  People speak up.  They switch on their cameras.  Organisations can’t turn a blind eye anymore.

However, there’s a flip side.  Too much harmony doesn’t make us psychologically safe either.

Are you too agreeable?

Agreeableness is one of the ‘Big Five’ personality traits.  The others are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism.  All of the traits are helpful to a certain degree, even neuroticism, but problems occur when you score too highly.  

Agreeableness is a very positive trait.  It makes you cooperative, compassionate and optimistic.  Being overly agreeable will make you avoid any type of conflict.  You can’t bear upsetting anyone or not being liked. It can lead to being taken advantage of and a lack of assertiveness in decision making. 

Psychologically safe teams actively encourage friction and constructive debate, vital for innovation.  People who are too agreeable can’t bear even a whiff of dissent.  They dislike tough choices and struggle to push through improvements because they seek total consensus.

In my Crazy Busy sessions I see the agreeableness problem all the time.  People who are too agreeable struggle to put their own priorities at the top of their list.  They commit to more work than they have time for and risk burnout. Their lack of decision making slows down progress.  People who are lower in the trait are much better at setting boundaries and controlling their own and their teams’ workload.  

What’s next?

I’ll send a copy of Badly Behaved People to anyone who can match that Eddie Jones bad boss story.  

My talks change behaviour.  Please email me to discuss how I can make a practical difference to your business.

Here’s some recent feedback from Lloyd’s Bank:

We asked colleagues to rate the event overall (we normally score 4-4.3) – the rating for the event this time was 4.68 – our highest ever!  Feel free to take whatever credit you like for that!95% of colleagues felt that they were clear or very clear on action they needed to take as a result of what they had learned.

Warmest wishes
Zena

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Published on April 22, 2025 02:48

February 20, 2025

Do you perceive conflict where there is none?

It’s easy to get stuck in our own story, perceiving conflict when none exists. Even when we try to keep a professional lid on our behaviour, our subconscious mind is still tick, tick, ticking, often making irrational guesstimates, and reacting to others from lopsided conclusions. Conflict, drama and chaos result.

Our backstories matter. The beliefs we develop in our early years influence our relationships now, both personally and professionally.  Much of the conflict I see in my coaching comes when people act out unresolved childhood issues that govern how they see the world.  

We form irrational beliefs based on our childhood experiences, which crowd out other people’s side of the story.  We look for evidence to confirm them. Often, that’s binary, black or white thinking:

Life is cruel
Only the tough survive
I can’t trust anyone
I’m not good enough
It won’t get better
I have to fight for everything
I have to be perfect
They don’t want me here, etc etc.

Whatever you look for, you find. We see slights everywhere, perceived and actual.

Comedian Ruby Wax studied mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to understand her own depressive episodes. She writes that we become so trapped in our interpretation of the world that we are prepared to go to war with others who are trapped in their own world view: a war of warped realities. Who’s right, who’s wrong, and does it matter? To quote the late Queen Elizabeth II, ‘recollections may vary’.

The drama and stress we manufacture elevate our cortisol and dopamine so we become addicted to the destruction.  That’s why some people constantly create chaos; they don’t feel alive otherwise.  Their difficult situations are entirely a product of their own doing.

The legacy of our earlier lives can be devastating. 

Some of us use work to fill emotional gaps left from childhood. We keep working for nasty bosses, projecting unresolved issues from our earlier lives onto a destructive work relationship. I’ve met perfectionists and workaholics desperate to satisfy unpleasable people from their past — most likely their parents — by subconsciously recreating that dynamic with authority figures at work. Desperate for validation, they work harder and more needily than everyone else, hoping in vain for the attention they’ve always craved.  Their manager is too busy to give it to them. 

Charles Spencer, brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, wrote a memoir about the physical abuse he suffered as a child at his exclusive boarding school. He believes many people at the peak of politics are likely to have been brutalised at similar schools, leaving them with mental scars which continue to feed into their decision-making. Earl Spencer suggests these dog-eat- dog systems inflict repetitive cruelty that leaves pupils cruel in their judgement of what’s right and wrong, something that shows up in the way they lead today.

I don’t believe people intend to cause conflict, it’s just a symptom of their lack of self awareness.  The only exception are sociopaths and psychopaths, and thankfully there aren’t so many of those.  Most studies estimate only one to three percent of the world justify the diagnosis.  Tragically they have a disproportionate impact on the rest of us. 

I’m taking the late Twin Peaks filmmaker David Lynch’s advice:

Keep your eye on the doughnut, not the hole.

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Published on February 20, 2025 07:50

February 3, 2025

Are you a Shoveller or a Shifter?

Pop tarts don’t benefit us in any way, although I’m sure they taste great.  There is a work equivalent of pop tarts: low value tasks with no benefit, involving extra layers of touch points and bureaucracy.   Is your diary clogged up with ultra processed tasks like lengthy email chains, excessive management reporting, inefficient meetings, too many layers of decision making, misallocated resources, unnecessarily complex processes and constant interruptions?  This is what I call crazy busy work.

To be clear, being busy is very good, but being crazy busy is definitely not.  It’s tough out there.  We need to be more entrepreneurial: heads up, fixing problems and looking for opportunities.  Crazy busyness keeps our heads in the weeds, busy but not productive.

Research says we spend over 60% of our week on crazy busy ultra processed tasks.  We don’t intend to but if you’ve ever got to 3 pm and realised that you haven’t achieved what you set out to that morning, then you’ll know what I am talking about.

A friend told me that she sees two types of people at work in her organisation:

Shufflers – who shuffle papers and slow everyone else down.

Shovellers – who shovel obstacles out of the way and make it easier to get things done.   Which one are you?

And which ultra processed tasks and activities will you cut out to become visibly successful?  This is the year to be brave and aggressively simplify.

My practical and energetic Crazy Busy session will open up the conversation about distractions and priorities, shining a light on what gets in the way of getting things done.The theme of March’s International Women’s Day is accelerating action. Crazy Busy fits perfectly.

The post Are you a Shoveller or a Shifter? appeared first on Zena Everett.

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Published on February 03, 2025 05:11