In This House We Do Not Glorify Busy
Ever hear something come out of your mouth and have no idea where it came from? A moment where you float outside of yourself for just a moment, those words hanging in the air and think “well…that’s new”. Let me set the scene – it’s sunny, and I am lying on our front wall, propped up by bolster cushions and reading a book. My boyfriend walks out of the house and asks, “busy?” – in that semi-taunting, semi-shaming way that people do. My eyes flick up to him, and I say, “in this house, we do not glorify busy.”
As the sentence lingered, I wondered whether I truly believed it or whether it sounded good as a retort. But, the phrase rose inside me as if spewed from a geyser and landed, fully-formed and heavy, right at the front of my brain – a truth. This was a different thought, but it felt like one I (almost) completely believed.
I should clarify that my boyfriend does not care one bit whether I am ‘busy,’ and doesn’t think I should do anything other than what I want to. The way he said, “busy?” was a habitual joke. But that tone, laced with disappointed expectation, took me straight back to all my earlier busy-shaming.
I was raised at the altar of busy-ness, like so many of us. To be busy, to be in action, to be working was the only worthwhile state to be in – if you weren’t doing anything, you were lazy. You were only functioning and worthy part of society, of the family, if you were contributing your labour. We were raised to be human verbs.
So that’s why, when “in this house, we do not glorify busy” landed in my brain, it took me by surprise. I’ve never lived in a house that didn’t glorify busy. Especially running my own business, ‘busy’ was the sign that things were working; it must be going well because I’m just so busy! I’m so successful and worthy because of how busy I am! Busy is the most glorious security blanket in a business.
Until it’s not, until it’s not just stifling your fears, it’s stifling your joys too. Until you’re not living life or enjoying the freedom you wanted because you’re too busy being busy.
The busy trap is a hard one to get out of. One reason is that it has a long pipeline – it can take many months to let the busy-ness work its way through as you’ve made commitments way in advance. When you do not see the change, it’s harder to believe in it, so you lapse. Another reason is that when you suddenly start seeing empty gaps in your calendar, it’s really damn scary, and the impulse is to start filling it up again. Another is because when you’ve believed busy-ness is equal to worthiness, it takes time to build a new understanding of what worthiness is. To be a noun, not a verb.
I didn’t set out to reject busy-ness; I had no intention of renouncing my security blanket. I began shifting the way I worked because I wanted to achieve some goals, and stopping busy-ness was a side effect.
In a small but significant way, I changed my weekly planning system. Before, I had stuffed my planner pages full of every little thing I wanted or needed to do and ran at it headfirst until I ran out of energy, and then anything that didn’t get done just got moved over to the following week. I know that sounds familiar, don’t you try to tell me it’s not J. This is peak busy-ness – the perpetual movement of to do’s that keeps you believing that you are just so busy.
I began to plan my activities in a goal-orientated way, rather than a time-orientated one. I got really clear on my goals for the month or quarter, and what I needed to do to make them happen. These were the only important tasks, and because they were so clearly bound to my goals, I was able to see they were the only important ones. This meant that I could prioritise effectively; pick out the fluff that busy-ness loves to weave into our days. It also meant that I stopped filling every hour and instead ticked off a finite list.
I also changed the way I document those tasks. It takes a little more time and a few more sheets of paper, but it is a vital ritual that becomes an enjoyable part of my month. Rather than throw everything into a weekly spread, I keep the long task list far away from my daily to-do list. The quarterly actions are divided across three months, which are then plotted into my monthly planner spread. This is where the master long list lives. Then every new week, I copy that week’s tasks from the month planner, plus anything that has come up.
My daily lists are SHORT. There are never more than four things on it. Sometimes, if the piece of work is particularly daunting, it might be the only thing on my list for the day. This doesn’t feel stressful because I worked it all out in advance; it’s ok that there are only three things on my list today because I know that everything has its allotted time to get done. I don’t need to even think about that other stuff. And I also understand that these are the essential things, the things that I can see are going to take me to my goals. That’s motivating.
It’s also motivating because you get a feeling of completion and achievement every day. It sounds like a tiny thing, but it gives you confidence and trust in yourself that makes you feel unstoppable. I spent years never finishing what I’d set out to do that week – which over three years is 783 daily lists if you allow for weekends. When you have spent years never completing a to-do list, it chips away at your self-trust – the weight of 783 unfinished to-do lists is a heavy one to bear.
So no, in this house we don’t glorify busy, because we’ve seen it for the tyrant it is. How it keeps us small and in our place, how it distracts us from pursuing our dreams while insisting that it’s helping, how it blocks our access to the joy of the present (and the joy of the ticked-off list). In this house, we glorify shortlists, and focusing on goals, and only doing what matters. In this house, we glorify reading in the sun and doing what we damn well, please.
