People seem to have come down with a case of the “busy’s”.
“How are you?” – “Busy”.
“How is business?” – “Busy”.
“How’s your Mum?” – “Busy”.
See a pattern here?
For me, busy is a word that I am trying to remove from my vocabulary. Busy sounds a bit too much like “frantic” for my liking, or “inefficient” or “overwhelmed” and I don’t want to be any of those things in truth. I want to be well, or good, or with lots going on or even not so great. I want to be things other than busy.
Busy should not be a catch-all phrase that we use for every aspect of our lives. It is not a determining factor for success or how well you are doing, by having too much of something. For when we are busy, we are often “frantic” as we lurch from one thing to another, or “overwhelmed” as we think of all the things that we have to do or even “inefficient” as by being busy we are not doing the work that needs to be done. Often, we are so preoccupied with being busy that we are not focused on what needs to be done and therefore not being effective, present or dedicated to these things, whatever they may be.
I want to move away from this feeling that to be successful in life, in business, in education, that we must be busy, or working beyond our capacity to do so.
Busy implies that we have too much on our plates, that we are working too hard or doing too much. I spoke about the idea of working hard and working well here, and busy is another symptom of that issue. Instead, I would prefer to be well, content, efficient or even taking a break. Winding down. Ramping up, even, or digging my teeth into a new project. Most importantly, I would like to be working enough that I am doing well and working on things that make me happy, by whatever standard I define either of those things to be,
Maybe it is simply that busy is succinct. It is an easy way to say all of those words that don’t fit neatly into a Facebook status or that we think people don’t want to hear. But when people ask us about our lives, we owe it to them and to ourselves to give them more than a one-liner, similar to something you would find at a comedy club. Haven’t you heard that joke about the homeless guy who had written on his sign – “Busy – need $5 for food”?
Instead, let’s be powerful in our home lives, and work on doing that cleaning or washing we have neglected. Let’s be digging into our business, making the changes that need to be made for growth or finding out exactly what we want to be doing. Let’s be efficient in our jobs and do the work that we need to do and get it done in a timely manner. Let’s be full in our workload, and have enough on our plates to fill our days and our fridges. Let’s be present in all the things that we do, and dedicate
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