Wednesday Journaling Writes: Where’s All That Busyness Taking You?

“I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another’s eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.” 

Heh! This could be the manifesto of a generation. It comes, actually, from a recent NY Times article titled The ‘Busy’ Trap about how “…Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness …” 

Sound uncomfortably familiar? The author, Tim Kreider, asserts that everyone he knows these days is perennially busy.  Does it seem that way to you? 

Even though I know that more creative use of time is preferable, it seems that I perpetuate my busyness, not only keeping me constantly on the run but also hindering smooth communications with colleagues and friends.  In place of natural curiosity, dialog, and interaction, an ‘endless frenetic hustle,’ as the Times author terms it, rules the day. 

But sooner or later you have to ask, for what? Why am I rushing about, what drives me so relentlessly, why exactly am I always so damn busy? 

Put that in your journal and smoke it. 

• What am I busy doing? 
• How do these activities relate to my values and goals?
• What would non-activity (not being busy, being available and flexible) look like? What would I like about it? What would I dislike about it?
• Are there any good reasons to reduce my busyness? What are they exactly?
• One more time, what is most important in my life?

I suppose we could go on all day about where the overbearing ethic of busyness came from, but that’s irrelevant in a way. Better to simply imagine an improved lifestyle and be serious about attaining it. I like to say, “Just Nike it.” 

Think about a friend, lover, relative, or other heart connection. Think about understanding, or awe, or peace. 

Think about any one of a thousand ways experience shows us directly that wonder is all around whether we have earned it or not. 

Our busyness pretends that we’re earning points, making savings account deposits, being smart and successful. It ignores the obvious fact that by doing so we store up riches on earth where, no doubt, moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break through and steal. 

Besides that, busyness does not allow for that all-important idle time that’s indispensable to the healthy life.  Says Kreider: 

“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets." 

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/yisongyue/5281756762/

Reduce busyness, resolve your money problems in 7 Days! Sign up for our Pay Yourself First Journaling Challenge which starts Monday, July 9!