Being Busy: The Pros and Cons

Being busy is a wonderful thing. It both prevents stress and causes it all at once. It just depends on how well you're able to balance all your tasks and how much you truly enjoy what you're doing. By "busy," I mean busy as in: Leave the house before 6 AM and not return until past 7 PM busy. As someone who is well-versed in being very busy, I thought I'd compile a list of pros and cons to being busy, as well as tips as to how you can effectively be busy while staying calm, cool, and collected. Or decide to not be busy at all! The choice is yours.

The Cons

I'll just lay out the negatives to start, so you can clearly understand what's in store for busyness if it's right for you.

1. Stress

It doesn't matter how much you love something and want it to fill up your life, you will inevitably get stressed. There's good stress and bad stress. You'll find both. Having a compact schedule can feel great because you're doing so much of what you love. But at times it can also be super stressful because you might feel like you don't have time for other things you also might love... like family.

Pro Tip: Don't overbook.

It's super easy to overbook yourself because there's so much to do! Trust me I know what it's like. When you're planning out your weeks always try to stay mindful about what you have to make time for, like eating, sleeping, and staying sane.

2. Missing Opportunities

Being busy and having many different interests certainly fills up my schedule quickly. What can be frustrating is when something really exciting comes along like an event or social gathering, but because of prior commitments, you have to say no. I've lost a few sweet opportunities because of already being booked.

Pro Tip: Choose your commitments wisely.

The biggest way to avoid letdown and situations like this is essentially to make sure you pick your poison wisely. Make sure that your main focus is worth the sacrifices in the end. And don't be afraid to simply say yes and rearrange some other things because you will definitely regret not taking some opportunities.

The Pros

There are some great upsides to being busy. If you've made it this far, thank you! Here's the positive stuff you've been waiting for.

1. Being busy leaves no time for boredom.

When I am bored, I am at my lowest level and often find myself a little depressed. But when I'm always executing and doing fun things, my mind is happy. The biggest thing for me is to always stay in motion. Busyness allows my brain to be stimulated and lets my creativity flow. Whereas being bored breaks me down internally.

2. Achievement

Along with the boredom and creativity side of things is the sense of achievement you can get from being busy. After crushing a solid day of work, school, and exercise I feel great. Routine helps too as once you get used to being busy you're able to do it more frequently and can execute awesome things every single day. So the main thing is getting that initial feeling of accomplishment, and remembering how much better it is than not executing.

3. All-Round Success

In general, being effectively busy can lead to some great success. Because getting into a routine, constantly executing, and staying creative will get you in the right mindset. To me success is being happy and doing what I love, so when I'm busy doing what I love and executing, I'm being successful.

Final Thoughts

Being busy is subjective. As long as your day is filled with doing what you love, that's what matters. If you live a hectic life like I do, be sure to take the proper cautions when planning out your days and weeks because it's easy to get lost or sidetracked and overbooked. Busyness has so many upsides, though, and I highly encourage you to get moving. It will change your life for good.