The Disease of Being Busy (Article)

We all suffer from this horrendous disease at some time or another - but a lot of us cannot turn it off.

Your work like a dog all week, pulling your regular 8 hour day plus a little bit of free work on the side (who does that and why?) cos your a good soul.

You get to Friday and you for some reason you stay in busy mode.

You have a few drinks Friday night then your up early Saturday to have some breakfast with friends before running off for a lunch with ore friends.

Saturday night is a dinner at someone else's house that you;re also running off to make on time before getting in a bit late Sunday am.

Sunday you get up early again to make that Yoga session then you're at it again, bouncing from engagement to engagement before settling in Sunday night wondering why you're still tired and if the weekend can go on for another 2 days to get some rest.

You're addicted to being busy!

When you're so busy, busy, busy, you literally forget to smell the roses and you are not aware that you are actually not aware of what is going on around you.

You simply cannot stay in a single moment because before the moment has even come, you're thinking of the next 5 moments.

This article by columnist Omid Safi is a self reflection piece more than anything but with points and implications that should make you sit back and reevaluate how you are living your work and private life.


Being busy means a build up of stress and when stress cannot be released entirely, it starts to make the body tired. Tiredness can cause pain equaling more stress which can then turn into illness.

I'm sure you know some of this, if not all of it, to be true yet we continue to make the same mistakes time and time again.

I see with my clients all the time.

The re-occurring back pain, knee pain, migraine headaches and constant tiredness - all signs of a level of stress build up that the body cannot function with at at some point has to "break' to make you stop and rest.

We're also pushing this onto our kids with scheduled play dates where back in my day you finished school and rolled around to a mates place unannounced.

Oh, the good old days.

You know what the first part is?

When we're not busy we get anxious because we feel we're not "doing enough". 

Enough of what?

This anxiousness again feeds the stress loop and we've gotten to the point now where resting and doing absolutely nothing is a bad thing.

Except one of the body's biological functions is to rest and regenerate - you simply can't overturn millions of years of evolution and go a different way.

It's the reason why we're sick all the time as well.
We have less time for things we grew up with like friends, family and community and we wonder why people on the streets are out of control?

They feel the stress and tiredness that you do but have less coping mechanisms in place to handle them.

Their bad decisions are crime but yours is not learning from the same mistakes.

All the techo stuff meant to make our lives easier has backfired, actually making us more accessible, and busier then ever before.

I am not immune to this either but what do I have is an impeccable ability to relax and do nothing.

This past Saturday, I had 1 hour of clients, played footy then literally watched 4 games of footy on the couch.

I mean I can do nothing with the best of them.

When we ask ask you are, the response often isn't personal it's more a run down of what you've just done and what you have coming up.

Essentially we're asking "Hey Joan, what have you done?", not "how are you feeling."

This bottle up effect of feelings also feeds the anxious/stress loop again.

Our means of relaxation is to be busy and that's the problem.

Sure there are timed when deadlines need to be met, no doubt, but extra stress requires extra rest.

I encourage you to read the comments section from the article too for some personal stories from readers.

So how are you really feeling today?