Replace Pace With Space

Busyness. We need to be busy to earn our livelihoods, take care of our families and run the errands that we need to. But before we realise, this busyness takes over. Takes over, not just our time, but sometimes, our lives! We find ourselves, running, really hard , always in mindless motion towards something in the future, and this race to nowhere overtakes life. The normal question “How are you”, the answer to which was mostly “Fine”, now gets answered with “BUSY”!!

I’m so busy… I don’t know if I found a rope or lost my horse

Truth is, a lot of us, have started wearing busyness as a badge of honour. Those numerous meetings, futile arguments, million distractions and procrastinations are all cloaked under one word now, “Busy”!A new study concluded that people who are always busy, are perceived as more important!

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, based on a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, the trio argue that “busyness” is an actual way people signal their importance — and that marketers are responding to it. Much as, it’s all, just a farce!

The Media and Advertising are also playing a critical role in feeding the false notion by shifting their content to celebrate busyness. The ads now focus on super busy people, rushing against time to somehow manage a small vacation or some stolen moments of quiet and calm.

A Harvard Study on the Perceptions Around Busyness

We think that the shift from leisure-as-status to busyness-as-status may be linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economies. In such economies, individuals who possess the human capital characteristics that employers or clients value (e.g., competence and ambition) are expected to be in high demand and short supply on the job market. Thus, by telling others that we are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status. Research: Why Americans Are So Impressed by Busyness – Harvard Business Review

Do Less and Achieve More

In reality, the more we pace, lesser is the space, and lesser the outcome! What we need to do is to create FOCUS. We need to replace the pace, with slow which is filled with focussed work, Creativity, Innovation and purposeful activities.

Empower Yourself with More Mind Space

To replace the Pace with Space, we need to do LESS, to achieve much MORE. We need to be Mindfully Present and make considered choices leading to clear priorities. This is beautifully captured by Marc lesser in his simple, honest and profound book LESS, where he gives us a guide to finding spaciousness in the only place it truly exists: inside our own mind, heart, and life.

So slow down, and become present, to observe your distractions, let them go, creating a fertile space in your mind to empower yourself with Creativity!

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