You're not too busy, you're not motivated

The case for "I'm too busy":

• Look at my calendar, I'm always in meetings and have too much admin to do

• All the hustle porn and success bullies on social media

• Your boss or internal narrative about your worth, self importance and your boss's need for control

The case against "I'm too busy":

• Summer Fridays (November to January in the southern hemisphere / July and August in the north). Admittedly I and several colleague forgot this gift of time, but after a couple of facepalm moments we caught on and promptly engineered our calendars, client calls and internal meetings to use those five Friday afternoon hours for fun and other personal stuff

The world didn't fall apart, our clients were still served - heck many who came to learn of Summer Fridays loved the idea and actively protected our time from their own colleagues... but magically due to motivation and a little inspiration we were able to carve out 5 whole "extra" hours in our week

So there you have it, same calendars, same workload, but two different outcomes. The difference, I put to you, is we worked harder for one over the other

My 2 cents