The Busy Addiction

Everybody is so busy in this country it is killing us. 

We wear this busyness like a badge of honor and we don’t even realize it.

Busy busy busy.

You have to be busy because everybody else is so busy. It’s kinetic. It’s mimetic. Or maybe it’s just the Joneses or angst. 

It doesn’t matter why, but It is a society wide addiction like alcohol or cell phones.

It’s even worse than alcohol or cell phones because people at least know they are addicted to those poisons but nobody even realizes they are addicted to being busy.

It’s not priced into the market.

I see it everywhere, and it is especially perplexing among financially successful people. It’s like they can’t stop even though they already have a lot of dollars.

So what are we going to do about this? 

What can you do personally if this rings true?

Ok, if this is you, I have a strategy for you. I call it Priority Flipping.

And it starts with this assumption: 

Your priorities are upside down.

You’ve deprioritized the most important things in the world and prioritized all the less important things.

And what are the most important things in the world?

Your health. Your peace of mind. Your happiness. The quality of the limited number of days you are allotted on this blessed earth.

You’ve put health and wellness at the bottom of your priority stack.

You’ve wedged it in down there if you have time after all the meetings and hustling and texting and calls.

And so the cure for The Busy Addiction is Priority Flipping.

You take the things you are wedging in at the bottom of your priority stack if you have time and you flip them to the top of your priority stack.

The first things you schedule are the morning walks, the midday workouts, and the full evenings cooking dinner with your spouse and eating with the kids.

These are the first things you schedule before anything else ever. 

Ever.

These are the most important things in the world and the gateway drugs to happiness, health and success.

These are not luxuries, they are necessities, like air and water.

But I Don’t Have the Time…

And here is the stupid beauty of Priority Flipping.

There is this false paradox that goes like this:

If I spend lots of time taking good care of myself, moving, and cooking and hanging out with my people and sleeping for Christ's sake, I won't have time to get all the stuff done that I need to get done.

This is the false paradox.

It’s a false paradox, because when you get yourself feeling great physically, mentally, and spiritually, time opens up like a secret room behind a bookcase in an old house.

Time opens up because you have more energy than you ever had before, you have more ability to focus than you ever had before so you get stuff done more efficiently, you have more resilience and stamina and emotional control and self-confidence and charisma etc etc.

You have all the things that you need to really be successful.

Have a great day everybody.