We're all so busy these days that we need apps to help us arrange lunch with friends. But are we confusing being busy with being successful?
Women with busy lives can be rather hard to pin down. There are business meetings, dates, conferences, styling appointments, dentists appointments, facials, consultations, breakfast meetings and conference calls to contend with. Never mind family functions, taking care of children, and – oh yeah – paying attention to your partner/spouse/lover.
We’re all so busy.
Even worse, on some twisted level, we’re all proud of how busy we are. Sure, we’re sick, tired, probably in need of therapy, but god damnit we’re living. Instead of sitting on our sofas every night and watching ITV or Lifetime, we’re doing stuff. Which isn't a bad thing. However, I think our need to feel like we’re living and involved in something, whether it’s with a hobby or our career, has gotten a bit out of control.
Lately, it seems even trying to make time for a 45 minute coffee date with your friend can be a joke. We’ve had to resort to Blackberry apps like Tungle and web services like Doodle (great names right?) to try and avoid the 300 email long thread of “I can’t do Thursdays I have meetings all afternoon” and “Oh, Monday won’t work for me now as I’m planning on having tiny fish suck the dead skin off my feet at 5:45...”
Now, of course, there are some of us who are just genuinely busy, and perhaps have too much on our plate. But I’m starting to get the sneaking suspicion that there’s more to these full-up diaries than just our “hectic, on-the-go lifestyles”.
It would appear as though we’re filling our diaries up to validate how important and successful we are.
Surely successful people can’t be relaxed or rolling out of bed at 9:45am? No! The busy women are the successful ones. We see them everywhere. They’re the Anna Wintours who are so fucking busy they barely even have time to sip down their skinny, sugar-free vanilla lattes. They’re the women clicking away on their Blackberries and iPhones while their office phone is pressed up against their ear on a conference call. They're Tweeting at 2:30am about what a “productive day it’s been”. They’re then Tweeting again at 7:02am talking about how they’re exhausted, but these SUPER SECRET business plans aren’t just going to write themselves. (Read: See? I AM SO FUCKING PRODUCTIVE.)
We also see these busy, superior women on TV shows (“reality” or otherwise) as the Terribly Important Boss Lady, talking about how they’ve not had a holiday in 15 years and that they only get 4 hours sleep a night because they run five businesses and have a husband and two kids. And a girlfriend on the side.
They’re even in our magazines, giving us a 700 word “peek in to their world” letting us know how they get up at 5:30am every morning to train for that triathlon they’ve signed up for in April, and how they find it helps them concentrate better during their regular 9:00 conference calls with their client in Shanghai.
Somehow we’ve decided that being a workaholic and having a ridiculously filled-in Filofax equals success. To be good at what we do and to be taken seriously, we must bang on about how busy we are, on Twitter, on Facebook, to clients, to potential clients, to strangers at the grocery store, and even to our friends. We can't just say, “No, Friday won’t work for me, can you do Tuesday?” We have to explain exactly why we can’t do Friday.
“Oh, Friday is manic because I have meetings all morning, then I have to pick up the kids from school and drive them to their grandma’s house, and then I have my painting class at 3:30, a call at 4:30, I have another meeting and then we have that dinner with a client at seven, and then I have to prepare for that conference in Berlin I'm speaking at!”
CONGRATULATIONS.
Perhaps the best explanation of this problem comes from the geniuses who the book Mind Gym: Give Me Time. As they say:
“Some of use our bulging diary as proof that we are important, whether to other people, or just ourselves. This is particularly the case in corporate life where...the diary is one of the primary weapons. The fuller it is, the more power it packs...
"You may be pleasantly surprised to find that often many successful people are often not busy at all. Conversely, very busy people often aren’t successful.”
Perhaps we all need to look deeper at our schedules. At what’s necessary, and what isn’t. Do we really need to go to X,Y and Z, or are we only going because we’ve been invited and we’re free?
But more importantly, I suppose thinking about what we could be accomplishing when we’re not running around like a Very Important chicken with its head cut off.
If you skip a networking event to stay home and relax, does that really make you a failure? Or does it mean that you’ve had a long day, and you need some time to recharge so you don’t become overly stressed and run the risk of getting ill?
Sure, making a lunch date with your sister next Wednesday means that that “time slot” in your day is now unavailable to a client for a consultation – but surely investing a bit of time in your personal and family life isn’t all that bad?
Whether we like it or not, having a busy diary doesn’t equal importance or success. Why we keep ourselves so busy is an important question to ask ourselves. You know, when we can find the time.
Cate Sevilla is the editor-in-chief of BitchBuzz.com. You can follow her on Twitter as @CupCate or read her personal blog over at CupCate.com.
Image via chätzle's Flickr