How often do you hear someone say, “I can’t make it to the meeting, I am busy.” Or, “sorry for missing the appointment, I was busy.”
In this fast pace world, people rushed through their lives, making busy excuses for the things they missed. “Being busy” is a common refrain, so common we failed to realize the real implications of making a busy excuse.
Preceived reasons why we are busy
There are many perceived reasons which made us busy. I use the term “preceived reasons”, because these are things that kept us occupied, took up our time and prevented us from doing something else. Thereafter, we mistakenly, or unjustifiably use a busy excuse, when we find ourselves unable to meet another obligation.
I will cite the archetypical example of father and son, as so eloquently narrated by the song Cat’s in the Cradle.
The song began with the father, who couldn’t find time for his son, as he was busy with his work and travels. Later, the table was turned, after the son grew up and became too preoccupied with his own life to spend time with his father.
Here, I am not discussion the implications, nor examining the lessons we could all learn from this song. Rather, I am looking specifically at the “busy excuses” when the father declined to spend time with his son, and vice versa. And really, these are busy excuses that are perceived, not real.
Real reasons why we are busy
Here are the few real reasons why we are busy. Perhaps the list is not exhaustive, but it illustrate the point I am trying to make.
We are bad in prioritizing out tasks.
I don’t think this is a skill that parents consciously taught their children, or something taught in schools. As a child grew, she might pick up prioritizing her tasks unconsciously. Sometimes, we learned it from management courses, but this inevitably target more on work or business priortization. Rather, I think prioritizing one’s life is what is most important, and a skill which is not formally taught.
The fact is, everyone has the same 24 hours each day, and the same 7 days a week. We are simply bad at judging what tasks are urgent and important, and what tasks could be put to later.
We are too caught up with what we are doing at that particular moment.
This is a common trap everyone falls into. We are doing something which took up all our attention. It could be internal e.g. we enjoy doing it, or external e.g. pressure from a boss/corporate culture at work.
Too caught up with the present moment, we push away everything else competing for our attention and time.
We make a deliberate easy excuse.
Sometimes, we simply don’t enjoy doing something, and we made a deliberate busy excuse to get out of it. For instance, you colleague asked you to look into something at work, and really you think she was just passing the buck. But not wanting to be rude and point out your thoughts, you gave a busy excuse. Maybe, your false busy excuse could be justified in this instance. But could you really be sure without being frank? What about if a loved one asked you for something? Should you be honestly rude or should you use a false busy excuse too?
The moral of the story
So, where does this leave us? It would be ideal if life planning and priortization is a formal subject that can be taught. Maybe it is, but I for one, am not qualified to comment on this. Until then, we should realized that a busy excuse is almost always comes from negativity within us.
Hence, a life motto I have adopted is this: always stop and think before giving a busy excuse. It might not always work out, but I would definitely try my best.
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