The impact of being always busy can be significant, affecting our emotional and physical health, relationships, and work-life balance. A busy lifestyle can lead to improved self-control, leading to better choices in areas such as diet, exercise, and money. However, it can also result in stress, depression, and anxiety, as people with a lot to do but limited time to do so may make impulsive decisions that may be more unhealthful.
A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that staying busy improves mental processing and reasoning skills, improves memory, and can help maintain healthy relationships. Overscheduling oneself can severely impact emotional and physical health and the capacity to maintain healthy relationships. The perception of oneself as a busy person can be used to promote better self-control.
The potential beneficial effects of a busy lifestyle are likely most noticeable in older adults, who report lower levels of busyness. The authors suggest that developing a long-term perspective toward healthy lifestyle habits can result in long-term happiness.
Busyness is often seen as a badge of honor and status symbol, or the glorification of busy to show our importance, value, or self-worth in our fast-paced society. However, research has shown that being busy can actually increase self-control, leading to improved health and well-being.
In conclusion, the impact of being always busy on our lives is significant, and understanding the relationship between busyness and health can help individuals make healthier choices and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
📹 Busy People vs. Productive People
Just because you are busy does NOT mean you are productive. This animation explains some of the major differences between …
What are the benefits of staying busy?
This article discusses the five unexpected benefits of being busy, including increased energy, increased productivity, improved creativity, mental alertness, and staying positive. The author suggests that while being busy may seem like a frantic or exhausting state, it actually offers numerous benefits. The author highlights the importance of maintaining a balance between being calm and organized, and being frantic.
One of the key benefits of being busy is the feeling of being in the zone, where every cell in the body is on alert, ready to tackle the next task. This energy boost can help maintain focus and focus, even when it’s late at night. The author emphasizes the importance of maintaining a balance between being organized and frantic, as it can lead to a more productive and positive life.
How can an active lifestyle affect your diet?
It is plausible that physical fitness may influence people’s food preferences, potentially aiding weight maintenance. The available evidence indicates that individuals with a normal weight who are physically active exhibit a diminished inclination towards high-fat, calorie-dense foods in comparison to their obese, inactive counterparts.
How can food affect your lifestyle?
The consumption of excess food or nutritionally inadequate foodstuffs can result in the development of obesity, undernutrition and an elevated risk of developing diseases such as arthritis, diabetes and heart disease. As defined by Webster, food serves as a medicine, assisting in the maintenance, prevention, and treatment of health issues. It is therefore evident that our dietary habits are of paramount importance in maintaining our overall health.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being busy?
Staying busy can boost self-esteem, but if it prevents self-care, spending time with loved ones, and enjoying free time, it can negatively impact our overall well-being. Disconnecting from work or unnecessary obligations and taking time for ourselves can significantly improve our quality of life. Research shows that an individual’s perceived busyness is strongly connected to their feelings of self-worth and how others view their status.
Those who are always busy by choice feel needed, important, and valued. Additionally, culturally, there has been a shift in status perception, with individuals who are busy at work, overworked, and lack leisure time perceived as having a higher status.
Why is busy life important?
Staying busy can help combat negative emotions and maintain a positive outlook. Having plans in progress can make us feel hopeful and motivated, preventing us from dwelling on negative feelings like worry, sadness, loneliness, anger, or jealousy. However, if we find ourselves distracting ourselves to mask other issues, it may be time to slow down and manage our emotional health. Sign up for our newsletter for weekly mama-friendly content.
What are the disadvantages of being busy?
Being too busy can lead to negative effects on productivity, stress, and creativity. Research shows that our brains are not designed to multitask, and we are more productive when we focus on one task at a time. Jumping between tasks can decrease productivity and increase stress. It is crucial to prioritize tasks and give each one our full attention to avoid the negative effects of busyness.
Overworking ourselves can have serious consequences for our physical and mental health. Burnout is a real risk when we overwork ourselves, causing symptoms such as fatigue, lack of motivation, and reduced productivity. Chronic stress can lead to anxiety, depression, and physical health problems such as heart disease and obesity. Poor work-life balance can also lead to poor sleep and digestive issues.
To avoid the physical and mental toll of busyness, prioritize self-care and rest, and set boundaries between work and personal time. By prioritizing self-care and rest, setting boundaries between work and personal time, and avoiding the negative effects of busyness, we can work towards a more productive and healthy lifestyle.
How can a busy lifestyle affect your diet?
Family meals have declined over the years due to various factors, including work, sports, and school schedules, shifts in roles, and the increasing popularity of quick food alternatives like take-out, fast food, and restaurant foods. Working parents often work multiple jobs, leaving little time for meal preparation. The current generation of young people is growing up in households where no one cooks, and some ethnic groups are adopting fast-food solutions due to busy lifestyles.
The food industry is under pressure to provide more healthful foods that are convenient, easy to prepare, and ready to be eaten quickly. To make healthier food choices, it is essential to read food labels, learn about portion sizes, and consume more fruits, vegetables, high fiber foods, and low-fat dairy products daily. Additionally, learn to make healthy food choices when eating out and cook simple meals at home. Accurate information can be found through reading, watching TV or internet sites, attending Cooperative Extension classes, or visiting websites.
What are the effects of being busy?
Stress leads to poor mental and physical health, including unhealthy eating habits, depression, and emotional exhaustion. Long-term work hours are also linked to increased job injuries and higher risk of death from coronary artery disease or stroke. To reduce stress and promote calm, individuals can create space for activities they love, exercise regularly, keep a gratitude journal, meditate, and unplug from notifications.
Creating space for hobbies, catching up with friends, and engaging in hobbies can help reduce stress. Exercise, such as walking or exercising, can help alleviate stress. Keeping a gratitude journal can improve mood by recording gratitude daily. Meditation, including deep breathing, mindfulness, and prayer, can also help reduce stress. Unplugging notifications and avoiding work emails can also help maintain a balance between busyness and calmness.
Why is it important to be busy in your life?
Staying busy can help combat negative emotions and maintain a positive outlook. It helps us feel hopeful and motivated, preventing us from dwelling on negative feelings like worry, sadness, loneliness, anger, or jealousy. However, it’s important to manage our emotional health and avoid distracting ourselves with busy activities. It’s crucial to operate from a place of productivity, not panic, and to prioritize quality time for ourselves and our loved ones. Being busy is beneficial for our body and soul, but it’s also essential to prioritize self-care and quality time for our loved ones.
How does your influence your lifestyle choices?
Lifestyle choices are shaped by a multitude of factors, including socioeconomic status, educational attainment, family and kinship networks, social connections, gender, age, and interpersonal influences.
What are the factors that affect lifestyle?
Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. Lifestyle risk factors, such as lack of physical activity, poor nutrition, lack of sleep, tobacco use, and excessive alcohol use, can contribute to their development. The Tracking Network’s data can help public health professionals determine if health outcomes are related to the environment or if they are due to lifestyle risk factors like smoking and lack of physical activity. Additionally, the data can help public health officials determine the best actions to reduce modifiable lifestyle risk factors in their communities.
📹 Staying Healthy in a Fast-Paced and Busy Life: The Impact of Your Lifestyle Choices.
Learn how to stay healthy in a busy life and understand the impact of lifestyle choices on your health. Discover tips for making …
The trouble with these ‘We can make your life better’ articles is that after five minutes, the magic wears off. It’s like most of those TED talks. You will find that you can’t learn Japanese in three months just by viewing a twenty minute article. It’s fake. However, concentrating on a priority is good, so take that message.
great article…thank you …but allow me to correct this one mistake (although it sounds rhetorical) …doing 1000 sit-ups everyday won’t give you abs …abs can only appear if you don’t have a layer of fat in the stomach region…so, diet and reasonable amount of exercise could give abs…not just 1000 sit-ups.
I honestly think that my favorite part of this website are the cartoons. They are so simple but purely beautiful. I hope theyre actually drawn by hand and not generated on the computer as the articles would have us believe. The content is a very TIGHT second. I believe every one of these articles is worth sharing and could be the next “Schoolhouse Rock” but without the music.
Well this article is great and all but i still cant see why productive people are better then busy people,im a young man living in India still struggling for my PG course and i am quite busy as my parents are no longer living with us due to work.i have a big brother as well as a younger one,my elder bro owns a motorcycle workshop and works hard and busy all day.He is one of are main source of income and i had to be quite responsible in the house due to chores,cooking,cleaning, etc etc.and we alk hand to look out for each other.However my younger bro is a fitness freak and he is quite a productive person as his to do list for the day is like 1)eating a perfect meal that helps muscle growth, 2)working out hard, 3)resting.and he wouldnt help me even when i am too ill to wash my cothes and he would never do any thing beyond his schedule even if we are busy as hell.but he is quite successful in his passion as a body builder but if that is what it takes to be a productive person then fuck it! I dont want to be a selfish successive person that dosent give a fuck about other things in life
Objections, your honor! Actually, I do read several books at a time and it really works in my case. When I read for my education, changing a book (let’s say, from math lectures to a physics textbook) after 2-4 hours of elaborate reading really helps me get my brains re-switched and regain my focus. As for the rest, great vid!
How about not setting goals at all? Everyday you have not reached your goal is a failure….rather concentrating time to go in the direction everyday seems a better approach, because many times you can’t control the pace of achieving your goal..deadlines are stressful and negative, what you can control is the amount of time, productivity will increase and decrease day by day….
However, there are actually many people with TODO lists with 1-2 dozen items that are all necessary and have deadlines. Typically, once you have more than 5 people working under you, so family life, personal list, professional life, all produce tasks to be done. Also homemakers. They are both busy and productive although the work is highly boring.
By and large I love this series of lectures. But I have to vehemently disagree with the logic presented hearing. We are living in an age of over specialization. As someone who is practiced many trades and skills I find that there are overlapping attributes that I gain through multitasking. By reading five books at the same time on the same subject I’m able to get an over arching holistic viewpoint. By practicing multiple trades there is overlap between the trades which gives me a perspective on each individual trade which I would not be able to glean otherwise.We are living in a changing world at the moment and we must take a viewpoint on creativity. Differentiating people as either productive or busy there’s an oversimplification. One must be discerning and how Wen spends on his time and focus is one’s energy of course. One must often say yes and except failure and detours along the way if one is to really branch out and extend beyond one’s comfort zone.
Outline for Busy People (so they can get back to work and be productive): 1. Productive people have priorities – the most critical things get handled first 2. Productive people say no – your time is limited, don’t stretch yourself too thin doing too many things at once Want to learn more? Read Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
What is your goal is completely unattainable in a reasonable amount of time. In that scenario you can’t finish it then move on because you would die of hunger or not getting paid because you lost your job. How do you decide how much time you should spend on you’r massive goal before working on some of the more immediately necessary things. Basically how do I decide weather I work on the huge assignment due at the end of the year homework due in a week and working out.
What is also important is that productive people are less stress and get more work done than busy people. My sister in law is always “busy” and a chicken without a head. But I look to see “what has she actually accomplished? And is she in a happy place in her life?” The answer is “Nothing and no.” Avoid these people if possible. They will blame their failures on you and say your success was luck.
After Skool’s quality of article is great, but in many articles, including this one, they represent “success” with a hunky man with skinny ladies looking up at him. And they show only males as the main characters. I get that the production crew may consist of mostly men, but remember that your audience has both males and females perusal, including younger people whose minds are still impressionable to definitions such as “success”. Edit: holy fuck I am not offended by this article. I was just pointing out some little details that have the potential to affect younger people. Goddamn…
I love this. I know people that just make blind check lists and don’t actually focus on things they should do. I’ve also had friends who consistently lie around till 2pm and make excuses like “they’re tired from the day before”, even though they spend merely 1 hour sat sat in a lecture theatre, and they call it hard work. More people need to get a grip. Admittedly, me included.
I have busy person in my life. He’s good at a lot of things and he does a lot of things, but he never finishes anything and he’s always looking for new projects. He’s been trying to fix up an old corvette for over a decade now. He’s yet to get it in working condition, but he’s spends at least a weekend a month working on it.
I think whatever task you set yourself to, try and take your time as much as possible. It is the journey of the task that where the value is. I am creative, and whenever i draw or paint I always say to people that the art work is just a manifestation of my experience, it is something tangible for others to look at that but the real value was in my time enjoying making it. No one else can share in the experience of what it felt like to make it, its the same that someone cant listen to a song for you, it is your personal experience. Taking your time means you take time to enjoy the journey, and this is the most valuable thing in your life, your time. You cannot get that back so learn to value your time. A good reference for what I am talking about may be found in the Tao Te Ching, it has a lot of wisdom on how to live a good life.
Busy People vs. Productive People Busy does not mean productive Busy People:Have goals Say Yes to Everything Get things done just in time Have more than 20 things on their daily to-do list Productive People: Set Priorities and focus on high priority items Take time to say yes; say no when necessary Set unrealistic deadlines to get things done sooner…force yourself into immediate action Have only 3 or 4 things on their daily to-do list. In summary: Trying to reach too many goals is slower than handling each goal one at a time. Instead, categorize your goals in a way so that the most critical things get handled first and get the most attention. Do not let any lesser tasks interfere with higher priorities. Once complete, move on to the next. Having less in your life leads to more clarity, creation and production. Shut the door to distractions and sidetracks. In reality, saying no to difficult clients or stressful tasks will allow you more success and to focus on the greater target. By setting unrealistic deadlines, you force yourself into immediate action. Next time you make a to-do list, ask yourself, what is my highest priority? What can you eliminate? Am I just inventing things to stay busy? Don’t overcrowd your schedule. Life is to be lived! Remember that we work to live and not live to work! Be Blessed! 🙂
This is partly why many people still believe that they’re great multitaskers – even when studies have shown over and over that multitasking is a myth that produces worse results than single-tasking. Multitasking feels like you’re being productive so you think it works. Working on one thing at a time may not feel as productive, but what’s really important? Do you want to feel productive or actually be productive?
Just gives me another to hate school. I’ve gotta study so much shit that I’m never gonna remember. I found out that I learn way better by perusal short article essays on YouTube, rather than have people lecture me about a subject for an hour and a half, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months a year, at least 12 years of my life!
Sometimes you have to read 5 books at once. Some skills take time. No matter how much time you put into them sometimes you just have to take daily small bites towards the larger goal. The brain needs time to slowly digest it. Learning guitar with multiple focused topics and goals in little chunks each day will help you greater overall later on. Rather than just studying and mastering one concept leaving you comply void of the others.
Doing 1000 sit-ups a day won’t give you a six pack, this is a common misconception. Lack of six pack is pretty much entirely due to too much belly fat and not because lack of muscle. You can get a six pack just by eating less and reducing belly fat which in turn reveals your abs. You can get a six pack without even doing any exercises on it.
Hourly rate= busy work Paid by the work= productive work As an hourly rate employee I would always take my time, or look “busy”. For example if I made 4 items or 20 items in one hour I’d rather do less per hour because I’m paid the same. However if I would make $5 per item, of course I would make as many as possible, within quality standards, to make as much money as possible.
I have, wood lathe, start turning wood again, wood lathe burns up within 20 seconds, friend gives his old wood lathe to me. I turn some pieces, wood lathe breaks down, get parts and repair wood lathe, wood lathe breaks down. Get brand new wood lathe, have interested customers, have orders and offer to display in art shop. Covid 19 comes along, art shop closes, flower shop closes so order is canceled. Doing good, making progress, need alcohol, State of California makes law against sell of methyl alcohol, shellac thinner and cleaning agent. Why??? don’t know. I substitute with Rubbing Alcohol. Back to work, I contract Shingles, to fucking painful to use arm. Use rubbing alcohol on arm, back, and chest for shingles relief, movement is to painful, use rubbing alcohol on arm, back and chest, can’t drink it. Fuck.
Disregards the fact we must work for a living thus busy but accomplish many Small things for others…. If given freedom to focus that for their own profit they would be just as successful. Worked 30 years raised two great kids and accomplished much. I personally have little to nothing to call my own because I gave that to my family. Bite me it’s just how this world is. Success us intangible, to those who accumulate it is cumbersome. To me? I am free because I never asked permission to Live as I wanted. Never waited for someone else to make me happy. I made others happy…. by not burdening them with my misconceived notions, I freed them of life’s past mistakes.
Sure, I’ll put my love life, family and work on hold to finish my project that would take around a year to finish with multitasking and around a third of that without. My sarcastic point is, sometimes you just have to multitask. There is nothing productive about trampling over everything else for one goal, that’s actually called being destructive.
I agree that busy does not equal productive, but I disagree that it never equals productive. My life is busy, but it’s busy for the sole purpose of improving myself to the maximum degree. And I have been improving immensely because of it. I think the bigger idea here isn’t really that busy never equals productive, but more that busy may not be fulfilling the goals that you have set for yourself take initiative to reach those goals don’t just dream of reaching them. Ps. I assume he was using hyperbole when saying do 1000 sit ups a day, but don’t actually do that. It will end up injuring you not help you.
I understand it was probably a small comment, but there has to be young people in this audience. Teaching them false truths like doing 1000 situps in the morning will get you a 6pack? Thats crap. Furthermore, a good looking body doesn’t get girls swooning over you! I understand it was a light comment in this article, but it has a much deeper and subliminal meaning. We need to be teaching our boys and young men that a perfect body isn’t something they NEED to attract women.. and things like this certainly don’t help accomplish that goal.
This strikes me as not very useful. It may be true for some, but for the majoity, being busy is outside your control. For example, if you have a 40-hour job and kids, or if your job pays so little that you need three of them, which is true for many, many, many people. Those people are not going to have any free time, nor are they gonna accomplish much beyond bare survival. But that’s not something that can be fixed by time management. It’s a question of resources, of economic justice. In a way, those people are slaves. They don’t have a choice.
Sorry but you have confused busy with disorganised. Busy organized and intelligent people do the list and usually more besides. This is unhelpful advice. Just stick to priority over flourish. To go further you can look at some of the worlds greatest achievements coming from absolute scatter brains. Thus what’s the real objective in this advice?
You basically saying “do what you think is important and ignore anything else”. That’s not how life works: some things you can’t ignore otherwise your life will turn into hell. And setting unrealistic deadlines is really stupid. It will lover quality of your work and cause a lot of stress. I think that’s a great advice for “How to ruin your life” question.
I disagree with this entirely. It’s impossible to build a habit without easy, consistent daily repetition. Sure, reading 5 books at once is too much, but is anyone doing that? It’s important to see a goal, and convert that into a task you do every day that takes 5-10 minutes. Otherwise you just won’t do it.
In a job, if you are assigned 10 things to do.. you can prioritize and work but rarely can you say a ‘no’. Another thing is a task is a task, one can always learn something from each. If there is no option to say a no…it’s better to take it up and do it earnestly. I wish the idea of being productive per this article was more realistic. With greater responsibilities, just 3-4 things in to-do list is absurd.
A little high handed. There’s no such thing as only doing one thing. If you are shopping, will you only get what you need for tomorrow, then have to go back to the same store that’s an hour away 3 times that week because you are trying to be ultra focused and “productive”? Is it “busy” to get everything you think you need from that place even if it’s something you won’t use for a while? There are times to narrow cast and times to broadcast.
The problem is this advice considers all goals to be the same. This advice seems to consider metaphysical goals and physical rational goals to be the same. Rational or containable calculable goals should have a long time and be well thought out. Metaphysical goals like being kind will rarely if ever hit their exact target. So their should be a different expectation and procedures for different types of goals. The best you can do is try an action and take feedback from anyone willing to make an opinion with in rational time. Human societal laws and internal corporate regulations can be considered a goal. Society wants this end result thus we must live this way to meet this goal or end result. If all goals are goals the society will tend to try to legislate metaphysical and warm feeling goals (example kindness gentleness patience.. etc. etc..) and quickly march through the rational calculable goals for the reason of warm feeling and idealism. Nuclear protocols, cdc protocols, transportation protocols, and military standards will be over shortened and be politicized. All human society’s are by nature imperfect to some degree. While the metaphysical goals will be legislated like speak this,, do that.. with all the end goals of being kind or maybe tolerant… these rules will not make society meet its exact goals even with the most complicated standard. A more achievable goal would be one to try to be tolerant, and then take feed back as long as the feedback is reasonable and rational.
Very true. Just use Skyrim as an example of overloading your to do list of quests will only full miscellaneous quests and not help you achieve story line mission quests to complete the game. I learnt this the hard way by overloading so many quests in my first 2 profiles that I had to start a third and only selectively choosing quests to be more productive.
– busy is not productive Busy people have goals but productive ppl have priority Productive people handle the most critical things first Busy people say yes to everything Busy people say no. Having less in ur life leads to more clarity and productive Say no to sidetracks and distractions Say no to things that are stressful Productive people set unrealistic deadlines If u set a goal with no deadline it only gets worse, Productive people have less than 3 things on their to do list
What to do when everything is critical and if multiple requirements come together? Something will end up getting delayed. And the problem with addressing critical things first is that important things that need time and reflection but are not on an immediate deadline don’t get done. Also saying no to work is not an option for many people in the corporate world. You are considered ‘unproductive’ and not accommodating if you say no. I found that even when you try to prioritise critical things new critical things pop up and there is never any time. Especially if the new ‘critical’ things popping up are something that you haven’t had experience dealing with and need time to figure out.
You forget, that sometimes you haven’t got the choice to priorize your tasks. Sometimes you have to take on more than you would normally do to perhaps help other people who are struggeling more than you do yourself. Or something unforseeable happens and you have to leave a task undone and your whole plan for the day is screwed. It is not as simple as you describe it. #dontknowifthegrammarwasright😅
Ugh I just started hating myself, because what the article said is totally true. I always add stuff to my “task list” that aren’t really productive, but I feel a false sense of accomplishment after doing it, especially when there’s a lot, then not doing the actual stuff that mattered because I feel satisfied finishing the easy and useless ones.
What about when you have goals and they are tangled together . Like my goals is to be healthy and save money while reducing my carbon footprint . So I have to eat healthy which means I have to stop eating out which means I have to budget my money to buy food for home but I also have to do it in a way where I dont make too much trash while keeping my health and my wallet full and my trash can empty . So how do you move from one goal to another if they all are aligned with each other ?
I agree with most of the stuff said in article, especially the main point, Busy ≠ Productive. But I think prioritisation is not that simple. Blocking out pending stuff to focus on priorities might lead many tasks never being dealt with. Brute Force does NOT guarantee success, even in case of something as physical fitness. One advice which I have found genuinely working is that when you’re stuck on something, don’t keep pushing. Take a break or walk, relax, defocus and address the task again after sometime. Have seen wonders happening with this.
Thank you for this article, this added more knowledge on how to manage my time schedule and self. I always felt busy through the whole weeks (working for almost 13-14 hours a day*) with jobs and always tired on the weekend with so many things I wanted to worked on, but always ended up not doing them. *If anyone ask about my work hours, I worked in an outsource studio with weekly deadlines for tv series. Unrealistic? Well making VFX commercials and working in film industry has more crunch hours than this.
Man! This is easier said then done. I’ve been working on being more productive for the past 2 years and while its true, you should limit yourself to just 3 major tasks per day, its hard to do because life emergencies and loose ends keep showing up and either I put them off to do more important work while they gnaw at me internally and sometimes leads to worse problems or I take them head on in the hopes that once they’re done, I’ll be free to focus on the important stuff again. Only problem is that the loose end that promised it would be dealt with quickly and smoothly turns into a deep deep rabbit hole I don’t come out of for weeks and sometimes months because it turned out to be much more complicated. That’s where I’m at right now. I have plans to get back into my business plans but I can’t move on until I tie up just a few loose ends. But the loose ends never end. I need a way to stay on top of loose ends everyday and still priorities my plans, goals and dreams.
I disagree with your term ‘unrealistic goals’. Your explanation (packing a suitcase) is that it is in fact realistic to pack a suitcase in 10 minutes. The argument is would it be of the same quality? Productive people do not sacrifice quality for speed. A productive person will set a goal for completion that is realistic but identifies the minimum required time to achieve the task to maximum required quality. Once that timescale is identified ‘productivity’ is the ability to meet the targets.