Can you do things differently to be less busy?

That question still matters in 2026. Especially when every hour we save becomes room for something else.

Busy is partly a choice.

Dorie Clark names the trap. Almost all of us say we want to be less busy, “and yet we keep making choices that put ourselves in the position where we’re just as busy as we’ve always been.”

Not all busyness is a choice. Deadlines, care and other people’s decisions are real. But some of the work filling our days comes from how we have chosen to organise it. That part is worth questioning.

Busy looks important.

A packed calendar signals that we are needed. “I’m slammed” sounds almost like an achievement.

Adam Waytz describes in HBR what happens when organisations reward busyness rather than output. More activity does not automatically mean better work. We should stop treating the two as interchangeable.

Tom Goodwin adds another distinction: what we call busy is often overwhelmed. Too many inputs. Too much switching. Too many things asking for attention.

A full calendar and a flooded mind need different fixes. Another productivity tool is not automatically either one.

Stop starting from scratch.

For me, one useful change has been how I deal with recurring questions. I get asked about trends quite often. What is changing? What matters? What should we pay attention to?

Model · 5 min readTrend planning.Takes loose signals through five steps to a short list of trends, each with a…With Movements, I now have a trend database and a quarterly analysis. I use it for myself and with almost all my clients. It also starts interesting discussions with friends.

When a question comes in, much of the groundwork is already there. I mainly need to validate what is relevant to that question, rather than start again. AI helps collect and structure the evidence. I still need to judge what holds up and what matters.

The useful change is not answering the same question faster. It is organising the work so I do not have to keep starting from scratch.

Saving time is half the job.

AI also makes it easier to add work. Another analysis. Another version. Another thing to check. The calendar may not get fuller, but your head does. I wrote about that in The brain fry is real.

Structure · Part of your weekly planningThe not-to-do list.Makes the other half of a choice visible: what you will stop doing to make room.The other half is deciding what not to fill the time with. Being able to do more does not mean we have to.

Sources: Dorie Clark, via the TED LinkedIn post. Adam Waytz, Beware a Culture of Busyness, HBR (2023). Tom Goodwin, LinkedIn.