The Year I Was Busy and Went Nowhere
In 2012, I hired a consultant to help me grow Compete Every Day. His advice was simple: content was king, and I needed to be creating it every single day.
So I did. For the better part of 2012-2014, I wrote a blog post for the Compete Every Day website and three social posts every day. I spent hours researching, writing, and editing, and I'd finish one post and start thinking about the next.
I felt productive, and I could point to every post. I was busy, and busy felt like winning.
The problem was that the blog posts just sat there. Writing them didn't mean anyone came to the site to read them. Looking back, learning advertising would have been the better investment, but I never stopped to look back.
It took me about a year to ask the obvious question: is any of this bringing in business? It wasn't. I'd spent a year running hard on a treadmill, and I hadn't moved an inch.
It took me so long to see it for a reason.
In 2017, researchers at Columbia and Harvard found that we read busyness as a status symbol. When someone talks about a packed schedule, we assume they're important and in demand. That's why "slammed" feels so good to say.
Then a 2024 study at the University of Georgia showed 360 people a coworker's comment bragging about everything on their plate. That coworker was rated less likable and less competent, and people were less willing to help them.
In a follow-up with 218 working adults, people with stress-bragging coworkers reported more burnout themselves.
In plain English: busy looks like status from across the room, but up close nobody's impressed, and the busyness spreads.
That's Busy Drift, motion that feels like progress while you slide backward. My content year didn't fail because I was lazy. It failed because I was counting posts written instead of conversations with buyers, and tired doesn't tell you which way you're moving.
Most people don't check the scoreboard until the year's over. You've got seven Fridays left in 2026 to check yours.
The Friday Film Session
Every good team watches film after the game. They don't linger on the highlights. They study the missed block, because that's where next week gets won. This Friday, before you close the laptop, set a timer for ten minutes.
I even made this free PDF download to help you with the below.
Your challenge this week:
- Check the scoreboard. Write your three most important inputs for the week, with the target and the actual next to each.
- Check or X the calendar. Go line by line. Did it move something forward (✓) or just keep you moving (✗)? Circle the biggest block that was never going to turn into real business.
- Start, stop, continue. One line each for next week.
- Cut one X before Monday. Cancel it, shorten it, or hand it off.
Picture a sales manager running it for the first time and finding 9 internal meetings, 40+ emails, 2 fire drills, and one hour with her reps in the field. She wasn't lazy. She just wasn't competing for what mattered most.
I made a one-page sheet with all four steps on it: [Download the Friday Film Session sheet]
Hidden Advantage: Run it every Friday through December, and you'll walk into 2027 having already cut seven X's that were never going to turn into business. That's a cleaner calendar than any New Year's resolution has ever handed you.
Remember: A full calendar isn't proof of anything. Your film tells you the truth.
I'm cheering for you Reader.
