Too Busy To Read This? That’s Exactly Why You Should!

I want to recommend a fabulous article I just read in the New York Times. If you, or someone you know, is always "too busy"... it is an especially important article to read. It will take you less than 5 minutes beginning to end. Not a bad investment for what could be exactly the medicine you need to make an adjustment to your life. I'm not saying it's a life changer, but it could be a life tweaker.

Below are a couple of my favorite quotes to give you an example of what the article is about.  In the first one, the author theorizes about why people want to be so busy.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

But, he explains why it is so important to unplug every single day.

The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

When is the last time you had a vacation from the world?  When is the last time you sat quietly with no external stimuli?  No iPhone.  No laptop.  No distractions.  Just you and your soul.  The author of the article believes recharging your batteries makes you a better worker.  I agree whole-heartedly.

For the record, while I agree with a vast majority of the article, I vehemently disagree with the author when he supported the idea

that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays.

He loses me here.  He's right.  It does sound like a lunatic notion.  While I can appreciate his romantic wish for a Shangri-La society,  the realist in me knows that this would be a disaster.

Other than that, I'd recommend this article to just about anyone.  The irony is the people who need to read it most...won't have the time.  Do yourself a favor and read this brilliant article.