One of the primary reasons my partner and I chose to not have any children is because neither of us wanted to be busy in that particular kind of way. Like, none of it was appealing and I knew it would be a trap for me.
I’m thankful for our past selves making that decision! It’s made our present selves able to pare down other areas—we’re both public school teachers who have spent the last few years reframing what “busy” REALLY means in education—it means mostly working for free. Not any more. I work (and am extremely busy!) during my contracted hours but that. Is. It!
I’m Gen X and I’m def busier than I was before the Internet and so are my Gen X friends. The thing I remember the most about my childhood is being bored. even my 20s and early 30s I had boredom. If I was standing in line and I forgot to bring a book I just stood there. I couldn’t call somebody or start scrolling.
I had a smaller but deeper friend group because you couldn’t regularly talk to your friends who were far away because then you have to pay for long distance calling. So those calls were limited.
now I’m trying to keep in touch with a much bigger group of people which definitely has its upsides, but does make me busier.
And then of course we didn’t work on weekends before the Internet so basically until my 30s working on the weekends was pretty much unheard of so that gave you more time. There wasn’t as much to watch on TV and obviously we didn’t have streaming, so there was no binge watching shows . I’m trying to re-create my old life right now though single tasking and limited time on apps/internet/binge watching shows. It’s hard!
My work (as a professor in the humanities) is the primary driver of a busyness I can’t always sustain: it ebbs and flows with papers coming in, extra admin projects, writing deadlines, etc., but there has been a general shift even in the past decade to more work demands on my time, demands that cannot be accomplished in 40 hours a week during the teaching term.
We strive for simplicity as a family: avoiding over scheduling, trying to prioritize relationship over hustle, etc. my kids each do one activity at a time because that’s what we can manageably juggle. We rely on steady rhythms. A lot of this feels fairly countercultural, but my mantra is BUSYNESS IS NOT A FLEX.
However, some of the stress I feel sometimes isn’t fair to blame on work: my desires and my time and capacity don’t always match up because I have an enormous appetite for life. I want to read every good book, go deep with lots of friends, walk and garden and play with my kids, make quilts and have an indigo vat to dye linen and hand-bind books and write books and gaze into my partner’s chocolate eyes and cook delicious food and play piano for fun and volunteer and be present to my neighbors and and and…
And all of this in a body limited by chronic illness.
I am working to release unhelpful SHOULDs but also to embrace that I (1) need margin and rest to be well and (2) am graced with a hearty appetite for relationship and creativity, which will always outpace my time. Instead of a frustration, this can be another mode of abundance: there is SO MUCH MORE than I can do. So much goodness! Is this a tragedy or is it an immense gift?
The other night, I sat on my couch and listening to music for 2 hours. Nothing else. Not crocheting, not reading, not cleaning or cooking, and wow it was glorious. Many times during that session I felt my fingers itching for my phone but I did my best to put it farther away from me and that helped with the sense of needing to be busy. All the "busy" things (work, life admin) are on my phone. Spending time doing truly nothing was such a nice reset.
I want to quibble—strongly—with the idea that we’re doing about the same amount of work as we were in the 1960s. Maybe we are in hours, but productivity has skyrocketed over the last five or so decades, while wages have stagnated.
We’re doing more work in our working hours. A lot more. And for less pay and with more precarity. So, in a very real way, we are doing a LOT more work these days (to say nothing of the many people doing side hustles and second/third jobs).
I also think we need to interrogate the cult of busyness with a class lens.
I don’t think anyone working three jobs, parenting, and barely keeping their head above water is doing it out of compulsion for status. They’re doing it simply to survive. And they aren’t vaunted for it (whether explicitly or tacitly). If anything, they’re excoriated for not “making better choices,” for not being able to parent like a middle class helicopter, for not being able to be almond moms.
Look at the Twitter discourse around parents dropping their kids at the library all day. Are some of them going off to the spa or shopping? Maybe, I guess. But I’d wager the majority of them have no other option because we don’t prioritize affordable childcare and they probably have to work so they don’t get evicted.
"I don't want to hold up my busyness as a shield." I learned to be Busy in college, an emotionally overwhelming time having grown up in an emotionally unavailable home. If I was Busy, I wouldn't have to be vulnerable or learn how to have hard conversations. If I was Busy, I was valuable because I was Doing Things. I threw myself into a teaching career that exhausted my extroverted introvert self. I said yes to insane poorly paid nonprofit jobs. I worked on political campaigns. I worked at a Very Impressive Foundation. I was an independent consultant and constantly in the air and on the road. Until my burnout caught up with me and then the pandemic hit. Even in the pandemic I found a way to be Extremely Busy, organizing food relief & helping people navigate unemployment insurance. But that moment ended. I moved out of NYC (where "Busy" is a virtue) and chose to move to a place where the air is fresh, beaches are close, and nothing much happens. (Including my career, which has fully stalled out.) I am functionally retired in my late 40s (not by choice or desire). I have no kids, no partner. The man I love is on the other side of the country. My aging parents live four hours away. The kiddos I would help with are in Brooklyn. I'm estranged from my aging aunts who live nearby. I think there is a level of intentional busyness that puts wind in your sails. Without it, my life has entered a period of doldrums. I need to find a steady breeze. I'm starting to think that will require relocation.
These are wonderful spot-on insights. I applaud you for making time for yourself—for less essential things that cultivate happiness and health—especially running, because it’s during those unplugged times when we can do our best thinking and engage the imagination. Chair lift rides while skiing are great for this too; I used to feel impatient on the chair lift, having to sit still, my mittened hand unable to work my phone, until I gave into the forced stillness and either became highly observant of the present surroundings if riding the lift solo, or engaged in conversation with a stranger if sharing the chair. My point is, this is quality time with ourselves during the day—moments that seem to expand the day and make it “a good day.” I am reveling in this phase of life (my mid 50s) when I’m less of a caregiver because my kids are grown and parents have passed, so suddenly I can fill my days with more projects and jobs I want to do. Instead of “busy,” I’d call it “active” or “engaged.” For everyone reading this who feels stretched thin and stressed, I hope you have faith that life has many chapters, and a time will come when days feel less overwhelming and rushed. And it’s OK to say “no thank you” to opportunities and requests to volunteer; take that time for yourself instead.
I am late to the party, but I recently read Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks after too many months of being the wrong kind of busy. It helped me better recognize some of the sources of my busyness -- a sense that I could accomplish everything if only I was more productive, an attempt not to acknowledge the painful reality that I won't be able to do all the things I'd like to do with my one wild and precious life.
It's helped me reflect on the seemingly important things I should consciously reject in favor of actually important things -- in my case, the classic "forgoing certain career goals in favor of spending more time with family and friends". It's a bit cliché, but how many of us actually live our lives in accordance with these priorities even after coming to recognize them?
I'm angling more towards the right kind of busy -- navigating an abundance of beautiful possibilities! But doing my best to consciously choose the few things that feel most meaningful among them, and acknowledge I won't be getting to the others (for now, and possibly forever).
Also, it is much easier to make such choices if you have the means to. I've cut my work schedule down to 4 days/week. I couldn't have afforded this any earlier, and even now the change is felt, but well worth it regardless.
This post touches on something I think about a lot, which is how big or small one's world is. COVID really made my family's world extremely tiny, and small disruptions to our routine or any additional demands on our time felt UNBEARABLE. It made me really sad and I realized that I wanted to expand our world and give us a slightly bigger cup that could hold a few more things. I know this isn't the same thing as busy/not busy, but I think sometimes my experience of "busy" is also just about how disrupted I feel by the activity itself, versus feeling at ease with it.
I’m a school principal and have been so busy with work for years and years. I found it fulfilling and like it was enough until about a year ago....something clicked, and I realized I wanted other kinds of busy. I rested a lot on the weekends but didn’t feel fulfilled. I still find my work meaningful and I still find it very difficult to not work endless hours.
As an experiment/because I couldn’t think of another way, I joined an exercise class gym and started booking classes within 2 hours of school ending (or less!!) to give myself a reason to leave campus at a decent time and make myself empowered to say no, internally or out loud, to demands of my time and energy. I love it. It’s working. Hoping to develop mindsets through this first move towards life outside of work and towards further abundance.
For me it’s the fear of laziness that drives a lot of busyness I think. Lazy is not a thing! Lazy is a puritanical concept invented to make you feel guilty for resting! Understanding laziness isn’t real has really helped me.
I am feeling so burnt out with two very young children who are sick all the time, a demanding full-time job, and a partner who is not as supportive as I’d like. I would welcome advice on how to care for myself when it feels like I am drowning and it feels like nothing I’m doing is optional. Like, I can’t just not take care of my sick kids. I can’t quit my job and I also don’t want to. Please share your wisdom!
I saw something recently about burnout being borrowing tomorrow’s energy today and it stuck with me. I got Covid for the first time right at the holidays and the energy recovery has been A LOT! I cannot push past or through it like I normally have during periods of burnout. It is forcing me to have to stop and have to rest. Having that forced time has been so eye opening in how much I think I’m recovered vs. actually not being there at all. For my future physical and mental health, I’m forcing in breaks and slow downs regardless of the guilt I feel because for the first time in years I’m allow myself to see the benefits of rest.
Thank you for this post! I really started rethinking my ideas about being busy and all of the seemingly “urgent” things that aren’t really urgent after losing a parent a few years ago. There is nothing like a major wake-up call to knock you out of the normal *grind*. Ever since, my relationship with time has massively changed (although, it has been a slow process to unlearn). Life is too short to spend our time on things just because society expects it or external influences encourage it. Our values & priorities are all different and being in touch with ours and creating time for them is a wonderful kind of busy.
Nowadays, I am busy reading, writing, completing jigsaw puzzles, making time for friends & family, attending broadway shows, walking, lifting, listening to music, hanging with my pets, etc. This kind of busy is full of joy and I love it.
Reading this has made me realize that I am the wrong kind of busy. I bought a small business last year (an independent bookstore). I love it. And I hate it. It consumes all of my energy right now. I’m working on that in several different ways, although perhaps with less hope and vigor than is required to make real change. The worst of that though is that I’ve made very little time for friends and other activities in the past year. The time is often there but the mental and emotional energy is not. Add to this that I am a recent empty nester who actually misses my life being organized around feeding my family, tennis matches, quiz bowl, all the things. I’m completely lost in terms of how to spend my time right now. As others have mentioned, these are phases. I definitely can look back and see the phases...first job with no other responsibilities, early marriage with a job but no other responsibilities, early parenting while working, parenting without working, parenting while caretaking and working part time, etc. I did not enjoy the hands on and very physical parts of having small children nearly as much as the phases when they bathed themselves and could engage in interesting conversations. But those weren’t “bad” years. I found ways to make those years work for me and I need to do the same for these. I’ve realized that I often use the excuse of being busy to avoid things that would be good for me. I am an extreme introvert, meaning I need a lot of alone time to feel like myself. Owning a business has meant giving up the flexibility to be alone on any given day and now I protect anytime that I’m not at the store like it’s my life. I use the “busyness” of the store and my role there as an excuse from engaging outside of it. But that has isolated me from relationships that are important to me. I’m not good at self reflection and it’s one of the reasons I love this community. The questions discussed here are often ones that I would never ask myself. I find so much wisdom, encouragement, and often the challenge I need to make a change in my life for the better.
One of the primary reasons my partner and I chose to not have any children is because neither of us wanted to be busy in that particular kind of way. Like, none of it was appealing and I knew it would be a trap for me.
I’m thankful for our past selves making that decision! It’s made our present selves able to pare down other areas—we’re both public school teachers who have spent the last few years reframing what “busy” REALLY means in education—it means mostly working for free. Not any more. I work (and am extremely busy!) during my contracted hours but that. Is. It!
I’m Gen X and I’m def busier than I was before the Internet and so are my Gen X friends. The thing I remember the most about my childhood is being bored. even my 20s and early 30s I had boredom. If I was standing in line and I forgot to bring a book I just stood there. I couldn’t call somebody or start scrolling.
I had a smaller but deeper friend group because you couldn’t regularly talk to your friends who were far away because then you have to pay for long distance calling. So those calls were limited.
now I’m trying to keep in touch with a much bigger group of people which definitely has its upsides, but does make me busier.
And then of course we didn’t work on weekends before the Internet so basically until my 30s working on the weekends was pretty much unheard of so that gave you more time. There wasn’t as much to watch on TV and obviously we didn’t have streaming, so there was no binge watching shows . I’m trying to re-create my old life right now though single tasking and limited time on apps/internet/binge watching shows. It’s hard!
My work (as a professor in the humanities) is the primary driver of a busyness I can’t always sustain: it ebbs and flows with papers coming in, extra admin projects, writing deadlines, etc., but there has been a general shift even in the past decade to more work demands on my time, demands that cannot be accomplished in 40 hours a week during the teaching term.
We strive for simplicity as a family: avoiding over scheduling, trying to prioritize relationship over hustle, etc. my kids each do one activity at a time because that’s what we can manageably juggle. We rely on steady rhythms. A lot of this feels fairly countercultural, but my mantra is BUSYNESS IS NOT A FLEX.
However, some of the stress I feel sometimes isn’t fair to blame on work: my desires and my time and capacity don’t always match up because I have an enormous appetite for life. I want to read every good book, go deep with lots of friends, walk and garden and play with my kids, make quilts and have an indigo vat to dye linen and hand-bind books and write books and gaze into my partner’s chocolate eyes and cook delicious food and play piano for fun and volunteer and be present to my neighbors and and and…
And all of this in a body limited by chronic illness.
I am working to release unhelpful SHOULDs but also to embrace that I (1) need margin and rest to be well and (2) am graced with a hearty appetite for relationship and creativity, which will always outpace my time. Instead of a frustration, this can be another mode of abundance: there is SO MUCH MORE than I can do. So much goodness! Is this a tragedy or is it an immense gift?
The other night, I sat on my couch and listening to music for 2 hours. Nothing else. Not crocheting, not reading, not cleaning or cooking, and wow it was glorious. Many times during that session I felt my fingers itching for my phone but I did my best to put it farther away from me and that helped with the sense of needing to be busy. All the "busy" things (work, life admin) are on my phone. Spending time doing truly nothing was such a nice reset.
I want to quibble—strongly—with the idea that we’re doing about the same amount of work as we were in the 1960s. Maybe we are in hours, but productivity has skyrocketed over the last five or so decades, while wages have stagnated.
We’re doing more work in our working hours. A lot more. And for less pay and with more precarity. So, in a very real way, we are doing a LOT more work these days (to say nothing of the many people doing side hustles and second/third jobs).
I also think we need to interrogate the cult of busyness with a class lens.
I don’t think anyone working three jobs, parenting, and barely keeping their head above water is doing it out of compulsion for status. They’re doing it simply to survive. And they aren’t vaunted for it (whether explicitly or tacitly). If anything, they’re excoriated for not “making better choices,” for not being able to parent like a middle class helicopter, for not being able to be almond moms.
Look at the Twitter discourse around parents dropping their kids at the library all day. Are some of them going off to the spa or shopping? Maybe, I guess. But I’d wager the majority of them have no other option because we don’t prioritize affordable childcare and they probably have to work so they don’t get evicted.
"I don't want to hold up my busyness as a shield." I learned to be Busy in college, an emotionally overwhelming time having grown up in an emotionally unavailable home. If I was Busy, I wouldn't have to be vulnerable or learn how to have hard conversations. If I was Busy, I was valuable because I was Doing Things. I threw myself into a teaching career that exhausted my extroverted introvert self. I said yes to insane poorly paid nonprofit jobs. I worked on political campaigns. I worked at a Very Impressive Foundation. I was an independent consultant and constantly in the air and on the road. Until my burnout caught up with me and then the pandemic hit. Even in the pandemic I found a way to be Extremely Busy, organizing food relief & helping people navigate unemployment insurance. But that moment ended. I moved out of NYC (where "Busy" is a virtue) and chose to move to a place where the air is fresh, beaches are close, and nothing much happens. (Including my career, which has fully stalled out.) I am functionally retired in my late 40s (not by choice or desire). I have no kids, no partner. The man I love is on the other side of the country. My aging parents live four hours away. The kiddos I would help with are in Brooklyn. I'm estranged from my aging aunts who live nearby. I think there is a level of intentional busyness that puts wind in your sails. Without it, my life has entered a period of doldrums. I need to find a steady breeze. I'm starting to think that will require relocation.
These are wonderful spot-on insights. I applaud you for making time for yourself—for less essential things that cultivate happiness and health—especially running, because it’s during those unplugged times when we can do our best thinking and engage the imagination. Chair lift rides while skiing are great for this too; I used to feel impatient on the chair lift, having to sit still, my mittened hand unable to work my phone, until I gave into the forced stillness and either became highly observant of the present surroundings if riding the lift solo, or engaged in conversation with a stranger if sharing the chair. My point is, this is quality time with ourselves during the day—moments that seem to expand the day and make it “a good day.” I am reveling in this phase of life (my mid 50s) when I’m less of a caregiver because my kids are grown and parents have passed, so suddenly I can fill my days with more projects and jobs I want to do. Instead of “busy,” I’d call it “active” or “engaged.” For everyone reading this who feels stretched thin and stressed, I hope you have faith that life has many chapters, and a time will come when days feel less overwhelming and rushed. And it’s OK to say “no thank you” to opportunities and requests to volunteer; take that time for yourself instead.
I am late to the party, but I recently read Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks after too many months of being the wrong kind of busy. It helped me better recognize some of the sources of my busyness -- a sense that I could accomplish everything if only I was more productive, an attempt not to acknowledge the painful reality that I won't be able to do all the things I'd like to do with my one wild and precious life.
It's helped me reflect on the seemingly important things I should consciously reject in favor of actually important things -- in my case, the classic "forgoing certain career goals in favor of spending more time with family and friends". It's a bit cliché, but how many of us actually live our lives in accordance with these priorities even after coming to recognize them?
I'm angling more towards the right kind of busy -- navigating an abundance of beautiful possibilities! But doing my best to consciously choose the few things that feel most meaningful among them, and acknowledge I won't be getting to the others (for now, and possibly forever).
Also, it is much easier to make such choices if you have the means to. I've cut my work schedule down to 4 days/week. I couldn't have afforded this any earlier, and even now the change is felt, but well worth it regardless.
This post touches on something I think about a lot, which is how big or small one's world is. COVID really made my family's world extremely tiny, and small disruptions to our routine or any additional demands on our time felt UNBEARABLE. It made me really sad and I realized that I wanted to expand our world and give us a slightly bigger cup that could hold a few more things. I know this isn't the same thing as busy/not busy, but I think sometimes my experience of "busy" is also just about how disrupted I feel by the activity itself, versus feeling at ease with it.
I’m a school principal and have been so busy with work for years and years. I found it fulfilling and like it was enough until about a year ago....something clicked, and I realized I wanted other kinds of busy. I rested a lot on the weekends but didn’t feel fulfilled. I still find my work meaningful and I still find it very difficult to not work endless hours.
As an experiment/because I couldn’t think of another way, I joined an exercise class gym and started booking classes within 2 hours of school ending (or less!!) to give myself a reason to leave campus at a decent time and make myself empowered to say no, internally or out loud, to demands of my time and energy. I love it. It’s working. Hoping to develop mindsets through this first move towards life outside of work and towards further abundance.
There is busy because you have a lot going on, and busy that’s avoidance.
For me it’s the fear of laziness that drives a lot of busyness I think. Lazy is not a thing! Lazy is a puritanical concept invented to make you feel guilty for resting! Understanding laziness isn’t real has really helped me.
I am feeling so burnt out with two very young children who are sick all the time, a demanding full-time job, and a partner who is not as supportive as I’d like. I would welcome advice on how to care for myself when it feels like I am drowning and it feels like nothing I’m doing is optional. Like, I can’t just not take care of my sick kids. I can’t quit my job and I also don’t want to. Please share your wisdom!
I saw something recently about burnout being borrowing tomorrow’s energy today and it stuck with me. I got Covid for the first time right at the holidays and the energy recovery has been A LOT! I cannot push past or through it like I normally have during periods of burnout. It is forcing me to have to stop and have to rest. Having that forced time has been so eye opening in how much I think I’m recovered vs. actually not being there at all. For my future physical and mental health, I’m forcing in breaks and slow downs regardless of the guilt I feel because for the first time in years I’m allow myself to see the benefits of rest.
Thank you for this post! I really started rethinking my ideas about being busy and all of the seemingly “urgent” things that aren’t really urgent after losing a parent a few years ago. There is nothing like a major wake-up call to knock you out of the normal *grind*. Ever since, my relationship with time has massively changed (although, it has been a slow process to unlearn). Life is too short to spend our time on things just because society expects it or external influences encourage it. Our values & priorities are all different and being in touch with ours and creating time for them is a wonderful kind of busy.
Nowadays, I am busy reading, writing, completing jigsaw puzzles, making time for friends & family, attending broadway shows, walking, lifting, listening to music, hanging with my pets, etc. This kind of busy is full of joy and I love it.
Reading this has made me realize that I am the wrong kind of busy. I bought a small business last year (an independent bookstore). I love it. And I hate it. It consumes all of my energy right now. I’m working on that in several different ways, although perhaps with less hope and vigor than is required to make real change. The worst of that though is that I’ve made very little time for friends and other activities in the past year. The time is often there but the mental and emotional energy is not. Add to this that I am a recent empty nester who actually misses my life being organized around feeding my family, tennis matches, quiz bowl, all the things. I’m completely lost in terms of how to spend my time right now. As others have mentioned, these are phases. I definitely can look back and see the phases...first job with no other responsibilities, early marriage with a job but no other responsibilities, early parenting while working, parenting without working, parenting while caretaking and working part time, etc. I did not enjoy the hands on and very physical parts of having small children nearly as much as the phases when they bathed themselves and could engage in interesting conversations. But those weren’t “bad” years. I found ways to make those years work for me and I need to do the same for these. I’ve realized that I often use the excuse of being busy to avoid things that would be good for me. I am an extreme introvert, meaning I need a lot of alone time to feel like myself. Owning a business has meant giving up the flexibility to be alone on any given day and now I protect anytime that I’m not at the store like it’s my life. I use the “busyness” of the store and my role there as an excuse from engaging outside of it. But that has isolated me from relationships that are important to me. I’m not good at self reflection and it’s one of the reasons I love this community. The questions discussed here are often ones that I would never ask myself. I find so much wisdom, encouragement, and often the challenge I need to make a change in my life for the better.