Avoiding the Busyness Crash

This is the 3rd of a 3 week series where every Monday, the blog articles will be taken from Doug Fields and my new book, The First Few Years of Marriage. We love the book and our dream is for couples in their first few years of marriage to build a healthy foundation in their marriage that will last forever. If you are past the first few years, we think these articles will relate to everyone. We hope you will consider buying the book for yourself or a gift for someone in the first few years.

Avoiding the Busyness Crash 

To experience a lifelong marriage filled with refreshing time margins and deep intimacy, you must understand the cause of your busyness as well as the consequences. It’s easy to simply cast blame on busyness without looking within your own heart to see why you might be so busy. To help me (Jim) escape busyness, I regularly ask myself three questions:

1. Is the pace of my life sustainable over a long period of time?

2. Do I like the person I’m becoming as a result of the pace I keep?

3. Am I giving Cathy and my family my best during this season?

When I’m busy, the answers to these questions are always no, no, and no! While I’m often tempted to move to a deserted island to escape everything, I’m fully aware that a quick fix isn’t a good solution. The long-term answer always tells me to notice the warning lights of busyness, learn from my past mistakes, and make choices that will result in a better, stronger, and healthier Jim.

When I reflect on some of my previous bouts with busyness, I can see that I wasn’t willing to make the difficult decisions to unclutter my life so that I could have more time for my primary relationships. The warning lights were working; I just didn’t give them the attention they deserved. The warning lights of busyness are fairly obvious. Here are the ones Doug and I have seen in our own lives as well as in
the lives of couples we’ve counseled.

Constant clutter. Rushed lives are often reflected in clutter. For me (Doug), when I’m too busy, it can be seen in my piles. Laundry piles. Paper piles on my desk. Piles in the backyard (thanks to my dog and my not taking the time to remove them). I can create a temporary fix and shove clutter into the closed spaces of my life: filing cabinets, closets, and drawers. But when I’m too busy, I don’t need a drawer organizer; I need a drawer exorcist. We’re not implying you need to become a neat freak, but we are suggesting that your gathered mess could be making a bigger statement about the pace of your life.

Addiction to speed. This is when you want everything to go faster and faster in your life. You find yourself spending most of your waking moments fueling the adrenaline rush that comes from juggling your many “essential” priorities. You’re afraid that if you quit juggling, something is going to crash. Unfortunately, many
of those addicted to the speed of life do indeed have something crashing—and it’s usually one of their primary relationships.

Extreme multitasking. Do you try to accomplish too many things at once? Can you drive your car on the freeway while shaving your legs or playing bingo on your mobile device? Are you the type who can pay the bills and talk on the phone and entertain a child and make dinner while exercising? If so, it’s important to understand that extreme multitasking can cause “unintentional blindness.” It won’t affect your actual vision, but it does influence your psychological perception of what is most important.

Superficial relationships. Staying on the surface with your spouse and most of the people you know happens because busyness and a hurried life are the enemies of depth. Your life feels as though it’s a mile wide and an inch deep, and thus, you become a shallow person—possibly so shallow that you don’t even understand how the pace you keep is affecting your marriage.

Relationship fatigue. Many of these busyness indictors can blend together and sound familiar, but relationship fatigue is when you have very little or no time for the people closest to you. You may not be superficial, but you’re too tired, drained, and preoccupied to give time to the people who need and deserve it
the most. Instead, they’re the ones who get cheated and receive your time scraps.

Spiritual emptiness. Spiritual emptiness can be seen when your desire for worship disappears, your compassion dries up, and you have little, if any, concern for spiritual intimacy with your spouse. The pace of life leaves your soul malnourished, and as a result, you suffer from soul erosion. There is just no time or emotional energy to draw near to God.

If any of these warning lights describe you, it’s time to stop and make a course correction.