Addicted to Busy? By Juli Shulem

Summer is often thought of in terms of “lazy days of summer” yet some jam-pack their every last fun desire into a day without a thought. While most adults are at work, student age kids want to indulge in otherwise less stressful activities: play.

One of the challenges to overcome is to undo some of the busy-ness of the school day months and translate that into a more relaxed version of what would be considered an actual break. Keeping busy is appropriate at certain times, but being addicted to being busy is not healthy. So, that begs the question: How to become less addicted to always being busy?

Does being less busy make you feel guilty? For some adults this is a very real situation. Children experience less of this as they are still able to find value in ‘play.’ It’s important for a parent to not put their own agenda and feelings of wanting to be super busy onto their child. That said, it is also important not to sit around and waste an entire day doing nothing but watch TV.

So, how do we “undo” busy?

It all comes down to priorities. Determining what is important, meaningful and necessary in our lives.

Ask yourself ‘why’ you are engaging in a particular activity. Granted there is much more that we need to do besides the income producing work we do, but is all of it really necessary?

Acknowledge that we can’t do it all at once. To have something scheduled every day or night of the week without ‘down time’ to recharge will come back to bite you. When do you rest? When do you recharge?

Look at your life, assess your schedule and determine what doesn’t need to be part of your routine ‘right now.’ Take it out and let there be simply ‘nothing’ in its place. Everyone needs to rest and have unstructured time. Be sure to take time to do nothing.

Contributed by Juli Shulem (jshulem@gmail.com/805-964-2389), Professional Coach focused on helping people get more organized. www.julishulem.com, Organizing Expert since 1984, and author of the eBook, Order! A Logical Approach to an Organized Way of Life, www.getordernow.com