It is easy to bury yourself in your work. It is easy to be busy, too. Being busy is nothing to be proud of, and most people who are busy aren’t necessarily productive.
Life can be very full on if you don’t stop once in a while and recalibrate. There are too many people, from CEO’s to admin staff that need to take a goddamn chill pill and look at their health for once. It is no excuse that work is too full on and you can’t get to the gym. Or you don’t have enough time to meditate. Or you can’t turn everything off and spend a lovely evening or a whole day with your beautiful partner.
What are you working for? Are you too busy building a life that you want to live, that you forgot to notice that right now you are living a life? If you’re pulling 80 hours a week in the office, how long can you sustain it? And what is the payoff for working that many hours? When does it stop?
All too often people get caught up with work that they forget about the number one person in the world – themselves.
What happens to the CEO of the company working 80 hours a week every week? She burns out and has a significant nervous breakdown. Cortisol levels increase, and without exercise they never really lower. She has to spend weeks recovering, and what happens to her business while she is in hospital?
It probably falls apart.
There is a story of a farmer who buys a goose. He looks after it and to his delight, notices that it laid a golden egg! The farmer takes the egg, cashes it in and rejoices in his wonderful find. He feeds that goose more and more, and the goose lays more and more golden eggs. The goose turns into an egg laying machine as it keeps pumping out the golden units.
The farmer, blinded with greed, keeps making the goose lay eggs. In only a few months he has a million dollars, all thanks to this goose.
Then, unfortunately, the goose dies. Over worked, stressed and abused it passes away one evening. The farmer, now upset, realises his mistake.
In only a few months he made over a million dollars, But if he had slowed down and taken time to look after the goose, he would have had hundreds of millions of dollars over the goose’s longer lifespan.
Working yourself into an early grave is nothing to be proud of. You need to know when to say no and you need to look after the number one person in this world - you. The world is the farmer and only cares about what it can get out of you now. It’s not bothered about later on. Take the time to exercise, eat clean, look after the ones you love and meditate. If productivity is your goal, having a clear mind will make you more productive, less stressed and your output will be far greater.
Being busy is nothing to be proud of, productivity is what will get you to your goal. Here is a lesson on productivity from Tim Ferriss
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.