Are you a busy junkie?

Busyness is never a term in my working life before.

However, things seem to change recently that I’m staying late almost everyday :(

Hopefully it’s just temporary till things are back on track and I chose to believe it wont be too long before getting back to my work-life-balance status. :)

I personally never buy the idea of working long hours. Unquestionably that it is taking a toll on one’s good health and worse still, it scarifies quality personal time. I mean PERSONAL as some people might be having problem differentiate between personal life and working life. Perhaps these people are so passionate about their work that it becomes their life! Well, count me out from the list. I am definitely not one of them.

Being experienced the kind of so called workaholic life. I am now even more convinced that working long hours is not helping at all in terms of productivity and efficiency. Our brain tends to shut down after certain period of time and people usually chose to continue for the sake of completing task. And more importantly, being too occupied will not allow us the time to take a step back to look things at a bigger picture and strategize things moving forward. I suppose this is working blindly?

I’ve recently came across an article which I would like to share it here for those who “no-choice-ly” have to work long hours and it shall also serve as a reminder for myself from time to time :)

“Are you a busy junkie?”

• Our love of speed, our obsession with doing more and more in less and less time, has gone too far… it has turned into an addiction, a kind of idolatry.
• If you need proof of just how much people are addicted to busyness, consider the boast, “I’m so busy I don’t even have time to pick my nose”. Now, compare that line to “I’ve got so much time I feel like I’m living in a slow motion”. Notice how the first one impresses you, while the second one leaves you thinking he/she’s lazy?
• We like telling people how busy we are…busyness please us.
• In an age that holds up the ideals of accomplishment and achievement as a sign of success, we seemed to have missed the point. Instead of working hard in order to have more time to spend at leisure, we find ourselves working hard in order to spend more time, well, being busy.
• We dedicate our so-called “rest hours” to different kinds of accomplishments – learning a new yoga pose, finishing a book, completing a computer game,
• The mad rush to achieve and accomplish is still there, but since it is not directly related to work, we consider it leisure… Leisure as an idle pastime without a specific goal no longer seems to exist!
• Throughout history, scientists, presidents and inventors predicted that robotics and computers would soon give us all the free time we wanted, and that we’d be working two-hour days on 14-hour weeks. How wrong they were.
• Whenever a new convenience is contrived, the slick marketers dress up the ad campaigns with promises of how the new “time-saving” device will give you more “time for your family” and less “time at work”. Everything from washing machines to Internet banking was supposed to do these things. And yet, they didn’t. All these conveniences really did was free up time for us to engage in other busyness.
• We like busyness so much that even when we are offered viable alternatives to it, we reject it. Don’t believe it? Well, then, ask yourself this question: If you could be assured of earning the same income today by working a three-hour day, would you do it? Of course you would…so, what would you do with those newly available six hours of your day? Would you dedicate them to your family? Your hobby? Charity? Sleep?
• Or would you, dedicate it to finding another source of income?
• Our obsession with busyness does not just stem from our need to accomplish, but also our need to consume. When faced with having an additional six hours a day to spend on anything we want, we invariably choose to dedicate it towards earning additional income.
• You’d be a fool not to! You could double your income overnight, possibly even triple it… heck, if the conditions are right, you might even be able to retire before you hit 40! Imagine what you could do with all that valuable time!
• But you won’t retire. Every 30-something millionaire today started out with the intention of retiring before 30, and yet they did not.
• Why? Because there is always a bigger house to buy, a faster car to drive, a better hotel to stay in.
• There is always more to accomplish, and as long as there is something more to spend money on, you will spend more… which means you’ll also need to find a way to earn more.
• And there’s one way to do that, isn’t there? You have to keep busy.

Hehe. Sarcastic yet insightful, huh?

Seems like we are “punishing” ourselves with all sort of accomplishments.

But it does reflect our (or most people) mentality, isn’t?

Last but not least...

“We are all busyholics, addicted to accomplishments and achievement. How much more busyness we can take is anyone’s guess, but if there was ever time when we needed to slow down, it is NOW”