Busy is not necessarily a good thing. It is a choice. A decision. It seems so simple but we control how we spend our precious time. 

Don’t be busy.

If you need proof that busyness does not equate with being important or successful, Bill Gates said he learned this from Warren Buffett when he looked at his calendar and there was nothing on it for days at a time. While most people schedule themselves down to the minute, Bill Gates pointed out you control your time; busyness is not a proxy for your seriousness. 

Time is our most precious resource. Time is not renewable. You never, ever get it back. No one can ever get more than 24 hours in a day.

Use that time wisely. You need mental time and space to think, pay attention to the little things, watch the kids interact and play. I promise you that when you turn to those tasks that make you so busy, you’ll be better at them and maybe you’ll even realize that a lot of them are not necessary. We don’t have to fill our time. In fact, we should protect our time ruthlessly. 

Lack of time is lack of priorities.

– Tim Ferriss

As Tim Ferriss so eloquently said, “Lack of time is lack of priorities.” If you are “so busy,” you are choosing to spend your time on certain things. If, in turn, you are not choosing to spend your time on things that matter the most to you, that is your problem and no one else’s problem. You need to rethink how you spend your time and, although so cliche, prioritize. You also need to slow down.

Be Lazy.

Tim Kreider, an essayist and cartoonist featured in Tim Ferriss’ book, Tools of Titans, wrote an essay in his book, We Learn Nothing, called Lazy: A Manifesto. I love it so much. Not because I truly think anyone has to be lazy. But in our crazy, schedule-driven, always moving, never thinking society, we almost have to call what might otherwise be called being calm or thoughtful, lazy in order to drive the point home that we need time to just be. Kreider wrote: “Busyness is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it… Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness: your life cannot be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy… Idleness is not a vacation, indulgence or vice: it is as indispensable to the brain a vitamin D to the body and deprived of it, we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets…. It is, paradoxically, necessary to get any work done.”

As a working mom, I never am idle. I get up early. I stay up late. I work on weekends. I work on holidays. I work during naps. I work while sitting next to my kids while they eat. I work while sitting next to my kids while they play. When I am not working, I am doing the laundry, washing the dishes, cleaning up the tornado of a mess the kids leave behind, ordering the groceries, making the meals, planning the next events, driving to practices, buying the school/art/science/rainy day supplies… and sometimes paying attention to my kids. It never ends.

I need to just be. I need to be lazy. I need to protect my time ruthlessly.

It isn’t easy and it is not going to happen overnight or permanently. But it is something I try to always be aware of as I go through these long days and short years.

Do you feel like you are always busy? Are you spending your precious time on the things that matter? Are you ever lazy?