Are we really busy???


04 Apr 2019

What is it, that any human being on earth has got equally distributed?

Health?  Wealth? Knowledge? Food? Space? People? Not in the list? Yes it is 24 Hours of time that every individual on earth has got equally. It is the proper utilization of these 24 hours of time that makes a person’s life meaningful.

We often hear people say, “I don’t have time I am busy”.  But are we really busy??

Let’s take a look at how we usually spend our time and how can we effectively make use of it…

The first and foremost thing that we need to work on is our health…

Science says, a well grown adult needs at least 7 hours of sleep to keep one self physically and mentally healthy. Do we actually do that? The answer from many of them would be “no”.

For many of us our day starts only in the night…We start working busily only during the night hours, so what did we do in the day time? Thanks to a lot of social networking on Whats app, Face book, Twitter, Instagram etc…

Let us consciously work on reducing our time on such social media and concentrate on work during the day time.

Let’s start practicing our oldest of all Rhymes “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” A healthy mind can lead to a healthy body.

The next aspect in focusing on our health is to spend time on little exercises/workouts, walking, jogging etc. Many of us have this habit of taking a New Year resolution of regular fitness time, which only works for the first 3 or 4 days of a year. There are many gym donors!!! too, who actually pay an annual subscription to the gym and never turn up after a week. The reason is they claim themselves busy. Again the same reply “I am very busy”…

Any practice when done for 21 days continuously becomes a habit. So let’s make any resolution possible by practicing it for 21 days continuously to make it happen.

The next thing that keeps someone busy is the searching time…

We spend a lot of time searching for things we misplaced. The reason is we are unorganized. Again we are so busy to leave the things in different places after taking them from one place. Right from socks, to ID cards to vehicle keys, to spectacles (there have been instances where a person puts the specs on their head and keeps searching for it), etc. Sometimes the search list extends to purse, books and important documents too. Next time when we badly need it we don’t find it. A little effort to keep things organized and placing it back in the right place would save a lot of time. There by it would avoid searching time.

The next area where a person can save a lot of time is by planning things ahead.

Planning helps us save plenty of time. Let’s say a task normally takes an hour of time, if the same task is done without planning, it might take an hour and a half or even more. But if we spend 10 minutes to plan, we can finish the same task in 45 minutes, with a little more time left for even a review.

Let’s not be too busy to plan ahead to complete a task. “One, who fails to plan, plans to fail”.

Another important aspect where a person gets stuck is when he or she cannot prioritize.

 If we can prioritize our tasks we can save a lot of time in doing productive and important things instead of wasting our time in unnecessary tasks. When it comes to prioritizing we also need to be assertive enough to say no to people who are behind us in wasting our time and their time too.

There is one more important area where our time goes, is because we have a lot of distractions.

I would like to quote a forward that I received on a social media to better understand how distractions waste our time and we finally end up doing nothing. It goes like this…

I decided to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my cheque book off the table and see that there is only one cheque left.  My extra cheques are in the study table. So I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of coke I had been drinking. I am going to look for my cheques but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. The coke is getting warm and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye-they need water.

I put the coke on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I have been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I am going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember it is on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs to, but first I’ll water the flowers. I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day, the car isn’t washed, the bills aren’t paid, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, the flowers do not have enough water, there is still only one cheque in my cheque book, I can’t find my glasses, I can’t find my remote and I do not remember what I did with my car keys.

Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I am really baffled because I know I was busy all day and I am really tired. I realize this is a serious problem and I will try to get some help for it but first I will check my e-mail.

Let us start thinking are we really busy? Yes we are really busy getting distracted with n number of tasks. Let us finish what we started and then move on to the next thing so that we are not too busy to leave all tasks incomplete or even leave them without starting.

Next important aspect that goes for a toss in our life because we claim ourselves to be busy is our relationship with people.

When someone asks us why you haven’t called or spoken for a long time, the immediate response is I am busy these days. Again are we really busy that we can’t even spend couple of minutes for our near and dear ones?

Let us make it a practice to call or visit friends regularly or plan to meet up with them so that we maintain a good relationship with people. While travelling in public transport or anywhere even with family, we can see 90% of them bent upon to their phones with music or videos. We can even make use of such travel time to call friends. Instead of a birthday message in the social media, a personalized call would make the difference.

Again let us not be too busy to maintain relationship. If we are too busy to talk to people, they will be too busy as well when we actually need them.

Let us make ourselves free to enjoy the real world around us instead of claiming to be busy all the time.


Written By

Ponnammal Subramaniam

More Posts by Ponnammal Subramaniam


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