When Busyness Threatens

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed something interesting about small-talk interactions. Many people, when you ask them how they’ve been doing, will respond with, “I’m really busy.”

This single phrase encapsulates at a high level one of our largest cultural obsessions right now. If we’re not “busy,” we’re not meeting the expectations of the world around us. Hardly anyone says this out loud, but it’s just as true as the feeling many people (especially people my age) get whenever we suddenly realize we have a spare moment in which we’re not being “productive.”

This sneaking feeling has, unfortunately, been a side effect of my recent goal of not procrastinating. When I realize I’ve done everything I currently need to do, I start feeling weird. It’s like I’m forgetting something important, even though I know I’m not.

Are there things I could be doing? Probably.

But are they things I need to be doing in this exact moment between periods of productivity? Probably not.

This trend is only exacerbated by the state of the world economy right now. More and more people have to work more hours to be able to afford what they deem to be a “good living,” and many are not content with the amount of money they make (though that may just be part of the human condition of always wanting more).

A statistical study recently found that there are more dual-income families than ever. And if a family isn’t dual-income, there’s a chance that one partner in the relationship/marriage is working lots of overtime or multiple jobs while the other partner is the main caretaker of the home and/or children. And if the family is a single-parent one, the single parent is often working a full-time job alongside one or two part-time jobs. (How did we get here?)

So people aren’t always bragging when they talk about how busy they are. Often, they’re overwhelmed but have no immediate ability to take a pause and are just resigned to their situation. Sometimes, they’re addicted to a stressed-out lifestyle and wouldn’t know what to do with a break if it slapped them in the face with a Kit-Kat bar.

Work and busyness are often considered virtues, especially in the Christian community. Yes, there is biblical precedent for working hard and not letting idleness creep in, but I think Christian culture tends to take it too far. This is revealing of our culture’s influence on our faith practice: I think one of the least-obeyed commands of God to His people today is that of Sabbath rest.

I write this blog post this week not to vent about the issue, but to bring awareness to it. This month has been an incredibly busy one for me, though that’s partly by choice because I have some plans that I want to see completed by the end of the year. And I also write this post this week because my current state of busyness almost prevented me from writing and posting this week at all.

So I have one simple encouragement/exhortation to offer right now: make time to take a pause, even if it’s just a couple hours at a time. If you don’t build it into your schedule, it probably won’t happen.

I realize many people don’t have much free time, especially those who are working a job or three just to pay for a sky-high cost of living and/or who are raising young children. But as I’ve heard it said most of my life, if something is a priority, you’ll make it happen somehow. Also, I think something a pastoral mentor told me a few years ago applies here, too: “Get to your calendar before someone else does so you have the ability to say no when needed.”

I think we have become a society of burnouts and close-to-burnouts. At least, that’s what the memes are saying. Are we achieving crazy and incredible things in this world? Sure. But I often wonder: at what cost?

So do yourself a favor: make “clocking out” happen every now and then.