Recently, I read a short story about a marketing professional telling her colleagues she is always running out of time. On a way to a meeting, she said “I wish I had time to prepare for this – I have been so busy I didn’t do a thing for the meeting”.

Busy doing what?

For fun they made a diary of her work week. In a typical week she spends 2,000 minutes playing defense – filling out forms, answering urgent requests, returning calls, and putting out fires. You know, what most of us refer to as “work”.

She spends 300 minutes in meetings, listening to other people talk about what they are doing.

She spends about 45 minutes actually doing creative work on the projects she is currently involved in and 15 minutes a week thinking of the next breakthrough.

If you put this into perspective, how many of us creatives out there are busy doing all that (non-urgent) “work” stuff? Or in the rare instance, you are able to double your big-thinking time from 15 minutes to 30 minutes and come up with the next big idea – one that will pay the company’s bills for the next 8 months to a year.

So, do you really think you are too busy to work on something extraordinary? Actually, you’re too busy to do all the (non-urgent) “work” stuff.  

Alison Grabowski is the Senior Marketing Manager at MANN+HUMMEL

Alison has a background in advertising and marketing, specializing in brand strategy and development.

Contact Alison at [email protected]