Wednesday, July 8, 2015

21 Reasons Why You Should not be Proud of Being Busy


Before you say you don’t have time, here’s a better question:
Can you afford to stay the same and still grow?

1. When you’re busy, you aren’t present.

Life is made up of hundreds of thousands of moments. Some that move us, others that change us, and some that provoke us to action. Being busy takes us away from those moments.
Millennial expert Jullien Gordon has a remedy for this: know the difference between being a workaholic vs. a high performer. The former wants to look more important, but the latter seeks out important work. Knowing the difference can help you do more in each moment of your day.

2. When you’re busy, you opt out of opportunities.

Opportunities are everywhere. They come up in coffee shops, via social media outlets like Twitter, and through mutual connections. When you’re busy, you often miss opportunities because you only see them as distractions, not spaces for you to grow and advance.

8. When you’re busy, your vision gets blurry.

Ideally, you’re busy because you are working towards something. A new job, a promotion, financial freedom, or simply trying to change something. It’s hard to remember your “why” for doing what you do. But it’s arguably the most important motivator you’ll ever have.
That’s exactly what Lo, the founder of Can’t Stay Put, did. Can’t Stay Put is a lifestyle movement built to inspire people to break out of their comfort zones, see the world, and live the lives they only dreamed about. She did that by finding her vision and purpose on a trip to Maui, and hasn’t looked back since. She transformed her life by finding out exactly what she was supposed to be doing.

11. When you’re busy, you equate patience with complacency.

Great things take time and effort. With only a finite amount of time, you can control your effort. Sometimes we think our efforts should put us in a different place immediately. It’s never that simple, though. Being busy creates a myth of perpetual progress: the faster we move, the closer we are getting to our goals, right?
Not always. Your effort, multiplied by your consistency, is what sets you up to capitalize on the moments that are made for you to shine. Patience means you’re not watching the scoreboard, as you’re in the game everyday. Don’t count the number of shots you take, because you only need one to win the game.

13. When you’re busy, you don’t have time to think.

Thinking deeply and clearly is a skill that comes with practice. When we’re busy, we have to deal with floods of information, and often we are responsible for opening the dam. Professor and author Cal Newport describes the benefits of deep work (which requires deep thought) in three ways:
1. Continuous improvement of the value of your work output.
2. An increase in the total quantity of valuable output you produce.
3. Deeper satisfaction (aka., “passion”) for your work.
Those outcomes are exactly what we try to produce as a result of our productivity

15. When you’re busy, you aren’t working to your potential.

Being busy requires a consistent shifting of focus, which takes you away from using concentrated effort to complete the tasks you need too. The Harvard Business Review calls this cumulative attention debt, and it keeps people from generating new ideas and solutions to complex problems. Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert has an insightful quote on how to tell if you’re really living up to where you should be:
“Innovation is rewarded, but execution is worshipped.
You can only execute when you have the space to develop ideas. Being busy takes you out of that space.

16. When you’re busy, your friends can quickly become acquaintances.

Friendship is a critical component in how we engage in the worldWe need other perspectives and opinions to help shape us, push us, and develop us. But being busy, we often put our friends on the fringes. We’re so busy on the grind that we don’t have time for their counsel or insights. That’s a risky endeavor, as they are sometimes the only people who are able to tell us about ourselves and have it stick. Make time for the people who will tell you the truth, especially when you don’t want to hear it.

18. When you’re busy, you’re really joining a cult no one ever wants to be in.

Everyone is always doing something, and our culture rewards efficiency, even when it’s not practical nor sustainable. The ‘cult of busy’ is an association that we opt into because of work, the speed of life, and an incessant desire to try and do everything. It taps our relationships, drains us physically, and leaves us confused and looking for answers. Work will always be there, but the connections and moments that we cherish and are intrinsic to our humanity, won’t be.

19. When you’re busy, you forget to dream.

Dreams fuel us. They let us break through our current state, and are the building blocks of desire. Without the dream, your passion and drive won’t be sustained long enough for you to actualize them. Dreaming is what allows seemingly ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

21. When you’re busy, you forget your “why”.

Your “why” allows you to achieve and persist under adverse circumstances, when a lot of other people might tap out. It’s what allows you to persevere through crazy work hours in the first place. But you’re not simply a worker. To consistently remember it though, you need to create time to refresh and think about the reason you do what you do.
Having things to do isn’t bad. But busyness without purposefulness is a recipe for burnout and personal dissatisfaction. Make 2015 the year for you to live (or find) your purpose, commitment  to being present, and fight to own your schedule. It isn’t easy, but nothing worth having is. Let’s make 2015 the year we measure the importance of the work we do, instead of how much of our calendars we can fill up. Let’s hold each other accountable and make this year the best we’ve ever had.





Retrieved from:
lifehack.org

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Life is Unfair



The only thing that I don't like about the written form of communication is that the receiver can cut you off whenever they want to; AND they will only respond whenever they need you.

Nice, very nice.
And yes, you.