Being busy all the time is a habit you made. You can unmake it. | Dan Pontefract

Read more at BigThink.com: Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: https://ift.tt/1qJMX5g Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink The current approach today is essentially we’ve entered into a culture of freneticism—that’s a Big Think word, and that means we’re really busy. But I believe we’ve created the business on ourselves. Ultimately we’ve become distracted by SQUIRREL the next thing that pops into our head or the next thing that pops onto our device or the next thing that pops into our laptop; we’re addressing it. And for some reason we think it’s a good idea to attend to every notification, every want of an employee, every need of a boss. And so we are loading ourselves up with more to do. We are ultimately working on the next thing while we’re doing the current thing at the same time. We think that multitasking is a badge of honor. We think that “do more with less” is the corporate mantra that’s going to take us to gold medal plates. And it’s frightening. And what we need to do is to take a step back and say, “How did we get here, is it good, and what’s in store for the future?” We go from one meeting to another. We’re in a peripatetic state. We’re just ultimately going from the 8:00 to the 9:00 to the 10:00 to the 11:00. We used to go out for lunch and pause, but now we go get lunch, we bring it to our desk and we stare at another device trying to catch up with everything we haven’t done between 8:00 and 12:00, and then we go to the next meeting at 1:00, and we end up at 5:00. And then maybe we pick up the kids or we’ve got to go to soccer practice. And instead of looking at the soccer practice and the kids at that soccer practice we’re looking at our device, because there’s eight more texts and 15 more emails that have come in. And now it’s 7:00 and you’ve got to make dinner. And at 7:00 and it’s dinner you’re like “Well, I don’t actually know how to make dinner anymore” so you order. And then while you’re ordering you’re attending to all your social streams.You’re saying “Oh! Well, I forgot how much I like dopamine, so I like those red things on my phone and my laptop that say hey, I’ve got eight likes on Instagram and 24 likes on Facebook. Maybe I’ll post more.” And then all of a sudden 16 more emails come in and you’ve got 14 more tasks to do because now you’re at 9:00. “Well, I don’t know, maybe I should just watch something”.