A Letter to the Busy People
You’re busy? Yeah, we all are. But guess what? No one made us that way. We did it to ourselves. If you don’t want to be busy, don’t be busy.
Stop saying “yes” to everyone (including your kids). Stop over-committing yourself. Stop wasting time on things that don’t matter. Stop trying to please everyone. Stop scrolling through Facebook… and Instagram… and Twitter… and Netflix.
Just. Stop.
Our lives are not intended to be an on-demand concierge service for everyone that has our phone number or email address. Our lives are meant to have purpose and value.
If you really want to stop being busy, here’s an exercise for you that you probably won’t do and surely won’t like:
Write down all the things you’re spending your time on. Not what you think you’re spending your time on, but what you’re actually spending your time on.
Do that for 1 full week.
Write down your goals and values and what you want your life to look like. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but you need to know what your values are and what’s important to you.
Now map each one of the things you’re spending your time on to one of your values or goals. Are you seeing the point here?
Eliminate ALL the tasks you’re doing on a weekly basis that don’t map to a specific value or goal.
Enjoy all your free time.
I think there are really two problems surrounding busyness. The first is that we like being busy. It helps us avoid the hard things in our lives while simultaneously bragging to our peers about how busy our schedule is.
The second problem is that we actually have no idea where we spend our time. We think we do, but until we write it down we really don’t.
So, that leaves us with a few choices. You can enjoy being busy and everything that comes with it. You can pretend you never read this and act like you’re stuck in being busy. Or you can change it.
It’s your call. Choose wisely.