Are you busy?

In our modern, fast-paced world it seems that people are busier than they were in the past, answering "urgent" e-mail, phone and text messages, attending to family, school, and work responsibilities, and taking care of urgent matters that arise daily. Is this a good thing? Maybe it's a good idea to stop from time to time and ask ourselves what we are so busy doing. In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey shares some important insights on managing our time more effectively, spending less time on urgent, but not-so-important tasks and more time on more important, less urgent tasks. Covey writes about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. We can go to work and get so caught up responding to e-mail, phone and text messages, and "putting out fires," that we don't have time to get to the important items on that must-do list that we prioritized for the day. Has this ever happened to you? Covey says that we can be very efficient at taking care of pressing, urgent, small things, but not be effective at doing the things we have identified as important in our personal and professional lives. Sometimes "busyness" can even be a form of work avoidance; focusing on small, easy-to-accomplish tasks to avoid tackling those more difficult and important projects that we keep putting off.

Next time you feel too busy and completely overwhelmed by life, school, or work, stop and ask yourself what you are so busy doing, and if you are busy doing the things that are important to you. Depending on your answer, you might want to re-think and prioritize the way you spend your time. In my own life, it has been my experience that I "find" a lot of extra time to do things when I focus on what is important to me.