Have you bought into the madness of being sooo busy?
Did that strike too close to home? I hope not. But if it did, hang with me… Because it’s got to stop.
All this “busyness” is bogus. Period.
Get over it. Start making better choices. It’s as simple as that. Choices. You have them. We all have them.
We’re all “crazy-busy” because we’ve lost the essential skill of choosing. There’s some perceived badge of honor in trying to do it all and have it all.
Dieter Rams got it right in suggesting the secret is… “less, but better”
Why does your kid need to be in five soccer leagues? How about one really good one?
When your boss stacks on another project at work. Ask, “Which one gets sidelined for now?
It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask. If you’re willing.
Somewhere along the line with all of this “do more with less” approach to squeezing every last drop of productivity, we started to believe we’re not allowed to say no. Or even ask about where a particular assignment stacks up among all the others.
Do you have friends who always say something like, “Oh, we’ve got to get together for dinner.” Emphasizing with, “Soon, real soon.” Soon never comes. It never happens.
“Oh, we’re just so busy,” they say.
Enough of that already.
I remember when I was a kid, my mom gave me choices. I had to pick one. Only one. Has that lesson long since worn off?
I love this quote from Tim Ferriss in The 4-Hour Workweek…
“Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”
Did it start back when the big corporations broke “The Deal”? You remember The Deal, don’t you? The one that says if you’re a hard-working, loyal employee, there will always be a job for you here?
Today’s Deal is that you’re lucky to be busy. Because, “It’s better than the alternative.”
Oh. Yeah. “The Alternative.”
So, we accept it and say… “But, it’s a good busy.”
Do you remember the expression, Information Superhighway? I didn’t quite get it at the time. But I do now!
We’re connected. Everyone’s connected. Things are even connected.
Do you remember when being connected meant someone knew a lot of people in a lot of places? That was a good connected. Potentially good, maybe.
But now “connected” lets us see what everyone else is doing. ALL THE TIME.
And of course, we have to keep up.
Do we?
Well… we DO, Right? I mean, what else would one vibrant, active, and yes… well-connected human do instead?
Maybe breathe a little?
Relax? Really, it’s okay if you do.
Find some peace and quiet?
Save a little room around the edges?
Try it. It feels good.
After all, “Busy” might just be a lousy measure of success.
But having a little margin in your life… that’s the reward.
How do you say no, so you can say yes to what you really want—to what really matters?
Let’s have a conversation… leave a comment below…
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