How to Create Margin in Your Overly Busy Life

Michael,

Great post. I agree with your analogy that most people think that they will just wait until things settle down or return to normal. And then, one temporary situation leads to another.

It reminds me of the famous quote, “There is no normal life, there’s just life.”

That’s one I always try to remember. :)

It was interesting to me how many of your business-focused tips could also be applicable to other areas. You may have to say no to volunteer organizations or to overzealous church ministries that keep asking the same 20% to do more and more work. And really, when you take a step back, so much of what we do in life boils down to feeling the urge to add value – not just specifically at work but as a person in general. Maybe if we just accepted who we are in Christ it would lead us to the right amount of hard work.

Thanks for exposing the “It’ll get better when” myth that we all tell ourselves. I often find myself mired in that one.

For me, busyness comes from all the good things I think I “could” or “should” be doing – they tend to crowd out the good works God has prepared in advance just for me to do.

I try to keep in mind that even Jesus had boundaries. There were plenty of suffering people on earth during his ministry who didn’t get healed or raised from the dead. He kept in step with his Father and focused on the mission given to him. Thank God he did!

Despite a core belief that Jehovah-God provides, much of our busyness stems from our sense that “the Lord helps those who help themselves.” We are busy because if we slack off or coast, provision will taper off or disappear.

Where once we had home equity, job longevity, or high interest rates on savings, we now have a black hole. This heightens our sense that unless we get busy, provision will not happen. So we get busier. Surely hard work will solve the problem and increase our provision.

Unless we are lazy by disposition (some are), most of us A-Types need a fresh understanding of how, why and when God provides. We also need to be deeply and consistently giving away what is provided to us: to those who don’t have.

I often see people ask the question “How can I attain work/life balance.” I deal with a lot of self employed visual artists, so it’s a common problem. They’re looking for some easy fix, some magic answer about how to stay sane. All the while they’re buried in their iPhones and iPads. I’ve learned that if you want work/life balance, you just have to MAKE IT. As Nike says, “Just do it.” You have to make a conscience choice to disconnect from the social media world and re-connect with family, friends, etc. There is no magic formula.

A few months ago we cancelled our iPhone plans and got “regular” cell phones. Primarily to save money on the expensive call plan. But something interesting happened along the way. It used to be that whenever I wasn’t doing something, I’d be on my iPhone checking Twitter, reading email, etc. Standing in line a grocery store. Read Twitter. “Watching” son play at park with other parents. Read E-mail. Waiting for oatmeal to cook 2 MINUTES in microwave, check Facebook. It was a sickness. Now that I have a cell phone with no data plan, I’m more connectet to people actually around me in person, rather than the thousands of “friends” I have on Facebook. Life slowed down just a bit.

I plan to go back to the iPhone when the time is right, but in the sabbatical I’ve taken, I’ve learned how disconnect and slow down. It would be worth it for more people to take a “iPhone” hiatus for a while.

Shane Hipps has a great chapter in “Flickering Pixels” about our Nomadic Life that has great points about this topic of connectedness.

I firmly believe that procrastination can end up looking like busyness at times. I become busy doing things that don’t matter, putting off the important things for later. I feel productive by still “doing” something, yet a pile is forming beside me. It is a pile that will not be ignored. My busyness is a symptom, masking the true issue, procrastination.

The best way for me to slow down is to turn things off. TV, Computer, Phone… everything has to be off. And because life and business has become dependent on those things, even after I’m unplugged it takes an hour or so to not feel disabled and lost and actually start producing. It’s crazy.

My busyness does not come mainly from technology or from too many hours or too much pressure on the job. It comes from having too many “jobs,” most of which are not paid: writing, marketing my writing, reading books to develop my writing, taking care of home and family, driving and doing mandatory “volunteer” work for kids’ schools and activities, and of course many hours at church. I think most working mothers would identify with my situation more than with what you’ve described. It’s difficult to see what can be cut without someone suffering for it. The writing looks “dispensable,” but that’s the only thing I do just for myself.

It is really all about priorities, isn’t it? There are a million things vying for our time, and we have to learn the power of ‘No’. But how do we know what to say no to? Good is the enemy of great. I struggle with having to say no to good things, that I might accomplish great things. I think that’s why it’s so important for us to sit down and write out our priorities and number them. Then our schedule can naturally follow course.

Joshua Hood
2020visiononline.org

What you shared about work is so true. We all have full plates. Saying ‘No” and looking for a new job is encouraging. I’m near my breaking point.

I believe that technology is to life as color is to a black & white picture: it enhances the picture but it’s not the picture. I see people with their gadgets and they are no more efficient than they were before the gadget. In fact, I think people get faster in their inefficiency with their gadgets.

Managing time, takes a process. I sit down every Sunday evening & look at my week. I block out unscheduled time for :Planning, rest, preparing for meetings or doing NOTHING. I look at my schedule everyday to know what I have to do that day. Every Friday evening, I make sure my calendar is updated with new meetings or things I have to do. If I didn’t have a process and priorities, I’d be in reacting mode all the time.

Thanks for the great post, Michael. My wife and I are currently looking for ways to simplify our lives, and we’re looking at ways to re-arrange our schedule so that we can create a day of rest for our family, as well as cutting things out of our schedule.

The source of my busyness is for sure the technology we now have. Over the past year I’ve added Facebook, Twitter, and Blogging to voice-mail, email, and texts as ways that I communicate with people. Managing all of those while maintaining boundaries at home and at works is a challenge. Upon your recommendation, I started using Hootsuite and other such tools to manage the flow of information and communication. One of the best things I’ve done is create messages that let people know when they can expect to hear back from me and not just when I am going to be completely unavailable but why – (family time, important meetings, etc.) People seem to respect that sort of transparency and are not as demanding, thus creating some margin in my life. – Dan

Technology has made my life easier, but has also made it much busier. I’m much more accesible than I should be. I’ve also created new ‘urgencies’ in my life by being that accesible. I’ve set the expectation that I’ll blog daily. I’ve also set the expectation that I’ll reply to comments, tweets, etc. That creates lots of little tasks throughout the day. Without strong boundaries, that weight has the potential to crush me. Rhythm and balance are my constant pursuit.

Right on Michael. Our inter-connected world is my biggest challenge as a pastor and as a gadget freak. What did we ever do without our smart phones :)

Ultimately, it’s my responsibility strength that keeps me busy, because I’m bad at saying no, and especially bad at not following through. Add to that the “spontaneity bug” and all of the sudden some free time becomes friend time and while my relationships with people are great, my inner clock is just ticking with the weight of what I feel needs to be done…

I think @DavidAllen’s assessment of the way work has changed—from work with defined outcomes to knowledge work with no defined finish lines—helped me identify the source of that “busy” feeling. His GTD system takes a while to learn, but I’m finding the more I put it into practice, the more I leave myself margins; not just time in my schedule, but a clear head without the looming shadow of dread that I’m forgetting something or missing something.

I’ve been unemployed for more than a year, I have no family and virtually no social life. (Not complaining. I love it.) Yet I feel that even without a job, family, and friends, 24 hours isn’t enough time to do everything I want to do in a day.

Of course, I’ll need a job soon, or I’ll end up in the poor house. But it has been my experience that working a full-time job plus doing chores (such as laundry and grocery shopping) makes it difficult to even get in an hour at the gym each day let alone do anything meaningful on the side, such as reading, writing, and other labors of love, which are, ultimately, those activities that make life worth living.