Do you find yourself in a stage where anytime you are asked, “How’s everything going?”, You can never say, “I am fine”? Instead, your immediate reaction is somewhat like “crazy busy” or “tired of being busy”. The world is revving up on a continuous scale, and so is our lives. We are on a platform with a new category of human evolution, where we can think nothing but to be “constantly busy” to be “worth”.
The materialistic society we stay in has already trained our minds to think being busy is normal. In fact, if you are not busy enough to crib about it, you are not much of worth. The priorities thrown on us by the greedy society makes us believe, “the more you have, the more you are”. However, the truth is “the more you have, the less you see”.
We all know that we are facing a serious social issue of being busy, but very few of us accept the fact and try to look for the inner self. It is even more surprising that the habit of being busy is not restricted to adults. One of my family neighbours maintains a calendar for scheduling their kid’s educational and extracurricular activities.
You have a disease if you are always busy.
According to a survey conducted by American Psychological Association, from August 2016 to January 2017, it was found that the overall stress level of Americans’ ticked from 4.8 to 5.1 on a point scale of 10. The surveyors also find that most of the Americans are well aware of the fact that they need to reduce their stress level to maintain a healthy lifestyle. However, the reason they ignore this critical issue is being too busy.
In a Boston Globe column from 2013, Dr Susan Koven wrote:
“In the past few years, I have observed an epidemic of sorts: patient after patient suffering from the same condition. The symptoms of this condition include fatigue, irritability, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, heartburn, bowel disturbances, back pain, and weight gain. There are no blood tests or X-rays diagnostic of this condition, and yet it is easy to recognise. The condition is excessive busyness.”
We have known this for years that excess amount of stress can cause serious health issues, but as quoted by Dr Susan Koven, busyness is the real reason. Busyness is the mother of stress and leads to significant health problems.
After studying stress and its effects deeply, a British epidemiologist, Dr Michael Marmot found two root causes of stress, and it is connected to two types of busyness. Although there are no official names given to the variants of busyness, the most damaging option of busyness is “Busyness without Control”. This type of busyness attacks poor because the reality of their economic condition does not allow them any downtime. To keep their family in good condition they require dividing their time into more than one work type, which results in legitimate health issues.
As per Dr Marmot, the second variant of busyness can be a kind of sickness that we invite to ourselves, termed as the “busyness we control” or “self-created stress”. The busyness most of us are victimised of is the second type; the self created busyness.
You must have had such times when there is no real rush, but you create the rush on your own. For example, times when you finish your lunch in a hurry because you need to leave for a friend’s housewarming party. The funny thing is that deep down we know, that our friend is not going to kill us if we are late for few minutes, but the compelling voice in your head that says, “You are going to be late”, will not let you have your meal properly.
If you actually sit and give your rushing nature a thought, you will find out that your busyness is in your mind and your nature to be in a hurry always is just an overreaction to many situations. Sometimes, the urgency developed in your head tries to control the brain of people surrounding you. However, eventually, it only creates resentment, anxiety and spite. Additionally, it creates scenarios like lower productivity rate.
Children affected with being busy disease
The complication of imbalance between one’s emotional state and being busy is not only limited to our self-realisation. Our youth, as well as children, have already started to gain the habit of being busy from a very early age. This unhealthy habit is not only destroying the quality of our lives, but it is creating difficulties in an individual’s personal growth. As our children and youth are too busy in the race of life, they are left with less time to dedicate to their personal growth, physically, spiritually and mentally.
We are living in a world where we have to oblige to the deadlines and norms that are always pushing us to demand mental and organisational perfection. The constantly being busy disease is a hidden destructive issue that affects our health and well being. It also weakens our stability of concentration for those who are close to us. If you are in a state of constant activity, you will be eventually get restricted from becoming whole people and separate yourself from the community.
Technology is the key to busyness
After the 1950s, when the new era of technology began, innovations that promised to help us lead a simpler and easier life, concluded to the activity of “constantly being busy”. Even today, after so many years of technological introduction we find ourselves have lesser time available, as compared to the past decades. With smartphones, laptops and tablets, lines between our personal life and work have completely disappeared.
We are so much depended on our technological life, that our normal social life is only reserved for our smartphones or tablets.
Across the workplaces and schools, the perception that says, “hard work leads to success”, is the most misleading guidance. A busy person always possesses the right characteristics like ambition and competence, is one of the reasons that are pushing us towards busyness.
Perhaps the time has come when we need to rethink this view that omitting the leisure time and indulging into continuous work is something to aspire. Overworked lifestyle brings a lot of undesirable psychological consequences for communities, families, grown up adults, youth and children. To remove long-term negative impacts of overscheduling and overworking, from our happiness, well-being and relationships, start believing in a meaningful life. By meaningful life here we mean a life full of a sense of community, balanced existence and human connections.
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