This morning I woke up, spontaneously mulling over work. After all, there are still some loose ends to which I need to formulate answers. And as always, time is running out. I start the day with my cellphone in my hand, constantly searching for new emails or notifications. Once at work, the laptop takes over from my smartphone and dozens of tabs and applications stare me straight in the eye, still open from yesterday. And so it goes, day after day. I no longer get around to all my tasks within regular working hours, fortunately there is extra time in the evening. Only I forget that after the evening session with my family, the energy runs out and I am too tired to continue working. So it moves on to tomorrow. To a new day, on the same merry-go-round.

This is not an argument to just give up. On the contrary, our diverse society is also immensely challenging. Yet we mustn’t lose ourselves in this environment.
This is, unfortunately, my story. Like many people around me, I am busy, too busy. I am an entrepreneur (although I am actually a glorified employee) living and working in an environment full of opportunities, in a crowded market of supply and demand, in a work environment with demanding colleagues. Everyone demands my attention, everything is a priority. And that’s just talking about my work environment!

I am not alone; all of us slide along almost mindlessly in the daily wave of to-do’s. Our lives have become significantly more complex, even compared to five years ago. We must pay more attention to a greater number of information sources to do our jobs well, to learn, to be a parent or even to be entertained.

The question is, how can we as humans, who as evolutionary beings had thousands of years to form in a relatively stable setting, reinvent ourselves at record speed to an environment that imposed itself on our society roughly fifty years ago, an environment still growing and evolving exponentially? How can we masterfully deal with a growth economy in which everything is becoming more and more complex and demanding, every word cries out for our attention, and everyone expects you to get everything done yesterday? The answer is simple: not. Even finishing two tasks at once doesn’t work. And so we rake all our work into an ever-increasing pile.

Now, this is not an argument to just give up. On the contrary, our diverse society is also enormously challenging. Only we must not lose ourselves in this environment.

I read a lot, often about new technologies, business management and innovative strategies, but also books that serve to move me forward as a human being, the self-help type of books so to speak. Usually these types of books teach me little new, this book was different. ‘Never Again Too Busy’ by Tony Crabbe didn’t change my life, but it did open my eyes to the way I, like so many of us, am mismanaging my work and social life. In short, everything I describe above.

Crabbe describes things that we do, in fact, know but ignore time and again. Things that we dismiss as action items until we (n)ever have time for them. However, to reduce the day-to-day pressure, there are some things we need to apply to ourselves. They seem like simple points, but implementing them is the big challenge.

Take emails, for example. Opening the mailbox is a routine I start almost every day. It is my window to the world. What’s alive? What opportunities are there? Who desires what from me?

In the morning however, I am at my best. I am still fresh and energetic and set myself up to have a productive day by slimming down that mailbox. I am genuinely happy when I can reduce the number of unread emails in my mailbox to 30! At the end of that day, only emails have been added. Every task I finish, every reply I formulate only creates more work.

Reading this book made me realize that this way of thinking is inherently wrong. An entire day, between meetings and client visits, I handle emails. But at the end of that day, all I’ve added are emails. Every task I complete, every response I formulate only creates more work. Agreed, emails can’t be ignored. But why do I spend the most productive part of my day replying to emails? Meanwhile, I realize that the things that matter more always take a back seat, in my case strategic thinking, formulating team plans or organizing social events.

A “free moment” in the car allows me a moment to think. Suppose I send you an e-mail asking you to check something. You get that email, read it, put it on hold for a while because you have more important things to do, and two days later you realize you still had to reply to me. In your reply, I read that you are busy and look at this as soon as possible. It makes you feel uncomfortable because something is a “loose end” in your to-do list and it makes me feel uncomfortable because not only is that also a “loose end” with me, I expect an answer before I can move on. I’ll leave the nature or importance of that email aside but it does illustrate how easy and free something like sending an email is. That system seems wrong to me. It creates endless frustration.

What if we made sending emails a paying business? You pay to have someone read your e-mail. And if he reads it, you could possibly earn back your credits. Maybe you’d think better before sending an e-mail and your mailbox would slim down on its own.

Now anyway, I got a lot out of this book and there are things I really try to apply to my day-to-day busy life. Evidently it is not, such a thing is never a black and white process. Life is laced with necessary tasks, drudgery and contingencies that you have to deal with willy-nilly. There is no book, coach or friend that can completely relieve you of that drudgery. Unless you want to live in the woods as an ascetic, there is no such thing in our living world. But it doesn’t have to. In my opinion, you need a healthy busyness, a healthy stress, to stay sharp and to become stronger as a human being by learning from our mistakes. But in the midst of that busyness, I need a point of rest. A point where I can go when things get too much and where I can put into perspective my mostly futile feelings of guilt (of not having finished something properly or sufficiently). And besides that, we steadily do what we are good at and hope to make a difference in the long run.

‘All our lives we as human beings are in search of freedom,’ is a quote that has stayed with me for a long time. I love doing my job, I am grateful for the opportunities I get, the colleagues and the work environment. I am very satisfied with my social life. But I am busy. Too busy. And maybe I’m also looking for freedom. Tony Crabbe’s book puts me nicely on the way.