rushed-off your feet
I’m busy. I’m so busy, you don’t know the half of it. I’m so busy that I even had to work yesterday, and it was a Sunday. I’m so busy that I only just managed to squeeze in a three-hour cycle ride, clean my bike, spend two hours’ pottering in the garden, cook a lovely (though I do say so myself) mussel & tomato spaghetti for dinner, watch a film and still be tucked-up in bed early-enough to listen to ‘What The Papers Say’. Oh, and I did I mention I did a bit of work as well? Not so busy then.
Yep, I’ve always been one of those annoying individuals that loves looking busy, and loves giving the impression that I’m way more busy than you are, because I’m way more important that you could even begin to imagine. And you’re exactly the same, right? But it really ain’t so.
Copious amounts of big-data reliably informs us that we all, even those with kids, families, friends, commitments and social lives, enjoy far, far more leisure time than our parents ever did, and let’s not forget our grandparents who didn’t have as much free-time on even their three or four days holiday a year! But more importantly, we won’t accept this and we certainly won’t have it that anyone could possibly be more busy than ourselves. In fact, there’s the rub: we don’t believe anyone anymore as we’re all at it, myself included. We’re all caught up in the hamster-wheel of exaggerated & exasperated busyness that we perform the Oscar of the Overwhelmed, scared we’ll be outed as a slacker if we don’t, and my, how well do I play the role.
We don’t have too much to do, we just think we have. And, you’ve heard this gripe before from me, our ever-connected nature ain’t helping as we now need to perform to people that we don’t know, that we never meet, that don’t really matter. Yes, I accept that email, messaging & social media are no respecter of time, availability or interest but there are things we can do to release their ever-tightening grip on our self-perception of busyness & self-importance.
Firstly, there are only so many hours in a day and eight of them you need for some shut-eye, so do start to say no to the things that don’t matter. You want to feel liberated? ‘No thanks’ is a great place to start and kicking-off with the assumption that something’s got to give will open the door to the new you. Secondly, accepting that there are one or two things you would indeed like to crack-on with, then do so – crack-on and crack-on without distraction and actually start something, do something and finish something. An old boss of mine, rest her soul, drilled it into me that to do something once, you have to do it right. And keep it short & sweet so that you’re not able to wane & wander mid-task.
Now, here’s an admission: no, not that I’m as technical as I am tall as everyone who has ever met or spoken to me already knows, but that I’m as technical as I am tall because I choose to be. My machine’s hung; the printer’s jammed, the kettle’s not working, my email’s not sending/receiving, the coffee jar’s empty, I need a PowerPoint presentation for tmrw, etc. etc. are all tasks I could probably get my head around, but I’ve already decided it ain’t a good use of my time and I’m going to get you to sort it. Setting the bar too high in others’ opinions is a sure-fire recipe for being too busy and I’m way too short for too high a bar.
I love a list. The first thing on my list is to make a list and being the over-functioner I am means I just can’t wait to start over-functioning. Thinking? Feeling? Deliberating? Pah, let’s function! But, whoooaa, just hold on for a second, don’t dive-in and chillax for a minute or two. Or a day or two. The result, especially with respect to all things digital, is that ignoring something for a couple of days makes it disappear: people are pretty ingenious in finding alternate solutions to their own problems, and maybe your valuable & incisive input wasn’t as valuable or incisive as everyone thought it was going to be. Result. And your own list? Keep it to five points, max, including making a list.
Finally, ferchristsakes stop banging on about how busy you are. I’m not, and you’re not. But if you are, how come you can always spare the time to bang-on about how busy you are!
