"Can Busyness Be Laziness?"

A good friend of mine recently wrote an article about a quote she had once heard, “busyness is laziness”.  The two seem very incongruent.  A lazy person is often depicted as someone who accomplishes very little and lies around watching television and taking naps, and we often characterize a busy person as someone who is accomplished- a go-getter or a doer. So how can busyness be laziness?

The explanation for this remark makes sense:   Busyness means filling your life up with a million little things, none of which get you to where you want to be.  This type of “plowing through life” masquerades as productivity, but is really ineffectiveness.  Busyness is laziness because it is easy to just let “demands” control your day, but it’s much more difficult to take time to plan strategic effort thoughtfully … to stop and plan your day and weed out what doesn’t need to be done in order to only focus on what is most important.  I have realized that busyness CAN BE laziness. 

While we might enjoy being busy, there is something to be said for not having a full agenda all the time, especially one filled with things that are not a priority to us.  One of my favorite quotes comes from Sue Bender, a writer who studies the Amish community.  She agrees that busyness is laziness, she just says it differently:

Lists engulf us, creating the illusion that our lives are full.

What could you take away from your list that might make a difference today?


Jill Personius