OK, first things first.  I am a busy person.  Currently, too busy.  (I am writing this as I sit on a plane flying to Chicago for a business meeting.)  So this is one of those entries where I call on the “psychologist’s privilege” of being able to expound on principles that I do not have implemented in my life yet.  The principles are true.  I’m just not consistently applying them.  (Ask my wife)

Busyness and the holidays seem to go hand-in-hand.  There is the “normal” busyness of life - work, family, home responsibilities, extended family, friends, leisure activities, and community involvement.  Then we add another layer of activities for the six weeks or so from Thanksgiving thru the New Year’s.

What is “busyness”, really?  How does it differ from just being active or doing things?

Lets look at some of the characteristics that seem to accompany a sense of being busy, and I think that will give us some insight. 

Busyness seems to go with:

• Feeling Rushed
• Having a lot to do in a short period of time.
• A general sense of pressure, even compression.
• Tenseness.
• Irritability (more for some than others).
• Things to do.
• Places to go.
• People to meet (to finish the phrase).
• Short time frames.  Activites scheduled in close succession.
• Being late (or worrying about being late).

Sounds like a fun way to live, doesn’t it?  So why do we do it ourselves?  Why (and how) do we let ourselves become so busy, even frantic, during this time of year?

I think there are 3 basic factors that lead to our busyness.

1. Opportunities. Lots of them.  There are a lot of extra things going on during the Christmas season.  School Christmas concerts.  Work-related Christmas parties.  Christmas shopping.  Kids’ basketball, volleyball, hockey, and indoor practices and games.  Extra choir practices.  Christmas pageants at church.  Ski trips and Christmas vacations.  Watching traditional Christmas movies.  Visiting relatives (both sides).  So, bottom line, there are more activities to do.
2. Expectations.  There are two primary sets of expectations: a) our own (for ourselves), and b) others’ (for us).  Both sets seem to crank up during this time of year.  As I have stated in the past, the easiest way to track expectations is through the “should’s” we hear (either in our head, or out of the mouths of others.)  “I really should go to…” or “You can’t miss…”  Expectations, generally speaking, are neither good nor bad; right nor wrong.  But some of them really are not reality-bsed - you really can’t do everything.  So you have to make choices.  The problem is: some choices lead to not meeting someone’s expectations.
3. The Experience(s) of Not Meeting Expectations.  When we don’t meet the expectations of others’, there is the risk of them having a negative reaction: hurt, disappointment, frustration, anger. [Note: they don’t have to react in those ways.  They have a choice.  They could also respond with graciousness, understanding and acceptance.]  When we don’t meet our own expectations, we tend to feel guilty, worry about “what others will think”, and sometimes beat ourselves up mentally.

Since most of us don’t like either of these experiences (others reacting negatively to us not meeting their expectations, and being hard on ourselves), we make the other choice - we try to do as much as we can to meet everyone’s (at least perceived) expections.  The result?  Busyness.

The Antidotes to Busyness.

So, is there any solution?  Or are we doomed to live frantic lives for the last six weeks of every calendar year?

I don’t think we are going to seriously reduce the number of possible activities available during this time of year, so give that option up.

One option comes from the disciple of management.  When a person or organization has limited resources, they have to prioritize. Anyone who has been in “tight” financial circumstances knows that difficult choices have to be made.  You can’t buy or do this.  We will pay this bill first and this other bill next week.  The same is true for our time and energy - when there is more to do than we have time or energy, we have to prioritize.  We pick those activities (hopefully) which are most important to us (based on our values), and decide we can’t do others.

The concept of margin also seems applicable.  Our busyness transforms into frantic and blood-pressure raising stress when we leave no margin for errror in our scheduling and planning.  When we plan to go to three Christmas parties on one Friday night, from 7 to 8:15 p.m. (30 minutes travel); 8:45 to 10 p.m. (30 minutes travel) and then 10:30 to midnight (this is obviously the schedule of a younger person!), most likely we are setting ourselves up for a stressful evening, if we really expect to keep that timeframe.  Most of us need to leave more room in our schedules for unexpected traffic, not being able to find the presents at the store as quickly as we thought, etc.

The idea of giving up comes to mind.  (I bet that phrase caught some of your attention.)  Not “giving up” in totality.  but giving up some of our expectations.  For some of us who are really social, the thought of missing a party is close to the pain of a kidney stone.  But, at some point, we need to say: “It’s not worth it.”  The busyness, the stress, the resulting irritability, the tension in my relationship with my family outweighs the fun I may have at going to three Christmas parties this weekend.  We may also need to give up some of our expectations for others - it is okay if they can’t make it to Susie’s Christmas concert (even though she has a one line solo in one song); our friendship won’t end if they can’t make it to my party; the world won’t come to an end if we open Christmas presents with the grandchildren the week after Christmas.

Finally,  pause and enjoy the moment. Instead of rushing from store to store in panic, take a minute and enjoy the cool winter sunshine, listen to the high school choir singing in the mall, stop and enjoy a glass of hot cider.  One of my biggest challenges is the tendency to be thinking ahead to the next event or activity and not fully enjoy the one I am currently attending.  When you are at a party, stop looking around to see who is there, and focus on the person you are talking to right now.  Enjoy them.  Listen to their story and laugh together.

Ok, so I have now lectured myself in addition to writing this to you.  I promise to work on these antidotes in the coming weeks (I have to start now by saying no to some of the opportunities I have before me). How about you?

I took some time off this weekend to “do nothing” — more than usual, at least. So Friday night, I went to a baseball game (to me that is pretty close to doing nothing!) with my family and hung out with some friends. After doing some chores on Saturday, I went fishing for a while (a more correct description would be “beating the water and losing lures”), went to a movie, and then hung out in the nice Spring evening shooting the breeze with some friends. And today, I helped my wife do some gardening, did some reading, and took a walk in the woods.

To be honest, I needed to do nothing. I was (am?) pretty emotionally worn out and needed some mental space. I kept asking Kathy, “Why am I so tired?” and she started listing off the various projects I am involved in. And I said, “Oh, yea.” So I kept choosing to rest, piddle, and slow down. And it was interesting this weekend, as I interacted with others, a lot of people said, “I’m really tired.”

And it made me think, “Why are we so busy?” What drives our busyness? So, obviously, the starting point is to look at my life — what drives me? why do I choose activity versus rest? Why do I fill my schedule full? Lest those of you who know me well start to write and tell me why, my goal isn’t to do a full self psychoanalysis here. But I will share some thoughts that are relevant both to me — some in the past, some in the present — and others I know.

It seems a large part of our busyness — whether it is work-related, or family-driven — is driven by fear. Fear of “falling behind”. Fear of not knowing something important that we think we should know. Being afraid that we are going to miss out on some opportunity. Being anxious that our kids are going to be “behind” — in academics, in sports, socially, with regards to the latest gadget.

I observe the phenomenon frequently in youth sports. We are starting our children to participate in organized sports at earlier and earlier ages — T-ball, basketball, soccer, etc. — largely because we don’t want our kids to be “left behind” and not be competitive later in life. Reality check: Many successful athletes did not start playing their sport until junior high or high school. And many middle school and high school athletes, who are quite gifted, are dropping out of sports due to burn out.

Just this weekend, a friend who coaches his kids’ soccer team asked me if my son played in select club tournaments when he was 9 or 10. My son, who was an All-State soccer player in high school, didn’t start playing soccer until middle school. The father replied, “That settles it. I’m not sacrificing my weekends with my family for tournaments at this age.” Bravo. (I’m surprised we don’t have leagues where parents push their children around the field in strollers so they “will get the feel of the game.”)

But I see it in business, too. Someone sees or hears a spot on the news, or reads an article or blog, about “successful businesses do xyz” and all of a sudden they come to the management team and say, “We need to be doing xyz. Everyone is doing it and if we don’t, we’ll be left behind the competition.” It is like chasing money market returns from last year. It looks good, so let’s go after it.

Now there is a type of busyness that comes from a high drive to achieve. These people often have high energy levels, are goal-oriented, and want to be “successful” — however, that may be defined in their field of expertise (including parenting). Not to get too psychoanalytical here, but sometimes these people’s drive for achievement can be rooted in fear, too. Often the drivenness comes from earlier life experiences that they don’t want to experience again (this was common for Depression-era entrepreneurs). And sometimes it just seems to be the person’s personality type.

But when busyness creates physical lack of wellness due to not taking care of oneself, or when your schedule is so full you have virtually no time or emotional energy to invest in relationships (family and/or friends), or you just don’t have the mental or emotional energy to do “it” anymore, then it is time to do some self-reflection.

It seems to me that a few well-placed actions can help stem the tide against our culture of busyness.

1. Be clear about your goals. What do you want in life? What are your business goals? What are your goals for your children? If you don’t clarify your goals, then you are at risk for being driven by the latest fad that blows by.

2. Set like-minded people around you. We all need support. And our culture — through the media, our neighbors, our coworkers, and our competitors — give us seemingly hundreds of messages a day that we need to be going faster, working harder, doing more, etc. We need a cadre of friends, colleagues and compatriots who have similar values and goals to be “reality checks” for us, to serve as examples in their lives, and to help us weather the forces we are moving against.

3. Create structures in your life that facilitate accomplishing your goals. If you want to get in better shape physically, it makes sense to structure exercise into your week. If you want to have good family relationships, then you better schedule time together that allows for talking about what is going on in your lives. If you want to have a profitable business that provides excellent services, then you better have mechanisms in place to measure profitability and the quality of services provided. Additionally, existing structure creates resistance to distractibility. If I have a meeting every Monday at 9 a.m. with my team that is core to our business plan, then that is a barrier to scheduling something else at that time that may not be as important.

Most of us are busy. Many of us are busier than we want to be (myself included). So, we (I) need to take some responsibility for our lives and ask ourselves: If I am busier than I want to be, what is driving me to make the decisions to keep so busy?