Myth: If you’re working hard and staying busy, you must be moving towards your goal.
Truth: Busyness is not the same as progress. And some of the hardest things to spot are the ones that look like high-achieving actions but aren’t.
There are two ways we tend to undermine ourselves.
The first is plain old low-achieving actions — the scrolling, the sock-organizing, the coffee runs when we should be studying. These are easy enough to spot, even if they’re hard to stop.
The second is sneakier. It’s the actions that look high-achieving. The extensive research. The careful planning. The peripheral tasks done with dedication and detail. These feel like progress. They look like effort. But if they’re happening instead of the one thing that would truly move the needle — they’re not serving the goal.
Once you can name both of these patterns, you can start to change them.
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