The Dangers of a Modern Life: Busyness
The 1960s Myth of Too Much Time in the Future
I heard that in the 1960s, Time magazine reported that a subcommittee of the United States Senate was assembled to discuss the topic of time management.
They gathered the best experts in the field because they were concerned about the advances in technology.
What were they concerned about?
They thought advances in technology would lead to a big problem by the end of the century.
They thought people would have so much free time, thanks to technology, that they wouldn’t know what to do with all of their free time!
They thought there would be so much free time that workers would have to cut back on how many hours a week they worked, or how many weeks a year they worked, otherwise they would have to start retiring sooner.
But the reality of how things have turned out is much different.
Many of us have a chronic problem.
It’s a problem that, for most of us, is getting worse and worse every year.
It’s something that – if it isn’t gotten a hold of right away – will keep us from really living life to the fullest.
It will rob us of our true potential.
What’s the chronic problem?
Busyness!
The Busy Trap
In a New York Times article published on June 30, 2013, Tim Kreider, wrote about what he called The Busy Trap.
It was so popular it received 800 or so comments.
I believe it was so popular because he hit a nerve about the realities of our modern American lifestyle.
And it’s nothing like they dreamed it would be in the 1960s.
Listen to what Tim Kreider said…
“If you live in America in the 21st century, you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: ‘Busy!’ ‘So busy.’ ‘Crazy busy.’ It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: ‘That’s a good problem to have,’ or ‘Better than the opposite.’”
Then Kreider goes on to say, “Busyness serves as a kind of … hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day …. [We’re] busy because of [our] own ambition or drive or anxiety, because [we’re] addicted to busyness and dread what [we] might have to face in its absence.”
This is such a widespread modern America problem that many of us forget that it’s a problem that has actually been around for a long time.
Socrates warned his contemporaries about it with this famous saying, “Beware of the barrenness of a busy life.”
I think many of us know deep down that Socrates was right.
And our gut tells us that Tim Kreider is right about the busy trap.
We can feel it tightening around our own lives but we just don’t know how to escape it.
The Allusive Solution
We all know this is a problem, but we’re not quite sure what the solution is.
The result is this:
- Many of us feel overwhelmed with all we have on our plate.
- There’s so much to do that we don’t know what to focus on.
- We sense that we’re become less effectiveness in our work and our life.
- We can’t even find time to process all that’s going on in our lives (good or bad).
And that’s just the beginning of how busyness impacts our lives. (I’ll explain more later.)
The thing you need to realize is that busyness is only ONE of the dangers of a modern life.
There are other dangers and their combined impact is robbing us of three main essentials to success:
- Focus
- Effectiveness
- Creativity
I want to reveal the other dangers of a modern life, because if you aren’t aware of them, then you can’t protect yourself from them.
But just knowing the dangers is not enough.
After I share the other dangers, I’ll reveal how you can get access to some surprisingly simple solutions I’ve discovered.
They are three keys I discovered by analyzing some of the habits of the “greats” from history and by putting those together with some ancient practices and viewpoints.
If this topic sounds like something, that you’d like to get more information on, then sign-up below.
When you do, you’ll be emailed exclusive links to posts, podcasts, and videos that will reveal the other “Dangers of a Modern Life”.
I’ll also begin to talk about the counter-intuitive methods that we need to use to find solutions to these problems.
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Photo by martinak15
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- Expert Feature: This Is What Your Biggest Problem Really Is (baybusinesshelp.com)
