I’m a workaholic. If I’m not working my part-time job, then I’m writing.
If I’m not writing, then I’m posting content on my writing Facebook page or volunteering with the National Council on Independent Living. My friends always joke that I’m always busy, but believe it or not, I’ve learned to slow down.
Whenever I tell a friend how much I have going on, nine times out of 10, they’ll ask me if I’m “good busy.” I don’t love this question, though, because I don’t view having a lot going on as “good” or “bad.”
Society loves to label “busy,” whether it’s living a life full of exciting projects or feeling overwhelmed during a crushing work week. But whether we’re preoccupied with distracting ourselves from the things that we should be doing or focused on crossing tasks off of our to-do lists, we should know that no type of “busy” is inherently better than any other type.
Being busy often results in distraction and burnout because people don’t always feel the need to rest and may feel pressure to make the most of every minute of every day. However, some tasks can and should wait for another day. You don’t have to do everything all at once. And if you don’t complete your to-do list, it doesn’t mean that your day wasn’t productive or that you “wasted your time.”
No matter how we define “busy,” we should stop using “busy” as an identity.
The pressure to overwork ourselves to stay “busy” doesn’t do us any favours. And if we have more low-key days, that doesn’t mean that we’re “lazy” or “bad.”
More importantly, we need to recognise that our fixation on always doing something likely stemmed from how others treated us early on. Maybe a parent or grandparent praised us for “being productive,” so we started feeling pressure to never have any downtime. Once we unpack why we believe that we need to constantly be productive, then we can begin to heal our relationship with staying busy.
We ultimately need to remember that “busy” is a neutral concept, and being productive doesn’t mean that we’re more worthy than we are when we slow down. The next time that you call yourself “busy,” check in with yourself about why you chose that word to describe yourself.
Whether it’s because you feel like you can’t rest or because someone else put value judgments on that word, you can heal your relationship with productivity. Today, you get to decide whether or not you want to try to do everything, and if you don’t feel like being busy right now, there’s nothing wrong with that.
