"If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do"
About this Quote
Productivity advice lands differently when it comes from Lucille Ball, a woman who turned controlled chaos into a national ritual. On its face, her line flatters the overbooked: the busiest people get things done. Underneath, it’s a backstage truth about show business and domestic life alike: momentum isn’t just a byproduct of competence, it’s how competence is manufactured. “Busy” isn’t framed as a lifestyle flex; it’s a proxy for someone who has already built systems, instincts, and a tolerance for improvisation.
Ball’s genius was making frantic precision look like accident. That’s the subtext here: capability is less about having free time than about having rhythm. People with slack time can afford to overthink, negotiate with themselves, wait for ideal conditions. Busy people can’t. They default to execution. The second sentence tightens the screw by rejecting the idea of fixed capacity. Doing expands capacity. It’s a feedback loop, almost muscular: repetition builds strength, timing, nerve.
Context matters. Ball didn’t just star in I Love Lucy; she ran a production empire and helped shape television’s grammar while being treated, often, as a novelty in the boardroom. So the quote also reads like a quiet refusal of the “too much” label so often pinned on ambitious women. It’s not romanticizing burnout. It’s a wry, hard-earned argument that responsibility, when met repeatedly, can become a kind of freedom.
Ball’s genius was making frantic precision look like accident. That’s the subtext here: capability is less about having free time than about having rhythm. People with slack time can afford to overthink, negotiate with themselves, wait for ideal conditions. Busy people can’t. They default to execution. The second sentence tightens the screw by rejecting the idea of fixed capacity. Doing expands capacity. It’s a feedback loop, almost muscular: repetition builds strength, timing, nerve.
Context matters. Ball didn’t just star in I Love Lucy; she ran a production empire and helped shape television’s grammar while being treated, often, as a novelty in the boardroom. So the quote also reads like a quiet refusal of the “too much” label so often pinned on ambitious women. It’s not romanticizing burnout. It’s a wry, hard-earned argument that responsibility, when met repeatedly, can become a kind of freedom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
|---|
More Quotes by Lucille
Add to List
