Swimming in the Waters of Busyness
“You’ve been working hard? The sage asked.
All my life. He said.
Why?
Why what?
Why do you work so hard?
He paused. What kind of question was that? Why does anyone work hard? It’s what you do. It’s how I got where I am.
Do you like where you are? She asked.
Of course.
He was lying. He knew it.”
Sunday. Start of another week. Day of rest? I don’t think so.
Here’s a peek inside my head: “E’s got a TON of school work to do today and will surely need help managing it all. We have a tree to decorate. I have so much shopping to do (I haven’t even started!). Oh, and we can’t forget that service project we committed to doing to get gifts for senior citizens. Bills need to get paid, food to get. I might want to use some time today to catch up on those materials I have yet to assemble for the two-day session I am leading later this week. Well, better start waking up the family. There’s too much to do to sleep in. I can wake them, then move toward making breakfast. That should help jump start us all. Now that I’m looking out the window… those leaves really need raking. Gotta get on the decorations outside too. When can we relax? Not at least for another 2 weeks. This coming week is a doozy. Two concert performances, two basketball games, five extended client sessions, milestones for projects, and navigating holiday family politics. Ah, it’s that time of year… just the way it is. Time to press on!!”
It’s not even 8 am on a Sunday, and I have wildly succeeded in stirring myself up pretty well. And, I’ve firmly convinced myself that “it’s just how it is” and the only way through is to grit it out, dragging everyone along with me in the process. In his book Creative Calling, artist and entrepreneur Chase Jarvis talks about how we get in the way of our own creativity without knowing it. He says “over time and without consciously realizing it, we let this insidious “busy” mentality take hold. It is seductive.” My frenetic scamper on a Sunday morning in anticipation of the day and week ahead makes Jarvis’s words feel intuitively genius.
Being busy is a badge of honor in our modern day culture. We “work hard” and are deeply proud of this fact. We enter into the arena each day battling out the contest of who will prevail with the busiest life. We swim in the waters of hyper-busyness, often blindly accepting that “this is life” - or some other unconscious story that we have come to believe as absolute truth. We take action after action to fill our days to ensure we are busy… and not really sure why. Days, weeks, months, and years go by this way… and we wonder why we are always so tired, why our mental and physical health is taxed, why our relationships are strained, or why happiness seems to elude us. It’s the rare person who dares to pause and ask the simple by very important question of “why do I work so hard?”
Now, there are many legitimate benefits associated with working hard. Most of us need to work to earn a living, and this ensures a healthy standard of living. This is critical, because without this, the stress of safety and survival takes hold (which is very real for far too many people). And, from an intrinsic perspective, hard work can offer the opportunity for personal fulfillment and positive self-worth. There can be no better feeling than completing a challenging piece of work that requires extensive amount of focus and energy. Indeed, in the research on flow, a certain degree of challenge is needed to enter into a state a flow, which contributes to a deeper sense of meaning. When do we step into a space in which we are no longer striving for real extrinsic and intrinsic needs? Too often, quite a few of us lean on hard work and busyness well past when it is needed. That’s when we know we have been caught in the “insidious busy mentality.”
So how do we shift out of a life of hyper-busy to one of inspired flow? A common thought might be to go straight to your calendar to fix the issue by scheduling your days better. While this certainly can be part of the solution, if you do this first you can guarantee that the pattern of hyper-busyness will return at some point. Yes, you might temporarily find space in your days, but eventually your old habits will ensure that you will over-crowd your days once again at some point. If you really want to cure the busy disease, you have go to the source of the habit which lies within yourself.
Start by carving an hour of quiet, uninterrupted time with yourself. This in itself is a tall task, if you are a hyper-busy person. When you have created this space for yourself, spend some time with the following reflection questions. Take your time with them, writing your responses down on in a journal or a piece of paper. Then, share your reflections with someone who cares about you.
What underlying stories do I tell myself that can lead me to work too hard or become hyper-busy?
What is the cost of this mindset? How does this affect the quality of my life?
What is not available to me on account of my commitment to being busy?
What is your sense of what wants to emerge that I may not be allowing?
What “noise” in my life might I be able to let go of that could open up space for something new or different to emerge?
How might I take a micro-step toward creating this space? What would 5% more space in my days look like?
REFERENCES
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2011). Leading with soul: An uncommon journey of spirit. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (2008). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial.
Jarvis, Chase (2019). Creative Calling. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.