Staying Busy Is A Waste Of Time: Three ways to make space for stillness

Time is the single resource we are given that is non-renewable. As we witness another turning of the year and the next click on our personal timelines, it is a natural moment to consider our relationship to the concept of time. As my own time reaches into the future, I am aware of how ‘staying busy’ keeps me fractured and disconnected from the present moment.  Being in constant motion, always rushed, often overwhelmed - what if staying busy is not how to maximize time, but is instead the way we waste it? 

Time is non-renewable, but it is malleable.

It has dimensions and it shifts.

We can all acknowledge that we have a cultural addiction to cramming our time with activity, productivity, and quantifiable accomplishments.  Staying busy is how we achieve as many things as possible in as short a time as possible, and our to-do lists are never complete. In our attention economy, our time is now a commodity to be bought, manipulated, and sold with alarming degrees of sophistication. The external forces working against our free, expansive time are legion, and our internal drive to always stay busy may not be the virtuous activity we think it is.  

Busy doing what? This question is actually a spiritual inquiry.

If I stop, does that mean I become irrelevant, unimportant, unaccomplished, and ignored?  How do I meet my purpose if I am not constantly tending to the lists of things to get done?  How can I meet my obligations without staying tightly wound and constantly active? 

As I have allowed these questions to work their way through my soul, my heart, and my entire being over years, I have begun to understand that being busy is like a numbing trance, like an illness.  Stillness and reflection may seem like the enemy of accomplishment and relevance, yet they are the antidote.

Are you brave enough to break the trance and addiction and see what happens?

Can you crack open the structure of your calendars, grids, and lists to find an expansion of time within moments of stillness?

Here are three concepts I am working with this year to help me find the potential within my multiple schedules, obligations, and lists. 

The first concept is managing anxiety.

Nothing robs us of presence, and thus of time, more than anxiety does. Anxiety is an understandable aspect of our humanity. It is rooted in survival, so thank you anxiety. Thank you for keeping us safe from harm. Today, the landscape of threats is constantly evolving and a sense of high alert is always running in the background. The brain still behaves like it always has, translating all of these tiny existential threats to our nervous system as if they are saber-toothed tigers.  This fractures our presence and attention through a thousand small cuts. 

Become aware of how anxiety manifests in your body and throughout your mind.  Bring attention and love to your anxiety and question how your ego and sense of self are straining to stay vigilant against uncomfortable feelings.  Imagine dialing down the tension and allowing your attention to become more full and present. The release of anxiety frees our presence and our time.  Our challenge is to find the modality, whether meditation, walking, medication, or friendship, that allows us to settle and relax into the spaciousness between our obligations. There are a multitude of riches to be found in this state of serenity. 

The second way to bend time is the sabbath.

The sabbath is an element of the architecture of time. It really doesn’t matter which day you pick or how much time you devote to it, so start small. My sabbath is as simple as walking my dog every Saturday morning to the farmers market, but that walk is one of my very favorite, most quiet moments. I luxuriate in the stillness of the morning, excited to make it to the stand that sells farm flowers before they are sold out, drinking a cocada from the medicine family who dream up recipes with spirit as their guide. There is nothing busy about me in that window of time, a weekly ritual of calm and presence.  I treat that time with reverence, leaving screens behind and staying fully present in the moment. A sabbath can be that simple. 

The third consideration is your time-surfing mentors.

Choose a variety of mentors and study how they use their time, how they make choices, how they live. I have mentors who are spiritual, mentors who are professionals, and mentors who are mothers. If you are lost in perpetual productivity and with no model of who you want to be, it can feel ungrounded and aimless – what exactly is the point?  Modeling is a great way to reflect upon and refine how you make your choices, which translates directly to a better use of your attention, presence, and time. Pick someone who is living an epic life in your eyes, and learn.

When you are present, time moves more slowly.  As a child, each summer day stretched full of slow-moving experiences. The space between opening my eyes to the bright light pouring into the window to finally dropping into slumber with legs covered in mosquito bites felt like a year of time compared to the way time moves as an adult.  Imagine the unfolding of time within your day, filled with wonder and curiosity.

See your time as something you hold and craft, gently pulling into expansion. 

From a place of stillness and presence, imagine how you could amplify your work in this world. Everything you do, whether you are an investor like me, or you have a different role in this world, changes when our attention isn’t fractioned and diffused. When you are not busy. 

This year, slow down and attune, take a sabbath and observe, craft your hours and days with grace and love. May your time expand within you.