#busyness #activity #happiness #ActiveLife #work #jobs
We have a love/hate relationship with busyness.
In his article, “Is Life Better When You Are Busy,” Scott H. Young says he’s happiest when he’s “ever –so-slightly too busy.”
Young talks about the scale from boredom to burned out. He says some seem happier when closer to “relaxed,” while others require more activity for happiness. “Different people seem to have dials set differently for the optimal level of stimulation,” the article says.
Busyness can be a convenient excuse for saying no to something or someone. Don’t want to visit your mother-in-law? Say you are too busy. Don’t want to volunteer for a worthy cause? Say you are too busy.
Busyness, in other words, gives your “no” a cover.
If you are indeed busy, are you busy doing the right things? Leadership expert Darren Hardy asked preacher Joel Osteen what the most important part of his service/TV show was. Osteen replied that it was the 20 minutes he took to give his sermon or homily.
Hardy advised him to spend most of his time preparing for those 20 minutes, and delegate other tasks to other people.
Other companies/employers want their workers to concentrate on the most productive – read, money-making for the company – activities.
But, you may know some employees who find other activities to stay busy, so they can avoid the most productive tasks.
So, all this begs the questions: How busy are you? Are you happiest when you are the busiest? Are you so overwhelmed with tasks that you fear a meltdown coming? Are the things that keep you busy worth the effort in the scheme of your life?
Young’s essay offers three ways to make the busyness of your life more fulfilling. First, adjust your expectations. “Expecting too much from yourself (or too little) is a stress,” he writes.
Second, find more satisfying work, friends and hobbies. “If you spend a lot of time doing things that don’t satisfy you … it can feel like you have too little time,” he writes.
Third, create more filters and constraints. “When the flow of upcoming opportunities is a trickle, we feel restless and bored,” he writes. Conversely, when the flow is a waterfall, one can feel overwhelmed, he says.
In short, we are happiest when we do things. Even on vacation, we feel better with more recreation than rest. We love activities that make us happy.
Make your busyness count. Concentrate on activities that produce the life you want. Do things that, even if they seem tedious now, will pay off later. That’s goal-setting.
There are tasks we can’t really avoid, short of paying someone else to do them. Housecleaning may be one of those for you. But try to make a conscious effort to spend the bulk of your time on rewarding tasks, and you are certain to stay happy.
Active might be a better word than busy here. Stay active. Stay happy.
Peter
Tag Archives: boredom
FEAR OF RETIREMENT
#retirement #FearOfRetirement #boredom #RetirementFinancing
Are you afraid of retirement?
Does the thought of not working anymore create anxiety?
Are you postponing retirement, even though you know you should retire, because of your fear?
There may be lots of reasons people fear retirement. The biggest, perhaps, is financial. Perhaps loss of a paycheck would crush you. Perhaps you haven’t saved enough, and your pension, if you are lucky enough to have one, plus Social Security may not be enough for you to live the way you want.
Another fear may be boredom. You may say things like, “what am I going to do with myself?” Perhaps you don’t have a hobby or hobbies to occupy your time. Perhaps you fear what you might become by just hanging out, day in and day out.
Retirement experts have advice on both counts. Most say that retirement without the financial backing would be difficult. One way to determine whether you have enough to retire on is to look at your savings. Without touching your principal, are the dividends, interest and capital gains those savings produce, combined with other income such as a pension or Social Security, be enough for you to live on?
When we talk about “living” in retirement, it should be more than just survival. You should be able to have the money to do things you like to do, perhaps things you never had time to do while you were working.
If you think about this while you are young, you can plan accordingly. If you are older, and are at or close to a reasonable retirement age, and believe you won’t be financially secure in retirement, you may as well keep working as long as your employer will keep you. Remember, though, that you could walk into work one day, and be shown the door.
Let’s examine the time factor. If you believe you’ll be bored in retirement, there are many activities available to occupy your time. There are countless volunteer opportunities, for example. Before you retire, find an activity that would interest you. There should be no reason anyone has difficulty occupying his time.
There are some solutions that would both occupy your time and give you a potentially great income. To check out one of the best, message me.
In this day and age, retirement decisions are often made FOR people. Employers who reorganize, downsize or otherwise want older workers gone use many tactics to get people to leave. If they don’t leave voluntarily, the employer will find some reason to terminate them. Most employees don’t have recourse against the employer, and most older workers will have trouble finding new employment in their professional fields.
Older workers are supposed to be protected by labor laws, but creative employers will find ways to force them out.
The lesson in all this is that one should prepare for retirement as soon as he starts his career. Unlike decades ago, when job security was more prevalent, there is no real job security in any field today. A worker is one reorganization, or one bad manager, away from a dead career.
If you can work until you want to leave on your terms, you are among the very fortunate. More than likely, your retirement decision will be made for you.
If you are at a good retirement age and fear retirement, you may be wise – especially if you see things in your workplace that seem stacked against you – to retire as soon as you are able. Know that it won’t be hard to find things to occupy your time. In fact, you’ll probably find it amazing that you had time to work.
Peter