To Be Less Busy, Get Naked
At the end of each college semester, I felt like a lasagna that had been forgotten about in the oven.
The burnt crispness of my brain was a result of my taking full-time classes, working part-time in a violin shop, playing in a piano trio and the school orchestra, AND expected to practice the violin for 4-6 hours a day on top of my regular classwork.
Meanwhile, my dog relied on me for her daily care, and my boyfriend at the time, who was super social, would often try to entice me into going out on weekends.
During summer and winter breaks I just wanted to hibernate for weeks on end.
At the time, I resented my boyfriend asking me to waste precious time on “unproductive” things like dinner parties, and I developed a superiority complex over how hard I worked compared to my classmates.
I later discovered the pissing contest doesn’t end when you graduate.
Burning ourselves into the ground has somehow become a badge of honor, as if we’re participating in a busy-ness contest, fighting to be the ones who can arrive earlier and work later or work on weekends or go to the gym 7 days/week or juggle the most side projects…
But let me be clear:
Being overscheduled is not a bragging right. It is a lack of self-care and boundary setting.
What I didn’t realize all those years ago was that sustaining intense effort requires mental breaks. It’s clear looking back why I fell completely apart at the end of each semester.
It’s not just the fact that your body will literally start breaking down. If you engage in periods of recovery, when you return to your work you will actually increase your level of focus, feel more creative, improve your attention and memory, decrease stress levels…and this is not due to how hard you work, but by incorporating things you enjoy into your life, whether it’s socializing with friends or playing a game.
These things are by no means unproductive—they’re necessary.
Cycles of Rest
There are a few different cycles of rest periods to consider:
On a micro-scale, you have something like the pomodoro technique, which is working for 25 minutes with 5-minute breaks in between.
On a slightly larger scale, you have your day broken up into working hours and off hours.
Then you have your work days and days off (think weekdays vs. weekends for a typical job).
On a macro scale, you have week-or-so-long vacations sprinkled throughout the year, or summer months off if you’re a teacher or student.
These breaks, regardless of the size, are ALL essential to maintaining your focus and productivity.
Again, periods of rest are productive in and of themselves. They help you to sustain effort over the long-term, which is the key to avoiding blackened lasagna-level burnout.
Making progress in a creative or academic endeavor operates the same way as in something more physical, like building muscle: you need to provide periods of “recovery” so you aren’t running yourself into the ground.
Similarly, leaders of all types suffer from what Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, authors of the book Resonant Leadership have termed the Sacrifice Syndrome: suffering of unchecked stress that results from residing in a place of power and responsibility.
You might think Sacrifice Syndrome applies only to leaders in a place of work, but if you’re a parent, for example, this applies to you too, as a leader in your household.
But as you may have discovered, it can be incredibly difficult to walk away from your obligations and commitments, even temporarily.
Why is it so difficult to allow ourselves to rest?
The Western world, and even in some cultures in the East, promote a busy-ness mindset, producing millions of workaholics who compete with each other behind masks of productivity while slowly disintegrating mentally and physically.
If you’re interested in exiting the rat race burnt lasagna race for good, what you need to know about mindsets in general are two things:
Mindsets are primarily formed subconsciously, meaning you often don’t see your mindset as a way of thinking—you see it as THE way of thinking—the ways “things just are.”
Mindsets can be changed.
This means that you can go from “workaholic” to “balanced human” if you’re willing to examine and change your beliefs about productivity, success, and how busy you are.
From a Busy-ness Mindset to a Time Abundance Mindset
If you have a busy-ness mindset, you’re probably accustomed to telling yourself, “I need to do this.”
That, my friend, is a belief.
Yes, I acknowledge that skipping some actions will have more extreme consequences than others. While you can get away with not picking up the living room before you go to bed, you should probably always pick your child up from soccer practice.
But here’s the underlying lesson:
What if instead of saying “I need to do this” to EVERYTHING on your plate right now, you asked, “What if I didn’t do this?” or “Who else could do this?” or even, “What if I didn’t do this right now?”
In order to embrace a time abundance mindset (as opposed to a busy-ness mindset), you’ll need to explore not just taking things away through discarding, delegating, or deferring to-dos, but you’ll need to make sure you do not add new tasks into their place.
This will require you to examine what productivity and busy-ness mean to you. For most, they mean “getting more done” which translates to “achievement.” For many workaholics, achievements are the armor to their lack of self-worth. Take the achievement away, and the striving that goes along with it, and the individual will feel so naked they will fill their schedule right back up the next day.
For example, if I told you that from now on, you’ll now get out of work 2 hours earlier. Where does your mind go? Are you thinking about the chores or errands you can squeeze in? Another hobby or pursuit you can add? Putting the hours toward a side hustle?
Feels pretty uncomfortable being naked, doesn’t it?
(By the way, if you were thinking that you’d spend those extra 2 hours napping, congratulations, I’d venture to guess you’re already burnt out or close to it.)
From my personal experience as a recovering workaholic and as a coach that has helped many people with a busy-ness mindset, I can tell you that many of us have a deep-seated fear of being average. We want to stand out. We want to be recognized and praised and admired.
Just like you’ll need to examine what productivity means to you, you’ll need to find out:
Who are you if you’re not busy?
Here are some journaling prompts to get you started:
Does a balanced life mean you’ll be average?
If yes, is average bad?
Why or why not?
If a balanced life doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be average, why or why isn’t that true?
If all of your tasks, projects, and achievements were stripped away, who would you be?
These questions are designed to get you to start thinking more about why you do what you do. Answers like, “It needs to get done,” or “I want to,” barely scratch the surface. Why do you really do what you do?
If you’ve tried to cut back on work and other preoccupations in the past, but you can’t seem to keep your schedule from filling back up, it’s not your life—it’s you. It’s your thoughts. But those can be changed.
And every aspect of your life from your health to your relationships will benefit from your new time abundance mindset.
Note: This article was originally published on January 25, 2019 and was revised on January 23, 2023.