Tim Chester on Busyness
2008 February 17
Tim Chester is co-author of Total Church
- Have you ever been irritated because there was a queue at the supermarket till?
- Do you regularly work thirty minutes a day longer than your contracted hours?
- Do you check work emails and phone messages at home?
- Has anyone ever said to you: ‘I didn’t want to trouble you because I know how busy you are’?
- Do your family or friends complain about not getting time with you?
- If tomorrow evening was unexpectedly freed up, would you use it to work or do a household chore?
- Do you often feel tired during the day or do your find your neck and shoulders aching?
- Do you often exceed the speed limit while driving?
If you mainly answered ‘yes’ then maybe you have a busyness problem.
- Over a third of people agree that ‘in the evenings I am so tired I just fall asleep on the sofa’ (Jones, 2003).
- One in five men has visited the doctor with work-related stress.
- Sixty percent of us feel our workloads are sometimes out of control. One in five feel this way most of the time.
My name is Josh. I.Have.A.Busyness.Problem.
Recently I’ve become aware of how I tend to let people know just how busy I am. I can’t easily drift from letting people know how I’m doing to complaining about how busy I am…as if they’re not busy too?!
I honestly believe that most of us feel overly busy because we poorly manage our time. Exercise and rest are usually the first things to go out the window when we feel under pressure, but they could actually be the remedy. Ok. I’m done preaching to myself.