YVALIKS

I want to rant a bit about a phenomenon that is part of most of our lives.

For most of us, we are busy people.

And to be honest, I am tired of being busy. I don’t mind being occupied but I don’t want to be busy anymore.

Ask someone how they are doing and most likely their response will be ‘busy’. 
Modern life is busy. It is a never ending to-do list backed up by longs hours of work, increased screen time and demanding schedules.
And just like many others, I am caught up in the cycle of busy. And to be honest, I am no longer a fan. I don’t want to be busy anymore.
Now, I am not advocating laziness.
I don’t mind being occupied but I don’t want to be busy.
Why are we so busy in the first place?
Well, it all start with the fact that we are living in a very capitalist world where companies and businesses tend to impose long and hard working hours to boost productivity levels. Although we have technology to facilitates us with our working conditions, work still demand so much of us. We have taken work in our home with so called flexible working lifestyle. From hot desking and agile working; working from anywhere at any time is the modern way to work. We are somehow blurring the line between a time to work and a time to relax. Most of us have turned into workaholics and some of us are proud of it. We are no longer working for a living, we are living to work.

Outside of work, our generation also likes to showcase a so called ‘perfect’ (but actually very filtered and curated) lifestyle. This leads to sometimes get involved in all kinds of things to keep up with the Joneses. We say yes to certain things because we do not want to have FOMO and refuse to miss out on things.
Be more, Do more, get more and get it fast is the motto.
And yes, since we want to accomplish our dreams, we hustle hard even to the point of working several jobs and juggling multiples tasks; because success is all that matters, right?
I do also wonder if this is happening because modern life is more demanding or because we were not equipped or prepared properly of what life was going to throw at us.
But is busy good? Is this the life we really want?

One word: burnout
Burnout is usually what happens when people gets overwhelmed and crash. This has negative impact on the physical and mental health of the individual.  Millennial are the burnout generation.
Burnout is a state of chronic stress mostly that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion. An exhaustion mostly caused by the pressure to do everything they need to do. Millennial are my generation , who are now all in their mid-twenties and thirties. We are victims of a culture of self-optimisation and over-expectations. We have become servants of our work and career. 
You will hear that the majority of people now only want one  thing: finding work-life balance.  But can we find such balance? Can we really escape the busy cycle? Is there a solution to this?

I am not sure how to stop it, but I know that change is needed. Well if I cannot end it, I will be committed to reduce the pressure of it.

I want to stop the glorification of busy.

1. Slow down

I hate urgency…Nothing irritates me more than to hear the word: I need this to be done now. Now I am okay with deadlines and thus it is really down to us on how we use our time to do things. However, because of the fast paced life we live in; speed is everything. We want things fast and we want them now. This is also why we tend to multitask more. The reasoning is that everything needs to be done. Consequently, everything has to be done at the same time, so that it will be done as soon as possible. 

But truth is: things can wait…They really can. Let’s learn to take our time and slow down.  Amid the fast paced, people are reaching more and more into mindfulness and the idea of being present. This is within reason. There are advantages in doing things slowly. First, you do them in a more diligent way because you taking your time. Secondly, it helped you enjoy the moment more significantly. It is even recommended to eat more slowly. Food when consumed slowly in small bites can be digested better and make you fuller on less food.

Let’s learn to take our time and slow down.  Let’s decide what is the most important and what really require our attention at the given time.

1. Prioritise

Rethink why you are doing it. Yes I need a job, so evidently I cannot stop working but I have to rethink the way I work. We have to think what do we really want our life to look like.

Prioritise your life

I watched a recent Ted Talks where someone was explaining that the most important things in your life are glass balls, and the less important are in plastic balls.
The glass balls are the most important thing in our lives: our relationships. I call it the three Fs: Faith, Family and Friends. The are made of glass, because if we drop them and they break, the effect it will have on us will be very detrimental. 
The others things like, our work and our hobbies are plastic balls. If you drop them, they will be bounce back. We can lose a job, and get another one. We can pause an hobby, and pick it up later.

If you lose a parent, you will not get them back. If you get sick, your job will not take care of you; you family will.

We have to make time for what really matters. 

1. Create boundaries

I try my best to leave work at work. I no longer bring it home and I stop staying too late at the office. I have also learn to say no and not over committing to thing. Work to live not the other way around. I also make to only attend social outings I really want to attend. I will miss out on some things, but I will gain time and rest. I also minimise my time online. I have a screen time restriction on my Iphone and I have disabled most of my social media notifications. We do not have to be hostage to our technology.
I know it is hard to break habits. Especially because we get comforted that everybody is in the same boat and this is the new normal. But this is not how I want my life to be.

My mother love saying this french says to me: ‘la plus belle femme du monde ne peut donner que ce qu’elle as’. To translate, this means that the most beautiful woman in the world can only give what she has.
You can only do what you can do. We are all limited in our abilities and our time. We all have only 24 hours each day. We can only do what we can do.
And that is okay.

Don’t have a busy life, have a meaningful life