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CHAPTER TWO

The Busy Race and the Price of Your Pace

GINNY’S OSW STORY

Ginny was an on-the-go mom. She had a demanding job that required her to attend several midweek meetings, and she traveled for her job one week each month. Her husband traveled as well, and together they were raising three children, all under the age of ten. On parents’ day at her daughter’s school, she sent her best friend to stand in for her. “How did your daughter feel about your not being there?” I asked. “It’s all about outsourcing. I told her that the stand-in “mom” would be much more fun than me. She understands that Mom is busy and that I can’t always be there. I would outsource brushing my teeth if I could!”

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this chapter, it’s this: You are living a life, not running a race. Slowing the pace so you’re not racing and constantly playing catch-up begins one step at a time. And the first step is to understand what motivates your behavior and the comfort the behavior provides you. Once you do, you can devise some solid solutions and make space for new resourceful habits to take hold.

You’ll begin doing that by exploring the Ten Signs That You Need to Break Up with Busy, which will help you determine what’s underneath your busy habits. It’s time to get in touch with who you are without all that busyness and to begin setting a new pace that feels right for you. In the process, you’ll influence other women to do the same.

• Ten Signs That You Need to Break Up with Busy

1. You frequently opt out of doing something for yourself when one of your loved ones requests your time.

2. You have a mixed sense of doing too much and not getting enough done.

3. Busy is your new normal.

4. You feel controlled by your schedule.

5. You eat at least one meal each day while standing up or doing something else.

6. You’re experiencing weight shifts, skin issues, or hair loss.

7. You’re not getting enough sleep, you have insomnia, your libido is low.

8. Things you once enjoyed taking time for now feel like inconveniences.

9. You often feel overwhelmed or anxious.

10. You constantly feel like you are rushing just to keep up with yourself.

Do any of these signs feel familiar? Of course they do! Busy is a club with far too many members. Ignoring these signs may seem harmless enough; however, busyness can put you and your health at risk. Though I could check off most of the items on the list above, like many other OSWs, I ignored the signs until I ended up in the emergency room. Unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon event for many women, nor is having a compromised immune system brought on by ignoring our bodies’ signals. To get a better understanding of how these symptoms have become so prevalent, let’s take a brief yet essential look at how all this busy business got rolling and the impact its pace has on you. Let’s begin with Ann’s story, an example of how intelligent and successful women still unwittingly ignore their busy signs.

ANN’S OSW STORY

Ann was a high-achieving and professionally successful OSW. When she was in her midtwenties, she started her first company. She went on to attain her MBA while pregnant with her fourth child. Ann was exceptional in all areas of business but was miserable in her private life. She had a fractured relationship with her parents and spouse, and her children were emotionally distant, even though she had done “everything right” and “everything her parents expected of her,” excelling beyond her own stratospheric standards. When she was in her early forties, she began experiencing digestion problems, severe insomnia, and abrupt weight gain. She had seen the finest doctors, and none could diagnose her ailments or connect them to a disease. She was so busy achieving what she felt was expected of her that she lived with these conditions for several years, accepting them as a product of her demanding lifestyle.

The first day she arrived in my office, she brought with her detailed records from the numerous doctors she had seen and her plan for what she wanted me to do. I said to her, “It looks like you have already discovered your solutions. Why are you seeking my help?” Ann responded, “I just want someone to make me do what I know I’m supposed to do.” She didn’t really want me to be the one in charge; letting someone else make decisions meant relinquishing control, and that would mean trusting uncertainty, something she was not at all comfortable with.

It wasn’t until she had worked with me for about six months that she was able to let her guard down enough to begin exploring what was really under her perfectionistic habits. She had been surrounded by very successful women all her life and had watched her mother and aunts go on to achieve super-success. Her own success was never really something she planned; it was just something expected of her. She described feeling like she was always racing to catch up with herself. She wasn’t even sure she liked what she was doing. In fact, she had always wanted to be a ballet dancer, not a CEO. Professional success was so familiar, yet she had little confidence in building and developing her personal relationships. The more she tried to control her relationships, the more her loved ones distanced themselves from her, and that in turn fueled her insecurities and kept her from trying a different approach. She also realized her uncertainties and angsts were being displayed in her physical symptoms.

These discoveries and her recognition of them initiated a dynamic change. I designed a fitness plan that fit her real life, not one that she was “supposed” to be living. I included daily meditation (that was a hard sell!) as part of her wellness program. We had an agreement that she would eat at least one meal a day sitting down, without her devices and devoid of business conversations. Ann began setting better boundaries at work and making more time for her family. Over time, her physical symptoms began to subside, until they dissipated altogether. It was a slow process; however, her changes stuck.

Ann is still highly successful, and now that includes having a better relationship with her children and her spouse. Her life is not perfect; it’s better, and she has finally accepted that better is often her best. As a side note, Ann joined an adult ballet class, just for fun. She has redefined busy, and it is now an exception to her day, not a habit.

As we can see from Ann’s story, being busy doesn’t happen in a bubble; busy behavior trickles down and ripples out. She learned it from watching the women in her family, and her learned behavior in turn had an impact on her family. The energy of busy behaviors affects everyone with whom you come into contact, and the more time you spend with these people — partners, spouses, children, and coworkers — the larger your impact will be on them.

The big question is, How did busy become such a bully? Pushing and shoving its way into life as though it belongs and is as important as, oh, I don’t know, things like love, family, and happiness? But there it is, manipulating time to the point that we’re so busy being busy that we feel lazy or guilty when we sit too long at dinner. Oh, but that’s right, who am I kidding? Nobody sits down for dinner anymore — we’re too busy! The bully of busy cleverly steals our time while promising to give us more. Understanding how busy got so powerful, pervasive, and acceptable will help you begin reclaiming your time and make even more of it.

• The Business of Busy •

Time is like a Ponzi scheme; most of us feel we never get a good return on the investments we’ve made. Technology has had a profound impact on the illusion of time. Most of us habitually use loads of gadgets, thinking they aid us in freeing up time and space but in reality, they provide a steady stream of distractions. We can Facebook all our “friends” with a few strokes of the keyboard; we can text a conversation and avoid the time-absorbing niceties that are expected in a phone call. We Instagram our daily moments as if we’re in a professional photo shoot, with age-enhancing filters and hashtags galore to let the world know that we’re important and that we’re busy!

Many of us who once considered the implications of our biological clocks are now surrounded by the constant reminders of the clocks on our laptops, tablets, smartphones, and automobiles. The reminders of time are constant and everywhere. Technology and its tantalizing time-saving gadgets have turned us into time wizards, like Willy Wonka conveyor belts, pumping out numerous tasks, appointments, errands, meetings, and chores. And thanks to these techy innovations, we can order food any time of the day and have it dashed to our doors; we can date, via the internet, while eating a bowl of ice cream in our PJs at 2:00 PM on a Sunday; heck, we can even file for divorce, pay taxes, and find a relative living in a cave somewhere in South America without ever leaving our backyard chaise lounge. We can have almost anything we want whenever we want it — and therein lies the problem. Busyness has no boundaries, with its unlimited self-imposed demands steeped in a myriad of expectations.

Busy goes far beyond the use of technology and our addictive draw to it. The feeling of being rushed and out of time has become embedded in our get-it-done culture. As economies grow and incomes rise, we have attached a financial value on time — it’s worth more. We negotiate with ourselves over the use of our time, as though we have to ask permission to spend time the way we want. The less time we have, the more we want, and so go the hands around the clock — ticktock, ticktock, until we can’t keep up with our own pace.

We forge ahead at breakneck speed, fueled by the perception that we are running out of time. That perception, along with the cultural acceptance that busyness implies importance and value, drives us to exceed any reasonable list of daily to-dos. We can’t remember what we’re supposed to be doing, or what we’ve already done, without a download or an update because we’re so distracted when we’re doing-what-we’re-doing. Our preoccupied mind-set lets busyness settle into our lives like an overbearing backseat driver; it’s always a little bit out of view, but you know it’s there because it never stops directing what you do, even though you’re (in theory, anyway) in the driver’s seat.

Slowing your pace can unclutter your thinking, boost your energy, revive your spirit, and awaken your passions.

• Busy and Relationships •

As mentioned above, our behavior ripples out. As parents, we are teaching our children how to be busy. We feel that by overscheduling them, setting high standards, and providing them with the newest technology we are helping them get ahead of the pack and ready for a nitty-gritty, competitive world. And although we may be well-intentioned, our continuous quest to get more done in less time, and our efforts to teach our children to do the same, ends up incubating us from one another.

When busy pushes its way into our significant relationships, little room is left for intimacy. Emotional intimacy occurs when we allow ourselves to be present, vulnerable, and aware of our needs and the needs of our partners. When we are distracted by our pursuits, shifting our priorities so that our significant relationships fall in line behind those pursuits, we become disconnected from our partners. It’s unlikely that we will be raised up and invigorated by our relationships if we feel tired, stressed, or unsupported, and it’s doubtful that our partners will feel inspired to support us if they don’t feel they are a priority.

In our professional lives, it might seem counter-intuitive that doing less and connecting more could be an effective formula for success. Yet when organizations value the importance of professional interpersonal relationships, they experience long-term benefits, such as better employee health, fewer absences, and decreased worry and anxiety. Cultivating relationships takes time and effort, and unfortunately, when doing so is not considered an important part of an organization’s tenet, opportunities are missed and personal health and well-being are sacrificed. Imagine if we all slowed down enough to get to know the other people we are spending 50 percent of our waking hours with? Building professional relationships doesn’t need to involve inviting our coworkers to dinner. We just need to slow down, be present, and get to know another person. Doing so builds camaraderie and communication and mutually focuses efforts.

• What’s the Price of Your Pace? •

What’s the price of your pace? Your health? Your relationships? Your career?

Now that you’ve determined the signs that it’s time for you to break up with busy, you can begin to advance that awareness and discover what motivates your busyness and the importance it represents in your life. The three questions below will help you begin your exploration of both.

1. What motivates you to continue your busy pace?

2. What value does your busy pace provide you?

3. What do you want, and what do you need, to make it happen?

Take a few minutes for each question and consider each with thoughtful consideration; it’s a significant step that will help you gain clarity around your motivations so that you can begin your break from busy. These questions may not be easy to answer. Perhaps you’ve never thought about what motivates you or considered the concept that busy is a choice, a culture, a behavior, one that entices you to feel important and valued. Just by exploring these questions, you’ve expanded your awareness, and awareness allows you to recognize your blind spots and build on your strengths. So, congratulations! You’re on your way to breaking up with busy and starting to live your life instead of just running the race. Understanding exactly what strategies you have in place that are keeping you busy and overscheduled is your next step.