‘How are things going?’ ‘Oh, they are busy’. How often are you talking about how BUSY you are? How often do you find yourself thinking you wish you had more time for other things. How often do you end your day feeling drained and worn and maybe resentful.
Busyness might be a cycle you are spinning in. And it is a common cycle for moms to be on – because we have a culture that tells how busy is a badge of honour while simultaneously throwing memes of frazzled moms in our face.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
In this episode we unpack BEING TOO BUSY, all of this is a primer to the next episode on being more present.
Main points on why you are too busy
- Our culture glorifies busy, and there are some signs that we have bought into it. One of them being that feel like we never have enough time
- Busy is that feeling when we get when we feel our life demands are more than the energy we have
- Being busy isn’t so much a problem with how we manage our time, but also a problem with how we manage what is purposeful. We aren’t using our time and energy purposefully
- Yet we are still busy because somehow, it serves us. Being busy allows us to chase a feeling or avoid a feeling
- Each enneagram type can be busy for different reasons.
- We respond to ‘busy’ with ‘productivity’ but we are often missing the ‘purpose’
- Simple solutions for moms to manage the busy feeling
- braindump, prioritize, make time for what matters
- Long term management of busy means knowing who you are and what you want in life, and setting your time and energy in line with that.
LINKS
Download the ‘Busy By Enneagram Type’ PDF
Join the Simple on Purpose community
Sign up for the Simple Saturdays bi-weekly email
Full episode transcript
Hey, friends,
This is the simple on purpose podcast. And if you’re new here, welcome. This is a podcast, I aim to keep short to the point and full of motivation and ideas on new ways to approach your everyday life. So that you can show up for your whole life without overhauling IT shop for your whole life where it is right now, and feel like you’re showing up on purpose.
Today, I want to talk about busy and I was about to record an episode on being present. And I just had so much to say on the opposite of present, which is busyness that I thought it deserved an intro of its own. Why are we so busy?
There is such thing as the glorification of busy, where we have a culture around us that glorifies busy.
Some things to look out for yourself, if you are buying into the glorification of busy are:
- you talk about how busy you are,
- you feel like you do a lot, but you don’t get a lot done
- after an active day you feel drained, maybe even resentful, instead of invigorated and purposeful.
- you feel like you never have enough time.
And that’s the thing is busy is something that we feel we feel busy when our life demands more than the energy we have.
So the problem is more how we manage our energy, and how we manage our life demands.
But we don’t really get to that place where we’re questioning, oh, how am I managing my life and my energy we don’t, we’re just busy. This culture of busy this badge of honor, and even busy in our leisure time where we spend it on our phone instagramming texting emails.
If you feel like you are too busy, the first thing I want to encourage you to do is stop saying you’re busy. It really makes you the victim, it perpetuates the helpless feeling of it. And if anything, that’s a great reason to stop saying because it makes you feel helpless when you talk about how busy you are.
Because being busy. what’s underneath that is that we haven’t been very mindful about what we choose to do we do more and more. And often, they’re not the things that we truly crave that that are leading us to the life that feels freeing and full. We haven’t been mindful about what’s important to say yes to and what we shouldn’t say no to, we haven’t thought about what we want in life and how to get it. So we don’t necessarily have a time problem. We have a purpose problem, we aren’t using our time purposefully, we aren’t managing our energy purposefully.
But we’re still busy, because being busy, serves us somehow. And I’m going to run through all of the nine enneagram types. The enneagram is a self discovery tool. And there’s nine types in it. And I’ll go through them each as I go through the nine types. And I’ll be really quick. And I’m going to talk about why each type might be driven to be overly busy. And I’m going to take this from the coaching that I do with women. So I do offer coaching if you know your enneagram type or want to know it, I do use that tool in coaching with women. And I’m going to just go off like a standard definition of each type and what I stereotype them as so take it as that take it with a grain of salt.
Type One, the perfectionist would be busy, because they believe that being idle is lazy, they feel guilty for resting. They’re driven by this constant need to make things better by an inner critic that’s constantly saying it’s not good enough, hard to rest, when you have that inner critic chatting at you.
Number two, type two the helper. So the helper might be overly busy because they’ve done it so long. They don’t even know how to shift. Who would we be without the busyness How can the type to constantly be serving others without the sacrifice without the busyness.
Type three, the achiever for them often busy means progress and accomplishment. There is a to-do list. When you stop being busy, you stop achieving. So your sense of value is tied to your achievements. You got to keep going forward.
Number four, the romantic, the creative type. they desire often to do things that are special and unique things that are unexpected. They’re looking for ways to express themselves. And they can spend a lot of energy getting busy with that.
Type five, the observer. It feels uncomfortable for a type five to just sit alone with themselves or their feelings. They can research a lot of facts about why it’s good to keep busy. They are constantly on the drive to get more knowledge and have their projects and they’re learning and managing things to keep their needs at a minimum that can keep them busy
Type Six the skeptic. The loyalist – they are concerned a lot with worst case scenario. So they are spending a lot of energy keeping busy by doing things that will secure them in their work, or their money, or their friendships and relational roles.
Type seven, the adventurer, being busy is fun. They never want to miss out on the fun. And besides, if you stop moving and doing you might have to sit with your own thoughts and feelings not so fun.
Type eight,the maverick. It feels good to get things done. And some look to the type eight to take the leadership role. What keeps them busy is the need to power through the tasks instead of relenting and calling it a day that would feel like submission. They prefer to feel more powerful more than they are driven to feel present.
And type nine, the mediator, the peacemaker, they are keeping busy with distractions that kind of block out what feels uncomfortable, or what feels like conflict around them or in their own minds. They might not get a lot done, but they’ll keep occupied with non-demanding and non-essential things.
This list of being busy by enneagram type is also available in the show notes if you want to download it and check that out. The show notes if you can’t find them, just go to simple on purpose.ca. Click listen. And you’ll find all of the episodes and all of the show notes right there.
So I want you to see there that being busy is a state of chasing something. And sometimes we are just going to call that something productivity. But it’s often a feeling or an avoidance of a feeling.
So here we are, we live in a culture of busy, our culture glorifies this busy life telling us that we should always be doing something. And this is especially hard for mums, where our culture tells moms that it’s normal, to always be frazzled and have endless demands on you. So we respond to busy with productivity, our solution to the busy culture is to be more productive. But we aren’t quite always hitting it right. We wonder what we’re missing. Other people seem to understand how to get things done, what are we missing?
What we’re missing is a purpose for our business. We’re missing the reason, the vision, that thing we’re working towards, we can’t just be busy for the sake of being busy, we have to be busy in a way that pushes us towards the things that we’re trying to achieve the big heart values we have the big life vision that we have.
So some steps to address you’re busy. This one will not be news to you that I’m telling you, it is the brain dump the brain dump getting everything out of your head, onto paper. What’s happening here is that all of the overwhelm in your brain that to do lists the ideas, the projects, the errands, the lists that are just cluttering up your head, you’re putting them on paper, you’re giving them a home to live, and your brain can relax. It’s clearing the space in your brain, it’s reducing the overwhelm.
And then you’re going to have this big list to look at. And you might be compelled to look at this and call it a list of everything I should do. I want you to stop yourself right here, we make this list so that we can prioritize. Because if everything matters, then nothing matters. And that is a trap we fall into every single day. Everything is equally important. But it’s not. It is not for you, whatever stage your life you are in whatever season of life you’re in, there are a handful of things that are very important right now. And the rest is just nice if it happens.
So look at this list. And if you’re thinking there are all things I should do, I want you to tell yourself, these are all things I could do. You get to choose and you should choose. This is intentional living making choices in line with what you want. What matters most to you today, this week, this month.
So you’ve got your brain dump, you’ve prioritized you’ve picked what matters most. And I want you to set aside time for the things that you want to get done.
I mentioned a few times that we need to be busy for the sake of something bigger. So this longer-term idea of how we’re prioritizing our time and our energy. We need to know who we are what’s important to us and where we want to go what direction we want to be headed in. And if you’ve used the life on purpose workbook, you’ve probably done some of this work. And if you have the workbook, if you don’t doesn’t matter. I do want to let you know something really exciting that I’ve been working on this month is the life on purpose roadmap. And the whole goal of that is for me to walk you through the nine areas of your life, to coach you through the excuses you make the pitfalls you fall into.
Because I want you to know what you want out of your life this year. I want you to show up better for yourself this year. And that means moving yourself in a direction that’s meaningful to you. Removing the distractions that pull you away from what you really want, and take back control of your time this year of your life this year. I don’t want you to be led by stress and just reacting to your daily life. I want you to be led by your life on purpose plan. I am so excited to be launching this. So excited to be offering it. I hope you’re going to stay tuned and join me with that.
But as I said, This episode is a primer to the next one, why it is hard to be present. So I’ve got some real tangible tips for you. I think it’s a great time to use them around Christmas time, where we want to be more present with our family. But what pulls us back from that what prevents us from being present? I’ll tell you spoiler alert. The mental chatter, no surprise, but what do we do with it? How is it impacting us and how can we address it? As always, I really enjoy spending this time with you.
If you want to learn more about the enneagram go way back to Episode 17. And I’ve got a run-through of the whole thing the enneagram one on one. And if it’s something that you want help with, then drop in the Facebook community group the simple on purpose community group and share your questions there. I will totally help you if you feel stuck on anything if you need help with that I am here for you. Alright, I’ll see you over in the next episode. Have a great day.
