Why You're Busy but Unfulfilled
Readtime: 3 minutes
Ever had one of those days where you were busy the whole time, but got to the end of it wondering what you actually did?
There's a reason for that. And there's a surprisingly simple way to fix it.
I heard Tim Ferriss mention something on his podcast last week. It was a quick throwaway comment he didn't really explain. But it's completely changed how I think about my time, both in work and out of it.
The idea is this: everything you spend your time on falls into one of four categories – Making, Mastering, Managing, or Mitigating – and the balance between them is what determines whether you end the day feeling fulfilled or just tired.
Making is creating something. Something new exists in the world because of you. A report, a strategy, a piece of writing, even breakfast. The thing wasn't there before; now it is.
Mastering is getting better at something. Practising a sport, learning an instrument, grinding through Duolingo. And it often overlaps with Making, because you can be mastering your writing skills while writing that report.
Managing is keeping things running. Update meetings, oversight, a maintenance workout where you're going through the motions. There's an established way of doing it and it just needs doing.
Mitigating is prepping so bad stuff doesn't happen. Most people avoid it because there's no immediate reward. You're preventing a negative, not creating a positive.
Here's the key insight: Making and Mastering tend to bring fulfilment, whereas Managing and Mitigating just tend to keep you busy. And most of us – especially in mid-to-senior roles – have calendars that are heavily weighted toward Managing and Mitigating, often without realising it.
That's not a criticism. It's the natural gravity of a career. The more responsibility you take on, the more your time gets pulled toward keeping things running. But it does explain why some days feel a bit empty even when your calendar was full and you worked hard.
The good news is that you often don't need to overhaul your schedule. You just need to notice where Making and Mastering might already be hiding.
Think about it this way. A team check-in can be a Managing exercise – going round the table with status updates. But it can also be a Making exercise if you use it to create a solution to a real problem together. Same meeting, same people, but a completely different feeling at the end.
A presentation you're putting together can be pure Managing – just updating the previous version. Or it can be a chance for Mastery if you deliberately experiment with a new structure or storytelling approach. Same task, different intention.
Even something like a Monday morning planning session. You can manage your week – slotting tasks into gaps. Or you can make something of it – designing your week around the outcomes that would make you the proudest by Friday.
The categories aren't fixed properties of what's in your calendar. They're shaped by how you choose to approach what's already there.
So here's something worth trying. Open your calendar for tomorrow and look at each activity through this lens:
Where could I turn Managing into Making? Is there a meeting where I could create something rather than just maintain something?
Where's there a chance to Master something I'm already doing? Could I use a task I'd normally rush through as a chance to deliberately get better at a skill I care about?
Can I protect even 30 minutes for pure Making? Writing, designing, building, solving – even a short window of genuine creation can shift how an entire day feels.
You don't always need to change what you do. Sometimes you just need to change how you do it.
And Tim, if you're reading this and I've butchered your idea, feel free to write back and let me know. I reply to all emails 😀.
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
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