I stumbled over a new word in the latest edition of Harvard Business Review this week: lionising. If like me, you are in the dark on this one, it means ‘to give a lot of public attention and approval to someone; or treat as a celebrity’. And do you know what it was in relation to? Busyness. And how true is it that we are, perhaps unconsciously, impressed by busyness?

I realise we’ve addressed this topic before fairly recently. And even so, reading this article enabled me to leave my desk, promptly sit on a sofa and read my book for an hour. It was rebellious and more importantly, restorative. Instead of stupidly grinding myself into the ground, I felt pretty smart for taking a break.

Whilst you may not be persuaded by my anecdotal evidence, fortunately, scientific research backs me up. Concrete evidence indicates that productivity and efficiency drop when we are busy.

Counter intuitively, if we want to be successful, we need to reject the desire to be lionised.