10 Ways to Ban Busy… and Still Get Stuff Done!

How often do you use the word “busy”?

I admit, I use it a lot. It seems that every Monday morning as I greet friends and co-workers, our standard exchanges go something like this:

“How was your weekend?”

“BUSY!” {Often said with a deep sigh, an eye-roll, or a frustrated shake of the head.}

“Mine, too!”

We rattle off numbers of trips to Target or loads of laundry, or perhaps the sporting events attended, essays graded, and meals cooked, and then we head off to another BUSY week of working and parenting and cooking and cleaning before we head to yet another BUSY weekend!

When my husband and I get home from work and ask each other how our days were, our answers are inevitably, “BUSY!”

Do we have to be so busy? Do we have to always tell everyone we’re so busy?

Why Ban Busy?

Shawn Fink of The Abundant Mama writes, “The problem with our obsession with “busyness” is that we are afraid of failing. We’re terrified we’re going to miss out on something — or worse, our children will miss out on something.” We spend so much time hurrying, we miss the very moments we’re hurrying up for! Shawn suggests we learn to be “present, peaceful and playful in a slow, intentional way.”

Agapi Stassinopoulos writes in this article on the Huffington Post that when we tell people we’re busy, we’re essentially telling them “I’m talking to you, but I’m really not here.” Reading that line made me cringe, thinking of all the times I have told my children, “Mommy’s busy right now.”

Stassinopoulos describes her wake-up moment when her doctor told her she tells her patients to stop using the word busy. “It only makes you feel more overwhelmed and not in charge of your time,” she told her.

Our words matter. How we describe our days and our lives impacts our perception of them. When we are “busy,” we are hurried and often preoccupied and stressed out. “Busy” almost always implies engagement in activities that are not of our choosing — it’s business (busy-ness), not leisure.

We tend to glorify “busy-ness” in our culture, as Arianna Huffington writes in Thrive {which you should totally read, when you’re not busy}. We brag about how little sleep we get and how many hours we work. Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness, describes his wake-up call to change his pattern of busy-ness: he actually contemplated buying a book called One-Minute Bedtime Stories, which condensed classic tales for kids in order to speed up bedtime so parents could get back to their busy lives!

Clearly, we’ve become a little obsessed with busy. But …  I kinda like being busy sometimes. I like doing things and accomplishing things. I absolutely treasure moments of peace and respite, but I also have a lot of stuff that needs to get done! How do we “ban busy,” and still work and engage in the activities of our lives?

Well, guess what?

In fact, banning busy may actually make you more effective, for it allows you to be, as Huffington writes, “fully present in your life and in the lives of those you love.”

We can slow down, do less, and sleep more. And we can change how we engage with the world.

How to Ban Busy

1. Stop Multitasking. Multitasking is a computing term. As amazing as our brains are, they are no match for computers. You are not a computer. You cannot multitask. You will get more done, and feel less overwhelmed, by focusing on one task at a time.

2. Manage Your To-Do List. I once read that your to-do list should be able to fit on a post-it note. On Sunday evenings, I look at the week ahead and figure out how I will distribute the items that need to get done throughout the week. And each day, I eat a frog. 🙂

Putting off unpleasant tasks {and then having them hang over my head all day} makes me feel more stressed. When I do the most undesirable task first thing in the morning, I feel productive and can approach the day with a greater sense of ease — and I feel less busy.

3. Repeat: “Self Care is NOT Selfish.” Yes, you have a lot to do and a lot of people counting on you. But you need to take care of yourself, whether it’s time to read a book, go to yoga, or take a nap. Even God took a day to rest.

4. Get More Sleep. Try just a half-hour more per night. In Thrive, Huffington writes that of all sleep-deprived Americans, working moms get the least. She encourages us all to get more sleep, for “our creativity, ingenuity, confidence, leadership, and decision making all can be enhanced simply by getting enough sleep.”

5. Leave Work at Work. Obviously this can depend on where, and if, we work, but I strongly believe it’s important to have a clear delineation between work and home. Several years ago, I decided I was DONE bringing work home — the piles of essays at home made me resentful of my job and took time away from my family. It took a few more days to get assignments back to my students, but I was a better teacher, mother, and human being because of it. I think it was a fair trade-off!

6. Know It’s Okay to Say “No.” We don’t have to do all the things we are asked to do. It’s okay to say no. While it may be easy to say no to the things we don’t want to do, it’s a lot harder to say no to the things we really do want to do. How do we decide? Consider if you really have the time or energy to complete a job the way it needs to be done. If you don’t, say no; it’s not fair to you or the person asking for your help if you take on more than you can handle. At the Bloggy Boot Camp conference in Minneapolis in 2013, one of the pieces of advice I heard was, “If it’s not a HELL, YES!, it’s a NO.” I return to that one a lot!

7. Limit Your Time on Social Media. There’s a reason they call it a time-suck. And I’m as guilty as the next person for spending too much time in the social media vortex. But as beneficial as it can be, it’s no substitute for old-fashioned social engagement. Set a timer when you check your accounts. When it goes off, you’re done. Then check-out the amazing NEW social media platform my colleague just told me about: Outside! There are real people there! And you can talk to them and look at nature and stuff. {Believe it or not, I fell for this one at first. “What!? I’ve never heard of Outside!” …’Doh!}

8. Speaking of Outside… Go for a Walk! Not only is this good for our health, but there’s a reason we go for walks to “clear our minds.” When I’m stuck in my writing or can’t think of an effective lesson, it usually only takes a short walk for ideas to come to me. And you can also see people and talk to them and look at nature and stuff.

9. Practice Mindfulness. Cultivating our mindful awareness of the present moment nourishes gratitude and contentment. It enhances our concentration and emotional regulation. Click here to get started.

10. Daydream. Though I’m always extolling the virtues of mindfulness, daydreaming has its benefits too, including the cultivation of creativity, compassion, and self-awareness. NYU psychology professor Scott Barry Kaufman writes, “The latest research on imagination and creativity shows that if we’re always in the moment, we’re going to miss out on important connections between our own inner mind-wandering thoughts and the outside world. Creativity lies in that intersection between our outer world and our inner world.”

And just think of how powerful our engagement with the world will be when we are mindful, healthy, focused, and present.