2. You have a mixed sense of doing too much and not getting enough done.
3. Busy is your new normal.
4. You feel controlled by your schedule.
5. You eat at least one meal each day while standing up or doing something else.
6. You’re experiencing weight shifts, skin issues, or hair loss.
7. You’re not getting enough sleep, you have insomnia, your libido is low.
8. Things you once enjoyed taking time for now feel like inconveniences.
9. You often feel overwhelmed or anxious.
10. You constantly feel like you are rushing just to keep up with yourself.
Do any of these signs feel familiar? Of course they do! Busy is a club with far too many members. Ignoring these signs may seem harmless enough; however, busyness can put you and your health at risk. Though I could check off most of the items on the list above, like many other OSWs, I ignored the signs until I ended up in the emergency room. Unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon event for many women, nor is having a compromised immune system brought on by ignoring our bodies’ signals. To get a better understanding of how these symptoms have become so prevalent, let’s take a brief yet essential look at how all this busy business got rolling and the impact its pace has on you. Let’s begin with Ann’s story, an example of how intelligent and successful women still unwittingly ignore their busy signs.
ANN’S OSW STORY
Ann was a high-achieving and professionally successful OSW. When she was in her midtwenties, she started her first company. She went on to attain her MBA while pregnant with her fourth child. Ann was exceptional in all areas of business but was miserable in her private life. She had a fractured relationship with her parents and spouse, and her children were emotionally distant, even though she had done “everything right” and “everything her parents expected of her,” excelling beyond her own stratospheric standards. When she was in her early forties, she began experiencing digestion problems, severe insomnia, and abrupt weight gain. She had seen the finest doctors, and none could diagnose her ailments or connect them to a disease. She was so busy achieving what she felt was expected of her that she lived with these conditions for several years, accepting them as a product of her demanding lifestyle.
The first day she arrived in my office, she brought with her detailed records from the numerous doctors she had seen and her plan for what she wanted me to do. I said to her, “It looks like you have already discovered your solutions. Why are you seeking my help?” Ann responded, “I just want someone to make me do what I know I’m supposed to do.” She didn’t really want me to be the one in charge; letting someone else make decisions meant relinquishing control, and that would mean trusting uncertainty, something she was not at all comfortable with.
It wasn’t until she had worked with me for about six months that she was able to let her guard down enough to begin exploring what was really under her perfectionistic habits. She had been surrounded by very successful women all her life and had watched her mother and aunts go on to achieve super-success. Her own success was never really something she planned; it was just something expected of her. She described feeling like she was always racing to catch up with herself. She wasn’t even sure she liked what she was doing. In fact, she had always wanted to be a ballet dancer, not a CEO. Professional success was so familiar, yet she had little confidence in building and developing her personal relationships. The more she tried to control her relationships, the more her loved ones distanced themselves from her, and that in turn fueled her insecurities and kept her from trying a different approach. She also realized her uncertainties and angsts were being displayed in her physical symptoms.
These discoveries and her recognition of them initiated a dynamic change. I designed a fitness plan that fit her real life, not one that she was “supposed” to be living. I included daily meditation (that was a hard sell!) as part of her wellness program. We had an agreement that she would eat at least one meal a day sitting down, without her devices and devoid of business conversations. Ann began setting better boundaries at work and making more time for her family. Over time, her physical symptoms began to subside, until they dissipated altogether. It was a slow process; however, her changes stuck.
Ann is still highly successful, and now that includes having a better relationship with her children and her spouse. Her life is not perfect; it’s better, and she has finally accepted that better is often her best. As a side note, Ann joined an adult ballet class, just for fun. She has redefined busy, and it is now an exception to her day, not a habit.
As we can see from Ann’s story, being busy doesn’t happen in a bubble; busy behavior trickles down and ripples out. She learned it from watching the women in her family, and her learned behavior in turn had an impact on her family. The energy of busy behaviors affects everyone with whom you come into contact, and the more time you spend with these people — partners, spouses, children, and coworkers — the larger your impact will be on them.
The big question is, How did busy become such a bully? Pushing and shoving its way into life as though it belongs and is as important as, oh, I don’t know, things like love, family, and happiness? But there it is, manipulating time to the point that we’re so busy being busy that we feel lazy or guilty when we sit too long at dinner. Oh, but that’s right, who am I kidding? Nobody sits down for dinner anymore — we’re too busy! The bully of busy cleverly steals our time while promising to give us more. Understanding how busy got so powerful, pervasive, and acceptable will help you begin reclaiming your time and make even more of it.
• The Business of Busy •
Time is like a Ponzi scheme; most of us feel we never get a good return on the investments we’ve made. Technology has had a profound impact on the illusion of time. Most of us habitually use loads of gadgets, thinking they aid us in freeing up time and space but in reality, they provide a steady stream of distractions. We can Facebook all our “friends” with a few strokes of the keyboard; we can text a conversation and avoid the time-absorbing niceties that are expected in a phone call. We Instagram our daily moments as if we’re in a professional photo shoot, with age-enhancing filters and hashtags galore to let the world know that we’re important and that we’re busy!
Many of us who once considered the implications of our biological clocks are now surrounded by the constant reminders of the clocks on our laptops, tablets, smartphones, and automobiles. The reminders of time are constant and everywhere. Technology and its tantalizing time-saving gadgets have turned us into time wizards, like Willy Wonka conveyor belts, pumping out numerous tasks, appointments, errands, meetings, and chores. And thanks to these techy innovations, we can order food any time of the day and have it dashed to our doors; we can date, via the internet, while eating a bowl of ice cream in our PJs at 2:00 PM on a Sunday; heck, we can even file for divorce, pay taxes, and find a relative living in a cave somewhere in South America without ever leaving our backyard chaise lounge. We can have almost anything we want whenever we want it — and therein lies the problem. Busyness has no boundaries, with its unlimited self-imposed demands steeped in a myriad of expectations.
Busy goes far beyond the use of technology and our addictive draw to it. The feeling of being rushed and out of time has become embedded in our get-it-done culture. As economies grow and incomes rise, we have attached a financial value on time — it’s worth more. We negotiate with ourselves over the use of our time, as though we have to ask permission to spend time the way we want. The less time we have, the more we want, and so go the hands around the clock — ticktock, ticktock, until we can’t keep up with our own pace.
We forge ahead at breakneck speed, fueled by the perception that we are running out of time. That perception, along with the cultural acceptance that busyness implies importance and value, drives us to exceed any reasonable list of daily to-dos. We can’t remember what we’re supposed to be doing, or what we’ve already done, without a download or an update because we’re so distracted when we’re doing-what-we’re-doing. Our preoccupied mind-set lets busyness settle into our lives like an overbearing backseat driver; it’s always a little bit out