It was 1:45 PM and waiting in the school hall was making me very antsy. I watched with steadily rising blood pressure as couples leisurely trooped in for a school session and cursed dad for my on-time fetish and son for his ban on skipping the session option. The session eventually started an hour late and the headmaster thanked the busy parents of high school for attending. Some time later the counselor introduced the concept of the fish philosophy. I had read the book and was all ears but a co-parent nudged my shoulder..”hi! you are working right? must be so busy how come you came for a mid-day meeting?” My “no not really” smile in fact encouraged her to continue “my husband’s sooooo busy,I didn’t even insist he come.”

This time I let out a hmmm so she deflected to the parent on the other side saying, “really how can the school call meetings at 1 PM, it’s the time I’m so busy to which the other lady agreed vigorously adding “Such a problem”. The counselor meanwhile was saying, ” I know you are busy and held up Outlook current issue on do you connect with your child and said “I know we have busy lives but you all must read this article”. By now I was fuming….my friends know me to never use the word and find that I meticulously wean the habitual “busy” people out of my life…but then you would say that’s my problem. It sure is but the purpose of writing this piece is that we all should unravel this Business of being Busy .

In his book Semantic Antics , How and Why words change meaning , Sel Steinmetz says “business” used to refer to being busy, but it gradually broadened to encompass many kinds of occupations. Now it’s fair to ask why don’t take the word at face value. Busy means just that..busy …occupied , not available right now…It’s because of what the word has become…Some use it as a polite brush off, some as a shield as a not available to you to and others just to pay back in the same coin. The most intelligent, creative and busy (dictionary sense) people I know are never ever busy ! They always take calls, they always return calls they can’t take, they always revert on time and almost always have a really good reason to being “busy”, a reason you can empathize with and thus begin to respect their time next time you approach them.

The fish philosophy session was meanwhile on the 3rd value “Play” and the counselor asked “So when did you all have fun last? I whispered to myself 2.20 PM ! ..the parent sitting next to me checked her watch (it was 2:22 PM) and looked at me enquiringly…I just shrugged. Later in the one on one sessions the counselor said, ” I heard what you said.. Did you really have fun ten minutes back?..Yes of course, you were speaking of one of good books I had read..my sms showed a friend trying to frantically reach me and sending vague smileys..the ladies sitting close to me were discussing how busy they were and I found it fun to be ‘free” enough to adsorb all that was happening around despite knowing all the jobs that waited for me back on my desk. ! The counselor gave me such a warm smile I skipped on my way out..

The business of being “BUSY” has occupied my mind forever. On the company Intranet I recently started a discussion string “Volunteering needs free time or a free mind ?” and the sum total was that Busy is a mindset not a state of being..or a mental state a job (or even personal life) keeps you in. For a very long time and even now sometimes I wonder what happens to us that we managers begin throwing “busy” around. Its more important in the context of Communications and Organizational Culture that the word become an anathema. Like Mark Twain said… Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover…And those people who do this i.e explore, dream, discover don’t do so on annual holidays. they do it everyday! Inspiration is all around us , in people ..with whom we are just too busy to interact with.

In the business of public relations, the media often tells us that when they have a query they need answers, we are busy but when we have a plug then we are free to pursue this single point agenda with them for days on end. There is more evidence of the misuse of the word in middle level managers. Last year I was on a compaign to get it off as many people’s daily verbal list as possible and it reflected in one of the articles on HOD skill sets where I then foolish enough to say bluntly. ” Busy is a four letter word! It keeps you away from experiencing people and events which have the capacity to make a positive impact on your professional and personal life. So don’t use it to defend your bad time management. Don’t replace “busy” with “I don’t have the bandwidth”, “I’m snowed under”. Tough job you have so stop whining – you are paid more, so you have more pressure to handle and thus more accountability too.” (you can read full article here)  That was last year. This year I’m more diplomatic primarily because habitually “busy” have very methodically been downgraded from Friends to Acquaintances to a Do I know you at all list. I have all the time in the world to do all the things I want to do…with all those who want to do it with me..

Now the epitabh (sic English) my previous blog entry received too much TRP I would say for a first one in fact led me to think maybe I should have written on a more non controversial topic instead. All that goes in the name of “breaking news” , especially nowadays when the end of life becomes the country’s soap opera, “journalism” generates some very strong emotions which showed up in the feedback.

But that apart most of the feedback tackled different portions of the blog and was generally in agreement, some comments were truly kickstarters to a thought process and Im going to tackle them in some later blogs. One colleague actually equated me in my journalist avatar to a much much senior colleague who truly was …for want of a better term …aweful kind of egoist. It is therefore correct what he said later “what hurts is to see that most of them (journos) make the generic mistake of clubbing all corporate communication professionals in one mould. Like you said there are different types of journos, similarly there are variants in CC professionals too.” Another colleague however says the exact opposite because her mentor used to say the same thing about working with journalists. A very astute colleague is pretty much agreeable with Line function bit and says she is currently heading an experimental pilot communications position which is bogged down by none of the previous process driven parts of the function anymore. Our friend Palin on the other hand is also saying the same thing but not exactly that. The point which I think is worth talking about is the scope of Corporate Communications? What pricesly are the Key Result Areas. What pricesly is the mindset..Lets talk about this in the coming days based on how many people post their curiosity on it

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