How Being Constantly Busy Affects Your Well-Being
Being busy is frequently regarded as a badge of honour and a measure of self-worth, with a lack of free time considered a clear indicator of social rank.
However, over scheduling yourself can severely impact your emotional and physical health and your capacity to maintain healthy relationships.
Why Do We Enjoy Being Busy?
According to research, an individual’s perceived level of busyness is strongly related to their self-worth and how others perceive their status. Individuals who choose to be busy may feel needed, in demand, and essential, which increases their self-worth.
Material things are no longer the only indicators of one’s social position since there has been a cultural shift in status perception. Individuals who are overworked and have a severe shortage of leisure time are now seen to have a better status.
Are You Using Busyness to Numb Yourself?
Staying busy may be a technique to escape or numb uncomfortable sensations and situations, in addition to relating to feelings of self-worth and status. When you’re overly busy, you can’t pay attention to what’s hurting you or causing you pain beneath the surface.
Busyness vs. Productivity
Being busy and being productive are sometimes misunderstood terms. If you’re busy, you may have a lot on your plate, but you must be more productive and manage your time wisely. Being productive entails being able to complete a task or accomplish something. It is not necessary to be busy to be effective.
What you accomplish determines productivity, whereas how you spend your time determines busyness.
Work-Life Integration
Work-life balance is essential for thriving in a good work and home environment. Work-life balance will look different for each individual, but in general, having a work-life balance means feeling in control and content with how your time is spent.
When your work-life balance is thrown off, you experience burn out, leaving you feeling overworked, weary, and alienated from your social and family lives. A lack of work-life balance also contributes to chronic stress, impacting your mental and physical health.
Influence on Emotional Health
When you glorify and encourage busyness, you may overburden yourself with many tasks, appointments, commitments, and responsibilities. Busyness can cause the following feelings:
- Anxious
- Stressed
- Overwhelmed
- Inadequate
- Sad
- Frustrated
- Angry
- Lonely
- Hopeless
- Incompetent
- Guilty
If you cannot accomplish chores or meet your many obligations, you may feel guilty or as if you have let yourself or others down. If you get your self-worth from being busy and accomplishing things, feeling inadequate can impact your self-perception.
Being extremely busy and exhausted might increase stress and lower self-esteem. This can lead to serious mental health problems like anxiety, sadness, and substance abuse.
Contact a therapist immediately if your busy routine makes you feel any of the above. Online counselling is available from the comfort of your home or office.
Physical Health Effects
Busyness also causes you to sacrifice your physical well-being to complete your responsibilities. You may make rash decisions regarding your daily physical health instead of more deliberate choices. This could involve not prioritising exercise as much as you want or not getting enough sleep. You may overlook or dismiss any physical health issues rather than immediately contact a doctor or therapist.
Excessive busyness can hurt your physical health by causing or exacerbating:
- Muscle tension/pain
- Restlessness
- Insomnia
- Headaches
- Inflammation
- Impaired immune function
- Fatigue
- Change in sex drive
- Digestion problems
- Cardiovascular disease
Relationship Effects
Opportunity constraints leave little room for meaningful connections with others. You may feel alone and lonely; others may feel rejected or angry because you are unavailable. Because of your hectic schedule, your relationships with friends, family, and spouses may deteriorate.
Relationships need time and effort from all parties involved. You may become frustrated and unable to fully participate in your relationships if your responsibilities pull you in several directions.
The Antidote to Busyness
Everyone has their own interpretation of what it means to be overly busy.
Prioritising your health and fitness is critical if you feel overworked, overwhelmed, or burned out. Although shifting your priorities and time may feel challenging, doing so may result in better emotional and physical well-being and more fulfilling connections with your loved ones.
- To connect with yourself, notice your thoughts without judgement, and ground yourself, practise mindfulness. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, this can also help you stop your thoughts from racing.
- Schedule a vacation or staycation for yourself (without activities) to recharge.
- Make spending time with your loved ones a priority. This might make you feel more connected, cherished, and energised.
- Make time every day to appreciate yourself. This could be saying positive affirmations to oneself or writing down one thing you are grateful for daily.
- Establish limits with others and remind yourself that it is acceptable to say “no.” Sacrificing your well-being to overextend yourself might have serious long-term effects.
- Remember that being productive or busy does not give you self-worth. Create a mantra expressing what self-worth means to you or why you love yourself, and attempt to recite it daily.
- Set a reminder on your phone or post a note in your home or office to remind you to breathe and relax.
- Consult a therapist if you have problems with daily activities or realise that your general quality of life has diminished.
- Establish reasonable expectations for how much you can comfortably take on, and be aware that this may alter over time.
- If you use busyness to avoid unpleasant thoughts or feelings, attempt to figure out what you’re afraid of facing. If this seems too much for you, speaking with a therapist who can help you is brilliant.
- Divide your job, busy time, and free time into parts. Always make time for yourself during the day, even if it’s just a little break, and intentionally unplug your work.
You deserve to take time for yourself, whether it’s a whole vacation or short breaks throughout the day. This serves as a crucial reminder to yourself that you are a worthy and valuable person!
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