The Disease of Busy

I recently spoke to a group of underclassmen about navigating their way through college. We all know someone who is so busy and loves to talk about how busy they are. Sometimes these people are actually busy and are just blowing off steam when they tell you how busy they are. However, more often than not, these people are boasting about their busyness so that their unlucky listener will hopefully pity them for having so much on their plate while also admiring them for being such a workaholic. These people seem to always be busy but they also often do not get much meaningful work done. Don’t fall for it. Don’t make the mistake that a lot of underclassmen make by aspiring to be “busy”.

The second theme I discussed is that in order to accomplish great things, you must understand that you will have to make tradeoffs. The common advice espoused by many is that in order to be successful, you need to work harder and sacrifice more. While this might be true to some extent, such thinking leads one to expect a linear relationship between hard work, sacrifice, and success. This is hardly true in reality as many people come to realize that all the input we give does not always result in the desired output. A more accurate, and I think empowering, way to view the journey to success is that of making tradeoffs. Whether it’s taking on an internship, focusing on grades, investing in a new friendship, joining a student organization, attending to family matters, or focusing on personal hobbies, you will have to make trade-offs. Making tradeoffs is about understanding that you can do it all, just not all at once. There will be days where you will have to say ‘no’ to a party in order to prepare for an internship and days where you will have to sacrifice school work to attend to personal matters. The “busy” people may tell you that you can do it all, all the time, but attempting to multitask your way through life will create poor results overall. Instead of being a “busy” person, choose to be a person who understands that you can achieve greatness in many parts of your life by making the right tradeoffs for you at every step of the journey.

Trade “busy” for your own definition of success.