I’m currently reading a book by Mark Buchanan – for the fourth time. Literally. I read it first in 2008, again in 2015, again in 2018, and again now in 2020. This means I’m an awful learner, or the book is that tremendous. Or maybe both.
The book is about rest – Sabbath, specifically – and was probably the first time I came across this idea of the busyness martyr, the busy badge of honor we wear proudly on our sleeves. And even though I’ve underlined the same text sometimes four times now, it still seems fresh – and more so, refreshing.
In the beginning part of the book, Buchannon mentions how one way we can tell if we are too busy is by measuring how deeply we care about the things that we want to care about. Our family, our hobbies, our friends, our projects. A barometer of busyness, of sorts.
I have friends who are way busier than I am – who seemingly have 10x the responsibilities, yet who have 10x the peace. I don’t think we can measure how busy we are by the amount of meetings we have, the amount of projects in the air, or the amount of hours we work. I think each of us is built slightly differently with varying degrees of capacity – and yet even so, we each have our limits of how much we can take.
So instead of measuring quantifiable metrics, perhaps a better assessment is this idea of measuring how much we care about the things we want to care about. How deeply. How often.
From the book: “One measure for whether or not you’re rested enough is to ask yourself this: how much do I care about the things I care about? When we lose concern for people… for friendship, for truth and beauty and goodness; when we cease to laugh when our children laugh (and instead yell at them to quiet down) or weep when our spouses weep (and instead wish they didn’t get so emotional); when we hear news of trouble among our neighbors and our first thought is that we hope it isn’t going to involve us – when we stop caring about the things we care about – that’s a sign we’re too busy. We have let ourselves be consumed by the things that feed the ego but starve the soul. Busyness kills the heart.”
I think of this in my own life – how deeply do I care about my family? About each individual client? About my faith? About my friends? If I’m honest – it’s not a whole lot at times. I’m much more in tune with knowing how little I can get away with doing – or caring – for each of these.
My busyness has/had taken over and is/was constricting the amount of care in my life.
I noticed this last year, and is a reason why I designated 2020 as the Year of Growing Small. For my own health, for the health of my firm, and for the health of those around me.
And as I said in that post, I realize some people are going to push back on this.
I’m too small to slow down.
I shouldn’t let go of the momentum or else I’ll never regain it.
Being stressed out is part of the job.
Just hire somebody.
Suck it up, buttercup.
I hear this, and realize there are nuggets – maybe whole bricks – of truth to some of them.
But I’m choosing to grow small anyway. The busyness has sapped a lot of joy out of my life, and even though – through God’s grace – none of the above relationships have suffered too much yet, I’m realizing there are some warning lights starting to flash.
/ cue awkward transition into talking about capital /
For a lot of us, we have more control over this busyness than we think we do. For those of us who own our own businesses – or who have a lot of autonomy within our jobs – we can choose to go slower. We can choose to not work as hard, or volunteer as much, or step out of other responsibilities. I realize this isn’t everybody – however, I believe it includes a lot of people who probably read this site.
But slowing down has a cost – namely, oftentimes we’re going to earn less money. There’s a sacrifice involved. And I’m sure someone could whip out a financial calculator and show me that the amount of earnings I’m leaving on the table if invested over the next 3 decades is some stupidly large number.
That’s fine.
My personal values don’t include maximizing net worth. And in fact – in 14 years of being a financial advisor, I’ve never heard one person list that as a value or a goal. But maybe you do – and that’s fine, so just ignore my words (and probably most of this site in its entirety).
My point of this isn’t to tell you to slow down, to grow small, or anything of the sort.
My point is to introduce an idea of measuring the busyness in your life, to do a bit of a self-audit to see if the things you care about are truly being cared for, to make sure that in the wake of our hard drive towards growth, that the waves aren’t pulling other things underwater.
The barometer of business was indicating the need for me, personally, to slow down. And maybe you, as well.
[ Photo by Michel Porro on Unsplash ]