As an OSW you may be everything from a well-intended problem-solver to a driven and tireless overdeliverer. Both can be personal assets as well as professional attributes; however, an excess of either will wear you down. When this happens, all the signs of busy light up like a Las Vegas marquee.
• Match Made in a Hurry •
Being overscheduled goes together with being busy; it’s a match made in a hurry. Hundreds of clients have shared with me their stories and their unusually creative methods for keeping up with their lives. At first glance, their particular busy habits may seem easy to change. However, the get-it-done attitude that makes the busy ethos so widely accepted is deeply embedded in the OSW ideology.
• OSW Confession: Eating Meals on the Go
I take my frozen Jenny Craig meal out of the freezer in the morning, and while I’m running errands, it sits on the dashboard of my car. By noon it is thawed out and warm enough to eat. It fits right in my lap, so I can continue driving to where I need to get to without stopping somewhere to eat!
Busyness has gone from taking over a few minutes of each day to swallowing the day whole. Once a seemingly innocuous habit, busyness is now a culture, an addictive attraction promising the opportunity to fit in, get ahead, and be the best.
Access to higher education, employment, and flexible motherhood choices don’t automatically equal freedom; rather, they are often a gateway to meetings that can’t be missed, promises that can’t be kept, and schedules that blur the lines between one day and the next. All sorts of corner cutting, which we do just to make things work, eats away at any free time. The imbalance between obligation and expectation results in making personal replenishment a mere footnote to the day, at best.
• OSW Confession: “I Stunk at Being a Room Parent”
My daughter really wanted me to be her room parent, and I really wanted to do it for her, but my job is so demanding that I didn’t know if I could make the time. When I asked another mom in the class to share the role with me, she responded, “That never works. Besides, you should get your priorities straight; your daughter is not going to be this age forever.” I felt like I had been kicked out of a group I didn’t even know I was in. I ended up taking on the room parent job, and I failed miserably. Luckily, my sister went to most of the in-classroom events, but it’s something I’ve always felt bad about; I should have found a way to be there. I’m so good at my job and managing a team of really smart people, but getting twenty second-graders to the science museum escaped me.
I’m busier than a one-legged tap dancer!
• The Road to Overscheduled •
The promise that staying busy will make you part of an elite pack of doers and changemakers is part of the OSW’s indoctrination to busyness. It’s like receiving a wink from an admirer: you feel special but you’re not really sure why, or what it means.
Do you find yourself checking off your long list of to-dos while simultaneously making a new list for the next day? Or multitasking even though you know it’s not helping you get anything done faster? Getting stuff done and being busy feed our sense that, yes, we are important and, yes, we matter. It may not be a conscious thought; in fact, we may really feel that our busy lifestyles are necessary. They’re not. They’re exhausting.
As parents, we spend a minimum of eighteen years raising our children so that they can leave for college or elsewhere. And it often doesn’t stop there; at least once, while in their twenties, most adult children will boomerang back into their childhood bedrooms that we now claim as our home offices.
As professionals, it takes about the same amount of time to build a successful career. And if you’re single and looking for a partner, you may also need to carve out enough time to find a dating site, set up a profile, and then vet, meet, greet, and repeat. It’s a process.
If we put all these efforts on a bucket list, it might look something like this: love, career, family. Sounds reasonable enough, right? But read between the lines, and you’ll find that’s where the trap has been set to keep us dancing the busy dance, on one leg, at double tempo, and with no end to the performance. I’m tired just thinking about what the OSW has planned next.
• OSW Confession: Two Weddings in a Day
I love to be part of what’s happening. I typically book my commitments back-to-back — I like getting a lot done in a day. But because I work full-time and have two kids, I have to find a way to fit all this in without it running into my family time. Weekends are the toughest because my kids have so many sports activities. Once I had two weddings in one day. I went to the church service of one and the reception of the other, and then back to the first so I could be at the reception. Each wedding was so different that I had to have two dresses. I used my Houdini skills to change in the car. I thought it was funny, but my husband thought I was nuts! He asked me why we had to go to both. “Because they expected me to be there, and I didn’t want to let either of them down!” I said. It didn’t seem odd to me at all. I like giving my all and being the best! It’s what I do.
And there you have it — the tribal lyrics of the OSW: Make it all happen, get it done, be the best, and give it your all! And then do it again!
My mother used to say, “I’m busier than a one-legged tap dancer.” I now get what she meant, and I’m sure you do, too. As you can see from the OSW stories in this chapter, many other women are dancing as fast as they can to keep up with the lives they have set in motion. You will find, as you explore the solutions in this book, that uncovering the motivations underneath your busy behavior and mindfully setting boundaries are both key to making optimal use of your best OSW characteristics. You’ll learn how to stop the flow of busy and reset your tempo so you can begin dancing in harmony, not in a hurry.
The Busy Race and the Price of Your Pace
GINNY’S OSW STORY
Ginny was an on-the-go mom. She had a demanding job that required her to attend several midweek meetings, and she traveled for her job one week each month. Her husband traveled as well, and together they were raising three children, all under the age of ten. On parents’ day at her daughter’s school, she sent her best friend to stand in for her. “How did your daughter feel about your not being there?” I asked. “It’s all about outsourcing. I told her that the stand-in “mom” would be much more fun than me. She understands that Mom is busy and that I can’t always be there. I would outsource brushing my teeth if I could!”
If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this chapter, it’s this: You are living a life, not running a race. Slowing the pace so you’re not racing and constantly playing catch-up begins one step at a time. And the first step is to understand what motivates your behavior and the comfort the behavior provides you. Once you do, you can devise some solid solutions and make space for new resourceful habits to take hold.
You’ll begin doing that by exploring the Ten Signs That You Need to Break Up with Busy, which will help you determine what’s underneath your busy habits. It’s time to get in touch with who you are without all that busyness and to begin setting a new pace that feels right for you. In the process, you’ll influence other women to do the same.
• Ten Signs That You Need to Break Up with Busy
1. You frequently opt out of doing something