20 | The Myth of Busyness
20 | The Myth of Busyness
The word "busy" is overused. It is often used as a blanket catchall phrase or a marker of success or martyrdom. I think a more accurate term is being over-committed. It's when you have to be in multiple places at once. It's when you have numerous projects requiring your attention or when your brain jumps from tasks to logistics to problem-solving. Busyness is life without sufficient and restorative physical and mental breaks.
A common misconception is that you can master busyness with organization.Yet, everything you do is a choice. Busyness happens when you're telling yourself you have enough time for it all rather than thinking deeply about what tasks are essential and non-negotiable.
One solution to busyness is prioritizing. It helps to cut down on the mental clutter. It's about recognizing that you can control where you need to be and what you're focused on at any moment. Practice redirecting your focus to the set of tasks that are absolute priorities in our overstimulated, highly distracted world.
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
Come say hello on Instagram
Follow me on Facebook
See what I’m up to on LinkedIn
Join my workshops.
LIKE THIS EPISODE?
I invite you to share, rate, review and follow my show. Also, join the conversation by connecting with me on Instagram @apleasantsolution.
-
Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing an Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy, and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast, we'll go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household, and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to Episode 20, “The Myth of Busyness.” When I meet new folks and they hear about the many moving parts of my life, they say things like, “You’ve got your hands full. You’re busy.” Under the surface, I bristle a bit, to be honest. It’s because I don’t love the word ‘busy.’ My opinion may be unpopular, but I think it’s overused. Sure, each of us goes through periods of busy-ness. However, the word busy is often used as a blanket, catch-all phrase for just the way life is these days. For some, it’s used as a marker of success or of martyrdom.
Yes, I have three school-age children who are all pursuing different paths in different places. I have two households that I live across which in turn, places me in a long-distance marriage. I’m on the road a lot. I’m the legal responsible party for my mother, who’s living with dementia. Although she chose to live independently, I see her as much as possible, managing her schedule, her accounts, her household supplies, and her needs. I'm growing a small business. I’m an active supporter and volunteer for several of my communities. I own that my life has more moving parts than most folks. However, I’m not busy. My hands may be full, but I’m rarely struggling to hold it all together.
Now, you may assume it’s because I’m more organized than most. Yep, I’m organized, and you’re also more organized than you think. Busyness and organization aren’t opposites. You don’t master busyness with organization. You can’t DO more or use productivity to be less busy because busyness is a myth.
So, on today’s episode, I’ll share where busyness comes from, how to notice when you’re in a season of busyness (or not), and I’ll share the solution I implement when life feels a bit more hectic than usual. This topic is particularly special to me because I believe that embracing an organized life and mindset is a holistic antidote to busyness syndrome. It’s something I fall back upon time and time again and a journey I’m on each and every day.
First, let me say there’s not one agreed upon definition of busyness. In certain cases, being busy is about being focused, industrial, or diligent towards a specific goal. I don’t think this is how most of us interpret the term. It’s more commonly associated with being overcommitted. It’s when you have to be in multiple places at once. It’s when you have multiple projects requiring your attention. It’s when your brain is jumping from tasks to logistics to problem solving from the moment you wake until the moment you fall asleep. Busyness is life without sufficient, restorative physical and mental breaks. You and I have both been there, but for most of us, living day-to-day in the land of busyness isn’t our dream life.
What’s often forgotten though, is that busyness is a choice. I’m going to get real plain here for a moment, and it’s okay if you have a little resistance to what I share. Technically, your schedule is a blank slate every single day. Every single hour ahead of this moment is available to you. It’s not currently booked with things you HAVE to do. There’s nowhere you HAVE to go. Sure, there are laws saying you have to pay taxes, feed and educate your children. Beyond that, no one’s forcing you to go to work, you’re choosing to go in order to pay for your lifestyle. (Many people don’t work and accept the consequences.) No one’s forcing you to drive your kids to activities, you’re choosing to stay enrolled and attend. (Many people don’t make every practice, lesson, or school activity.) The commitments you make feel like they’re set in stone, however, 99.99% of all of the things you do are choices. That’s why I say busyness is simply being overcommitted. It’s telling yourself that you have enough time for it all rather than thinking deeply about what tasks are truly essential and non-negotiable.
Busyness occurs when you don’t stop to draw a firm line, or boundary, around how you spend your time. When you weigh each activity, invitation, and task on your to-do list as equally important, you create your own busyness. Everything blends together and few things are prioritized. This is where busyness comes from. It’s how you end up needing to be in multiple places, unintentionally working on multiple projects, and trying to solve multiple things at a time.
Now, some of you are shaking your head at me right now. You’re thinking that it’s much more complicated than an intentional choice to do less. What I hope to get across is that busyness isn’t about the quantity of tasks on your weekly schedule, it’s about recognizing that you have the power to control where you need to be and what you’re focused on at any given moment. When you unconsciously assume that duty outweighs your personal control, that’s when your schedule becomes overfull, and you start to feel frazzled and pulled in multiple directions.
So, how do you know when you’re in a season of busyness? Of course, I’d always invite you to check in with your body. Your emotional experience will give you clues as to whether the amount you’re doing each day is enough or too much. How’s your breathing? What level is your stress or anxiety? How tense are your muscles? If you check in and find that you’re in a sustained stress response, I’d invite you to look at your schedule as an easy lever to manipulate. You may be overcommitted and recognize that you have the ability to limit what’s immediately ahead for immediate relief.
If you find it a struggle to connect with your body, another option is to track your time. There’s no arguing with the truth. Time isn’t abundant nor is it scarce. It’s neutrally ticking by. You can count it, but you can’t speed it up or slow it down. Busyness is a myth because as long as you continue to wake up each day, there are 168 hours in the week. No matter how much you divide your hours up, cram things in, or leisurely let them pass, you have 168 hours. I have 168 hours. Each of us uses those hours differently, and studies have shown that we aren’t that great at understanding where our time goes.
Tracking your time means notating every single thing you do for one day (or more!) straight. It’s tedious, and it will lay bare the truth you may be seeking. Much of the data may be easily accessed on your phone. My iPhone tells me how many minutes I slept last night. It will tell me my screen time, and if I truly want to be honest with myself, I can see how much time I spent listening to music, working out, scrolling social media, texting folks… The one thing that’s harder to account for is your daily mental and emotional labor. You’ll need to become aware of the time spent noticing, planning, or multi-tasking. Creating awareness around how you’re spending your minutes is such a worthwhile exercise because it will help you gauge if you’re more mindless or more mindful throughout your day. As always, this isn’t about judgment. I’m not suggesting that you track your time to beat yourself up about your choices. That’s truly a waste of time and energy. It’s about creating a sense of whether you’re busy by defaulting to obligation or embracing the power of choice with each task you add to your calendar.
The reason I stay away from calling myself ‘busy’ is because it feels more powerful to own that I’m always doing exactly what I think I should be doing. That places me in charge of my life and time. Our familiar friends – guilt and shame – don’t stand a chance when we consciously acknowledge that we’re choosing to attend an activity. Now, there may be a deeper reason at play – commitment to a friend, being the person who does what she says, fear of saying no or upsetting another person – when you over schedule yourself. Shifting out of busyness starts with awareness of what’s underneath it all and getting curious. Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this out of obligation? How could doing it (or opting out) be an act of love for myself and others? Noticing and vocalizing to yourself how you always have a choice returns your power to you. Life will continue to be busy until you’re honest with how much time driving to and from, completing a project, or swirling around a topic takes out of the limited number of hours you have each day.
The solution I return to, time and time again, when I notice I’m in a season of busyness is prioritizing. Before you turn the episode off because you know all there is to prioritizing, stick with me for the next few minutes. Prioritizing, just like busyness, has become a flexible phrase. When I start with clients, they often list like 10 different things they’re focused on right now, and that’s a flag for me. If we were to stick to the technical definition, priority is singular. One at a time. That definition DOES make sense because current research shows that you truly can attend to only one thing in your active, working memory at a time. Multi-tasking is as much a myth as busyness. When you’re busy, your attention and focus is split. It’s hopping back and forth between tasks, thoughts, and activities. Twenty episodes into this podcast, and I’m telling you, if I tried to have split attention right now, y’all would be lost, never to return. I do feel the pull of distractions, however I bring myself back.
Only you can choose and repeatedly return your focus to your priorities. When I work with clients, first we determine the overall umbrella categories in which they may have a priority. These may be personal, home, family + friends, and business. I do believe you can have 1-2 priorities in each category, and when you’re feeling busy, it takes conscious effort to narrow your scope to the week or month ahead. Oftentimes folks will say general phrases like, “my kids and my work are important.” This is too broad in scope and will leave you feeling always stuck in the busyness trap. Priorities act as a filter for your decisions about what earns your attention, therefore the narrower in scope you can get them, the better.
So, I’m curious. What are the top 5 most meaningful things to you right now? As of the recording of this podcast, which is June 2023, my personal priority is to complete at least 30 min of cardio five days a week. After my bout with appendicitis, I’m scheduled for an appendectomy in a month, and I know it will be most successful if I keep my body healthy and strong. If I’m asked to do anything that takes away from my total health, it’s a firm no. That decision isn’t about anyone else; it’s 100% about staying committed to my priority. In terms of my home, my priority is to get through the bumpy transition of summer by moving my eldest daughter home from boarding, close up our condo in Florida, and move my son back to Detroit for the summer. I’m not traveling anywhere other than Detroit or Florida. These tasks are essential, and traveling for business doesn’t make sense and would add to my busyness.
Again, I’m always actively owning what I’m doing to lessen the frazzled, scattered feeling. With regards to what’s not making the top priority list this month, I’d say that time with my mother has been limited. She lives in an assisted living community, therefore she’s always safe and cared for. She actively chose this living arrangement early on in her dementia diagnosis, and it’s proved to be the best solution for her and for my family as life ebbs and flows. Just because something isn’t an active priority for you, doesn’t mean you don’t care deeply about it. Your priorities are where you’re putting your focused attention AND spending your time. My mother holds an important place in my heart and my mind, and by consciously deciding that she’s not my priority these next few weeks, there’s no guilt or pull to think that I “should” be with her more often. I’m always doing exactly what makes sense.
This is one of the most pleasurable rewards resulting from dropping the cloak of busyness. When you slow down and decide where to put your time and attention each moment of the day, you’re also clarifying where NOT to put your time and attention. This is what helps to cut down on the mental clutter. You can practice redirecting your focus to the set of tasks that are absolute priorities. In our overstimulated, highly distracted world, this is such a gift. You’ll find yourself being more productive (and less busy). Especially if you track your time. All of these points will blend together to help support your personal and family values.
So, to quickly recap, you have 168 hours in a week. We all do. Overcommitting yourself creates busyness and unfortunately, it’s not a cycle that you can win. There’s no final level in the game or reward that you receive from being in multiple places, completing multiple projects, or juggling multiple ideas. The cycle will continue until you take ownership by seeing every minute as a powerful choice you’re consciously making. Even with work. Even with extended family. Even with your kids. You’ve got one life to embrace and enjoy, and if I can do it, you can too. Talk to y’all soon.
Outro: Hey, y'all my monthly Second Friday's Workshop Series is here. Join me on the second Friday of every month in 2023 for a practical, no frills, come as you are hour of teaching and coaching. I'll show you exactly how I handle one area of home organization, then the floor will be open for questions and coaching. We'll troubleshoot what's feeling challenging for you and get you unstuck on the spot. Find out more and register at www.apleasantsolution.com/workshops or via Instagram @apleasantsolution. Can't wait to meet you.
