Too busy

Some of my friends are always busy. When we try to get-together they have trouble finding a time to meet. It seems that their lifestyles create endless lists of other things needing their attention. They always need to be somewhere, doing something else, or getting something done.  When they finally schedule me into their life, it’s a big deal. They make a great show of all the other things that are happening around the same time, and carefully place our get-together way out in their schedule at their first available moment.

I used to think that I could change this approach to life by adopting an attitude of mono-tasking. I make a conscious effort not to be on my phone, emailing, and texting all at the same time. To be honest, I’m really not that good at doing more than one thing at a time, and this allowed me to focus on the person or task at hand and get it done. It feels good to give people my undivided attention and let them know that they are the most important thing that I have to do.

But, I realize that this is not the only problem for busy people. My sister-in-law Jane said that even before she retired she made it a goal to not be too busy. When people ask her how she is doing, and speculate that she is busier in retirement, she just replies with a simple “no,” and moves on to the next topic. No excuses, explanations, or justifications required. I found this approach to time even better than mono-tasking because it is even simpler.

It seems that most busy people equate their self-worth with the commitments and demands of their lives. They don’t say no to projects and tasks because they like being busy. These people are also list people. They like to tell you what they did yesterday, today, tomorrow, and next week so that you can agree with them that they are too busy to spend time with you.

I don’t deny that we all have things to do. Sometimes, the more things we do the better we feel about ourselves. There is nothing like completing cleaning, laundry, cooking, and gardening to make a Saturday feel full. But, it also feels good when a weekend comes to just sit back, relax, walk the dog, and read a book.

My son is good at realizing that he doesn’t like to be too busy. When he signs up for activities and they start to take up all of his after-school time, he picks the ones he likes the most and doesn’t join in on the ones that are just filler. He has a few things that he likes to do, and a lot of free time for his friends. When the weekend rolls around, he carefully plans to get-together with people based on how much he’s seen them during the week, and tries to reconnect with friends that he’s missed the most. He’s only as busy as he wants to be, which seems like a good model for all of us to adopt.