How to Stop Being Overly Busy and Focus on Your Real Priorities?

Have you ever felt like time passed by so quickly? We are so busy with whatever comes to mind, like work, friends, outings, vacations, and more.

Note: This article is based on the blogger Darius Foroux, in which he tells us about his experience with being busy and how to take care of his life priorities.

But being busy is not a good thing, especially because we waste most of our time on silly things. We say we are busy, but we fill our lives with nonsense.

We spend days watching TV, attending events where we meet strangers trying to sell us their services, and spending hours looking for new clothes to buy in order to impress people we do not like.

I did not realize how absurd what keeps us busy is until someone asked me, “How are you?” a few years ago. I replied, “I am busy.” What is the matter with us? Why are we so busy with so many unimportant things? It is so sad that we use our busyness as an excuse to put off doing important things. After realizing I had no control over my life, I decided to stop being busy.

Being busy is an excuse for losers, and I say that because you can use the word "busy" as an excuse for everything, for example:

1. You forgot your wedding anniversary: “Yes, but you know how busy I am, right? I will make it up to you later."
2. You have not called your mom in six months: “Mom, I am so busy.”
3. You did not go to the gym: "I am too busy to exercise."
4. Even worse: “I am too busy to do things that make me happy."  This could be about music, a business, or anything else.

I have used all those excuses before, but at a certain point, I thought to myself, “How can you be so busy that you cannot get in touch with someone you really care about?”

Whenever You Say You Are Busy, You Cannot Prioritize Your Life

Contrary to what most people believe, and in contrast to 95% of the people I know, I do not believe being busy equates to success.

When you first meet someone, they frequently try to show you how busy their life is. In fact, if you are so busy, you do not have a life; you are just eating, drinking, and breathing.

“To me, ‘busy’ means not having control over one’s life,” says Derek Sivers, author of Anything You Want and one of my favorite thinkers.

But If I Am Not Busy, What Should I Do?

Take a moment and think about the things in your life that are just meaningless preoccupations. The Roman philosopher Lucius Seneca put it best: “A good man will not waste himself upon mean and discreditable work or be busy merely for the sake of being busy.”

It is okay if you do not have plans for the weekend. What you did over the weekend is the most popular question asked at the beginning of every week. You do not have to do certain things to be able to tell other people about them. I would answer such a question, “Nothing,” or, “I wrote, went to the gym, and had dinner with the family,” and they might look at me as if to say, “That is it?”

Yes, so what? Should I have traveled the world, dined with forest dwellers, and jumped out of a plane on the way back?

I Disapprove of Many Things

I always say no to things like, Do you want to have coffee all day? Or do you want to write an article for money? Or do you want to work for us? Or do you want to do this or that? Because I do not want to get busy; when you get busy, time passes quickly, and I want time to slow down. So I only settle for the things that interest me.

In Conclusion

Some days may seem like they will last forever, and even years later, you remember how you felt that day, so all you have to do is slow down, stop being busy, not forget the important things, and live a mindful life. It is not that hard, and you can start now.