“I’m so busy!”
We are all always talking about how busy we are and to be frank I’m fucking sick of it. The truth is most of us have a lot to do, but we aren’t really busy. Chances are, you aren’t as busy as you think. You probably just aren’t working smart.
I came across an article today that really called me out on my busy bullshit. Before finally getting my depressed and lazy ass off my couch to come write and step away from Netflix…I repeat, “STEP WAY FROM NETFLIX.” I had spent most of the weekend on the couch texting my friends and commenting on how much I had to do and how bored I was. Friday night I drank an irresponsible amount and spent most of Saturday afternoon too hungover to function, then headed a friends house where we made frozen pizza, watched Good Will Hunting (first time I’d seen it) and old episodes of South Park on Hulu until about 3 a.m. Oh and during some point of that I drug myself to Specs because I was out of vodka and knew that they would be closed today.
Today I woke up and watched A Deadly Adoption (Oh come on, a Lifetime movie with Will Ferrell and Kristin Wig… how could I not DVR that) then finally finished season 2 of Faking It (4 episodes), an episode of Orange is the New Black, a nap and finally let my house for my first meal of the day and writing time at 4:30 p.m.
I promise this is going somewhere.
Looking at my To-Do List now I see, I accomplished… nothing… well I went to Specs. So when I got here (Starbucks) I decided to start with the most pressing task; write today’s post (which wasn’t technically on the list but something that needed to be done). Selecting a “good read” means looking for any emails from myself to myself about an article I really like during the week and searching Medium for anything that sparks my fancy.
I came across How I Learned to Get a Lot Done Without Being Busy, by Isaac Morehouse. Morehouse starts the article talking about his schedule and the things he gets done on a regular basis and to be honest, it’s a lot. The reason I liked the article so much is cause he pointed out a lot of things we do that we don’t have to do and taking these tasks off your to-do list wouldn’t lower your productivity. Why do we say, yes to things we really don’t want to do? Why do we have hour long meetings to share information we could in a short email? We have technology and resources like no other generation and we seem to be working more than ever before.
Besides the points he makes and tips he shares for trimming the fat from your schedule, it just makes you really take a minute and think about what you may be doing to make yourself busy all the time. It made me realize that while I do have a lot on my plate, I waste a lot of my time.
Check out Morehouse’s article and share some of your schedule killers in the comments.