I have found that because I am doing so much, those activities are controlling me, instead of the other way around. This is where the stress kicks in big time, and all the health reports feature research done on the effects of stress – it has been found to be directly responsible for up to 80% of diseases.

When we are busy, most of us tend to skip the home cooked meals, and go for fast food. Also we will stay up late to get things done, therefore compromising our sleep time. And how important is exercise when we’re busy? It’s not, because we’re too tired rushing around to even think about heading to the gym. I get enough of a work out worrying and coping with everything else!

Occasionally I think about what it’s like to be peaceful, to be quiet. To sit and contemplate the universe. Meditation and soul searching are two things I would love to take up, instead of mediating in squabbles and searching for car keys.

I am beginning to wonder if all this is worth the effort. What would happen if I just stopped doing all this stuff? Then the guilt hits – all those people I would be letting down if I didn’t do all this. Sometimes I find I can’t keep it up, and fail to get things done on time. Then I really beat my self up, and throw my efforts into it even more.

How tiring this is! I often don’t have the time or energy to spend just being with my kids or friends. All the important things are shoved to one side in order to do the immediate things, which may not be all that important but they are there, shouting for attention.

The urgent, demanding things and people get more time than the important. I’m reacting rather than making clear headed decisions on how I want to truly live my life.

To make matters worse, people who are able to handle a bigger load than most are admired. Being able to do more in less time is a virtue. We are all in such a rush, hurrying from here to there, trying to have it all. All at once.

We have added to our busy lives all those time saving conveniences, like microwaves, instant coffee, the Internet and mobile phones. All this so we can cram even more into the little time we have. All this technology is allowing us to do something busy every tick of the clock.

It’s not the fault of technology, or our jobs, or our families. The real problem lies with ourselves. We just haven’t said no often enough. We each expect so much from ourselves, and give so much to others. We do this in exchange for the emotional boost we receive when we are openly admired and praised by others for being so busy, so productive. To some people, being so busy means they are wanted and needed, that they are making a difference.

Being busy could mean that you are happy – if I have a lot on my plate, that means I must be worthwhile and popular. I feel more secure if I have a lot to get through.

When I asked my associates and friends about slowing down, most of them said they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they weren’t so busy all the time. Many agreed they feel important if they can show others how much in demand they are.

I know I am a perfectionist. I feel if I say no to something that others would think I can’t cope. So I keep saying yes, and forcing my already busy schedule to squeeze in another important commitment. Why is it that, even though I’m exhausted from all this running around, the more I do the better I feel about myself?

I often catch myself thinking that I’m the only one who can save the world – that if it wasn’t for me then everything would come to a grinding halt – nothing of any worth would ever get done if I took a day off. I often want to say no, but then I think that if I didn’t offer to help I would be seen as a lazy person who just doesn’t care.

I need to remember that I have choices, and that next time when I am asked to be involved in something, to stop and think FIRST, before I say yes. I have decided that I am going to practise this line whenever someone asks me to help out or do something new: Oh, that’s interesting. Let me think about it for a while.

Next time when anything is offered, or when a request is made, I can just take a breath, and think before committing without a thought, just to keep someone happy in that moment. I know I have a choice. I will make sure I exercise my choices carefully from now on.

Along with this I know I need to organise my life in a better, more useful manner. And this doesn’t mean I am just going to sort out my appointments diary. It means I will focus my energy and attention on the things I value most in my life, and not to work myself up into a guilt trip about stepping away from current commitments.

I have to keep telling myself that the world will still go on without me at the helm of everything. The things I value most are: my husband, my children, my wider family, my friends, my hobbies. Then in order of importance would come: my home, my job (hasn’t that taken a low peg on the list!) my community groups and charity work.

What ever I have forgotten to include on this list isn’t that important, so I can afford to leave it off.

The next big question is how to tell all those groups and people that I am off to live a life fulfilling my self with those people and activities that are of value to me.

I’m going to write down this list of VITALs (Very Important Things About Life) and keep it on the bedside table to remind me of where I want my life focus to be. That my spouse and offspring are the ones who deserve more of my time and energy than anything else.

I may also add to this list some goals – things I have been wanting to achieve over the past few years but have found my self too busy to get to. Like finishing my accountancy studies, travelling, reading more books for pleasure.

I’m sure that if I can keep these VITALs as my focus, then I will always know when I need to say sorry, can’t help this time. I will know that this new cry for help can go to someone else. If it’s not part of my core list of VITALs then I can say no.

Does this sound a bit selfish? If you call looking after your health and sanity, and looking after family peace and harmony, then I suppose it is selfish to plan to say no to a need for help.

I don’t think this is selfish at all. I can be of no help to those who mean the most to me if I run myself ragged trying to help everyone else. My health, my family and my home are more important than anything else. I’m so glad I have finally established these things as my key priorities now, before it’s too late.

Saying no isn’t that big a thing. The last time I said no was last week when my daughter’s gymnastics coach asked me to go to the gym camp as a supervising parent. 3 days of trying to keep 30 girls in hand. I said no thanks, I wont be able to do that. I smiled and walked off.

Important thing to note here: when I said no, the sky did not fall down on my head, the earth did not open up and swallow me whole, and the coach is still being pleasant to me when I drop my daughter off at training.

My instant reaction was – of course I’ll go! But I stopped for a moment and had a quick think and realised what a huge upheaval it would make to my family and to me to go away for 3 days.

I thought, I wish I could say no to this – so I did. I knew I had a choice and I chose the option that suits me and my priorities best. I know that maybe it wont be so easy every time I am asked to do something and I want to.

I want to enjoy my life, I want to be sure that what I am doing I am giving my full attention to, that I will only hand over cake ingredients rather than risking handing over trash.

I know the only thing that stays the same is change – things and situations are always changing. I know I always have a choice to say no. I’m going to enjoy the times where I am free to stand still and watch the flowers, instead of being is such a rush that I never even notice they have grown.

Having laughed to myself about Vicki and how silly busy she is, I began to think about my own busy life.

Wednesday last week I decided I had to do a list of errands – buy a gift then get to the post office and send a parcel to my nephew for his birthday, collect my husband’s shirts from the cleaners, return some long overdue library books, and get to the newsagents to buy the lotto tickets which May, my elderly neighbour, had asked me to get for her.

That was nearly it for my lunch hour, and I hadn’t had anything to eat yet! In the queue for the lotto tickets at the newsagents, I went to pull out my purse from my handbag – and the purse wasn’t there. I hurriedly backtracked to every store I had been to, panicking more with each store that said sorry, no purse here. In the rush to get into the post office, back where I had started my lunch hour, I bumped my shopping bags against the door way.
A hard lump from inside one of the bags told me – there was my purse. I had completely forgotten that in my rush I had just shoved my purse into a shopping bag instead of my handbag. My lunch hour was up, I was nowhere near the office, I hadn’t bought the lotto tickets and I still hadn’t eaten.

All of this, not getting things done, making mistakes, panicking, skipping meals – all because both Vicki & I were trying to do too much in not enough time.

A quick straw poll at the office tells me that nearly every woman I work with has the same, complex life. The only one who doesn’t is Natalie, the office junior, and she is only 16. She hasn’t had time to let her life get complex yet.

The rest of us all try to cram too much in. We have busy jobs to go to each day, houses to keep, kids to chase after, husbands to pacify, family & friends to enjoy, committees and community groups which we support.

The first thing most of us say when we finally get a chance to chat and catch up is: I am sooooo busy!

Now, there is nothing wrong with having a full and busy life, being open to new opportunities and activities. But sometimes it gets to be too much. With so much busy-ness, we often forget that it’s time to say no. In our rush to get everything done we overlook the opportunities to not be involved.

Different things keep us busy in different ways. I know that when the winter sports season starts, my household experiences a high level of perpetual chaos. With 2 older boys doing different sports: one at basketball and one at golf, the 2 younger boys trying out for every sport they come across, plus our young daughter doing gymnastics and ballet – the weekends are manic. Plus weeknights all involve training and classes for their activities – it’s almost impossible to keep up.

In the midst of this, my husband is often away on business, and all his needs must be attended to as well. And would someone please remind me again why I decided to resume my accountancy studies this year?

There is also our dear grandma who needs and enjoys having us keep an eye on her. She needs help with shopping, plus likes to sit and chat over a cuppa several times a week. Then there are her doctor appointments, and she is much happier if one of us is available to sit and wait for her, then drive her home.

This kind of busyness is something we have to just get on with, coping any way we can. I keep telling myself it can’t always be this busy. But it is – I am now experiencing a life where I am perpetually busy, rushing from one thing to the next with hardly taking a breath in between. It’s getting to the point where I am not having a life, my busy lifestyle is controlling who I am and how I think.

I am beginning to realise that with my being so busy, with so many things on the go at once, I am not doing a great of those activites. Rushing around like a headless chook means things are missed and not completed.

Click on the link below to go to Part 3 of Doing Too Much, which will deal with the attitudes to develop and steps to take to sort this out.

The other day, my friend Vicki & I met for a coffee. We hadn’t caught up for a while, and both miraculously managed to cram this coffee into two super busy schedules. We spent most of the time laughing at ourselves for being too busy, and the things which happen when our busy lives start to give us signals to slow down.

Vicki’s story first – of course, she had a super busy day. It involved the usual events of getting her youngest son to kindy and the 2 older boys to high school. Then she raced off to inspect the repairs on a broken window in an investment property. Then off to the shops before heading home to whip the house into shape before collecting her youngest from kindy.

This was all the usual stuff, which normally takes 39 hours a day to complete. While at the shops Vicki remembered she had volunteered to pick up all the ingredients needed for 3 dozen cup cakes which the children at her son’s kindy would bake the next day.

Rushing home with the groceries for dinner and the cup cakes, she fixed a quick sandwich and hurriedly munched while she vacuumed. After a quick swish of the dishes from breakfast Vicki was collecting her things to get out the door again to kindy. On the way out, she grabbed the baking ingredients and shoved them into a shopping bag. She grabbed another bag and emptied the cat’s litter tray into it and headed out to the garbage bin on the way to the car.

Of course, the phone rang just before she shut the back door. So Vicki juggled bags and phone and keys while dealing with further questions from the agent managing the investment property.

Hurriedly she scrawled a note to herself about the phone call, grabbed the bags and rushed out the door, paused long enough to toss the garbage in the bin, leaped into the car and arrived at kindy with seconds to spare.

Recalling how close she came to completely forgetting to buy them, it was with great relief that she was able to hand over the shopping bag of cup cake ingredients to the pre-school teacher, only to find, to her horror that she had handed over a bag of what the cat had left behind. The flour, milk butter and eggs doubtless lay in the garbage bin at home.

This in anyone’s book, is a tale of a woman who does too much. Surely the world is crying out for Vicki to slow down? Taken on their own, none of the things which Vicki does could be termed as hard or time consuming. It’s only when she tries to do them all at once does she run into trouble.

So is your life something like Vicki’s? Take stock of what you are doing to yourself and those around you when you do too much.