Let me begin by pointing you to this excellent article on the Huffington Post by Kari Henley, titled “Are You Obsessed With Being Busy?” For me, the answer is a loud and clear, YES.
Hi, my name is Alex and I am addicted to being busy.
My favorite line in the article puts it perfectly:
I struggle with being busy vs. being burned out on a regular basis. I like to drive fast, eat fast, read fast, type fast and can multi-task with the best of them. When I finally do stop, I often walk around in circles, trying to figure out what to ‘do’ with myself! Sound familiar?
All too much. I’m busy. And so is almost every single person I know. We all complain about it from time to time but deep in our hearts I’m pretty sure we all really love it. We do it to ourselves, after all–between new technologies, social media, our jobs and living our lives outside of work and the Internet, we’ve got a lot going on.
Just today I led our weekly team meeting and my presentation focused–as it often does–on Twitter. First, we discussed how to fit Twitter into your schedule, particularly from a work perspective as a busy public relations professional. It’s not easy. For some, it may not be possible. And for others, they might not even want to try. But for my generation, I see this coming very naturally to us.
We have been raised to multitask. America is still one of the hardest and longest working countries in the world and, although our economy may be changing rapidly, our work ethic seems intact. From a personal perspective, I have been trained to balance all of the traditional tasks in communication, while also balancing a valid social media and online presence AND still maintaining at least some semblance of a personal life.
From the moment I wake up I begin multitasking, and that’s become a way of life for me. Here’s a very basic example of some of my day-to-day activities:
- Wake up, make breakfast while listening to the news on CNN, while getting dressed.
- Eat breakfast while checking twitter, e-mail and reading the newspaper.
- Check blogs, twitter and listen to music on my way to work.
- TweetDeck is open all day at work and I usually work on multiple projects simultaneously.
- I make dinner while catching up on MSM news, washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen as I go along.
- I watch an episode or two of “Mad Men” while running at the gym, sometimes while texting friends to make plans for the evening.
- I’ll listen to music, check my e-mail one final time, set my calendar for the next day and read before finally heading to bed.
Also, I don’t like sleeping. This “busy” mindset has gotten me to the point where, to be honest, I feel like sleeping is boring and kind of a waste of time. I learn so much and take in so much information every minute of every day, that those 5-7 hours I spend asleep at night just seem hugely unproductive.
In her article, Henley suggests “downshifting” from time to time to relax. In other words, taking things down a notch and letting loose from some of those things that keep us so “busy.” I agree, I think it’s good to do this sometimes. But it’s hard. On the occasions I do take the night off from work, housework, social media, etc. I’m undoubtedly going to be hanging out with friends. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, hanging out with my friends is hardly “downshifting.”
It will be interesting to see how our busy lives evolve in the coming years, especially with the absolute onslaught of social media coming our way. Will we burn out, and get sick of it all? Or will we take it all on, as much as we can bear before we crack? Will we continue to fear that thin line between work and the personal, or will social media bridge that divide? These are just a few of the myriad of questions surrounding the advent of technologies like Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be around for a while–I can’t wait to see the answers.
