The importance of being busy.

I have a nagging feeling that too many people in our business and at our clients are simply not busy enough.

They have too much time to spend thinking about things that are just not important.

As a consequence we spend too much time responding to and discussing the banalities that others come up with.

Here's what I mean.

Let's say you're meant to do a spot on blue jeans.

After a couple weeks of work, let's say, you get to the point where you're storyboard is 98% approved.

That's when someone who's not busy enough says something like this:

"What if we made the blue jeans yellow?"

"Yellow blue jeans?"

"Everyone already has blue jeans! Let's sell yellow jeans."

"Yellow blue jeans?" you repeat.

"Who doesn't like yellow. The sun is yellow. Lemons, bananas, certain tropical birds."

"Well, we we're meant to send the boards to the production company tonight."

"I'd like to see a version with yellow blue jeans."

And so the agency creatives scamper down that senseless rabbit hole all because some blowhard with too much time on her hands felt the need (and had the time) to make a comment.

If people were busier, if like me, they had a next assignment to focus on, they couldn't come up with shit like yellow blue jeans.

But they do.