One of the most
recurring catchphrases in the 21st century is the word ‘busy’. If
you to want assume an aura of importance, just say you are busy. If you don’t
want people to disturb you tell them you are very busy. If people perceive you
as being too time consuming or they find your company repulsive, they apply the
dismissive wand of being too busy to attend to you.
People tend to
be too busy even for family, friends and even personal time. I have fallen into
that trap myself more than once and I tell you it is not a nice experience.
While it is not bad to be busy especially when you are productively engaged in
something that generates results that are beneficial to not just you alone but
to other people, it becomes negative when it is a ploy to
drive away your attention from real issues; leaving you to dissipate your
energy while chasing many things at the same time with not clear results.
In my university
days, one of my friends Chinonso Arubayi taught me a vital lesson that still
guides some of my decisions;. I was in charge of Public Relations of Bold Concept,
an initiative we started in school then to Build Opinion Leaders with a
Difference and as part of my strategic plans I suggested to the team that we
expand to other campuses at least within the South East and she coolly replied
“Ojisi, we have to grow deep before spreading out”.
Yes one can be
truly busy in the pursuit of certain goals and objectives. On the other hand
too, being busy can be too distracting and it keeps taking you further and
further away from the little things that truly matters. Hence, we become attracted to distractions
and distractions become the real attractions. I have been there severally and
am pretty sure there are many of us who have, and are going through this same
phase.
It is good to
engage the mind, by continuous personal development thereby avoiding mental
laxity. Steve Covey once said “Every
human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will and
creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom . . . the power
to choose, to respond, to change”. Now I find this statement
interesting because in employing these four endowments, we learn how to use our
time and also allocate it to fit in everyone and every sphere of our lives.
For every “busy”
person, there is a yearning for rest, for a pause, for timeout. But in many
cases, these never happen and it is simply because many have crossed the Rubicon
so that they no longer see it as distracting, but rather as an attraction to
which they must constantly strive to capture and sustain.
While it is good
to be engaged in something, remember, if it is not productive then you are busy,
you are just wasting your time!
OjisiEmezie
Speaker,
Compere, Volunteer.
Think it! Believe it!
Work at it! Achieve it!
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