A few days back I was reading an interview with designer, Debbie Millman. One comment stood out: busy is a choice.
I’m not sure about you, but my year has been busy, busy, busy so far. Old habits creeping back in. And my choice, apparently.
True, my busyness is down to many choices, but choices that I made last year and am wearing now. Do I have a choice, now, to stop doing what is making me so busy? Sure.
Along with choices, however, are repercussions. In this case, my current choice would be to ignore my earlier choices of taking on more work and instead hide at home under the duvet reading all the books I’ve not got to in the last decade.
The repercussions would likely mean that I’d lose my job, lose freelance clients and lose face (the latter of which is of course ego driven, but I’ve yet to discover a way to fully transcend all of its grip on my simple humanness).
Likely, there’d be other consequences too.
Right now, then, my choice is to keep going and therefore choose to be busy.
If busy is a choice, why am I choosing to be busy?
As part of ABC’s 2017 radio show on the ‘busy addiction’, Dr Leah Ruppanner, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne suggests that saying we have a choice is almost too simplistic:
We’re living in a society where there’s an emphasis on efficiency and productivity, and you as an individual are a resource within an organisation, in which your employer is trying to maximise your efficiency and your productivity, and what this means is you’re working longer hours, you’re asked to do more, you’re taking work home with you, and life and work – no longer are the boundaries clear.
We as individuals are responsible for our own health, wellbeing, future, economic, vitality. But wait, you’re not just responsible for your own, you’re responsible for your families, and you’re responsible for future generations.2
Maybe part of us gets satisfaction from being in a position of responsibility and of being needed. I’m sure I’ve fallen into this when my self-identity has been less robust. Maybe it’s back where I am right now. Or maybe, as Debbie Millman suggests, it’s just an excuse:
We’re living in a society that sees busy as a badge. It has become cultural cachet to use the excuse “I am too busy”, as a reason for not doing anything we don’t feel like doing.1
So we only do things we want to do and avoid things we don’t want to do or face. That makes a lot of sense.
But what about those of us who do choose to take on a lot because we enjoy doing a lot of different things, being involved with various projects, helping people out. As psychologist Richard Want, states:
Busyness isn’t always a bad thing and you need to think how it’s affecting you’2
If being busy is making you stressed, overwhelmed and anxious, that’s clearly not a good thing, and Dr Leah Ruppanner wonders whether we’re maybe a little hung up on how we view ourselves and how society would view us if we weren’t busy:
What would be the opposite of busy? It would be you’re lazy. So busyness means you’re productive, you’re engaged, there’s status in it, you’re able to get value from others, and we don’t have an equivalent term that has positive connotation for taking time out. No one wants to be lazy.2
And then, surely, sometimes busy just is, like everything else. Right?
Choosing to slow it down
My life is infinitely simpler than it used to be and – for the most part – I’ve learned what I need to keep me healthy and happy.
When I go days without yoga or meditation, I feel it. When I frazzle myself overworking in front of a computer, I know I need to get out in nature and walk briskly. When I feel isolated and low, I know I need to reach out to friends and family and allow myself to be vulnerable.
Right now, I’ve got to get back to applying what I’ve learned to help me navigate through this busyness and back to a quieter space. Being busy is not a mindful state of being for me.
Research tells us that looking after, taking time out and creating space for ourselves is vital to both our wellbeing and our creativity, and something the late poet John O’Donohue discussed musically in an interview with Krista Tippet:
I’d say seven out of every ten people who turn up in a doctor’s surgery are suffering from something stress-related. Now there are big psychological tomes written on stress, but for me, philosophically, stress is a perverted relationship to time, so that rather than being a subject of your own time, you have become its target and victim, and time has become routine. So at the end of the day, you probably haven’t had a true moment for yourself to relax in and to just be.
Meister Eckhart, whom I love, said, “So many people come to me asking how I should pray, how I should think, what I should do. And the whole time, they neglect the most important question, which is, how should I be?” And I think when you slow it down, then you find your rhythm. And when you come into rhythm, then you come into a different kind of time.3
And so it comes back to making a choice, to choosing being over doing. That is likely where the feeling of busy will end and the sense of flow can begin.
References & Further Resources
- Ferriss, T. (2017), Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World, Vermillion (BOOK)
- Life Matters (2017), Talkback: the busy addiction, ABC Radio, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/the-busy-addiction/9054274 https://www.facebook.com/SAFEnewzealand/videos/10159746674105434/ (PODCAST)
- On Being with Krista Tippet (2017), John O’Donohue – The inner landscape of beauty, https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty-aug2017/ (PODCAST)
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