When working to reduce busyness and overload, we tend to focus on our personal schedules. We look at ways to reduce our own “to do” lists. How often do we look at how our actions or inactions create more work and load for others?
Consider the following elements and how they not only impact your own life but how they might be adding to busyness and overload in the lives of the people with whom you work, live, go to church and play.
- Exhaustion. Our own busyness and overload adds to what others need to accomplish when we become too exhausted to keep commitments or fail to complete tasks satisfactorily. By continually working to keep busyness and overload in our own lives at bay, by default we reduce those for others as well. More importantly, living in constant fatigue, stress and overload fails to provide a picture of the freedom that Christ died to bring (Galatians 5:1). Instead, we appear trapped in and resigned to living out lives in the realm of too much.
- Ineffective Communication. Do you fully listen when someone talks, or do you think about all you have to do or want to say? Are your interactions (face-to-face, email, text, Facebook) uplifting and helpful or filled with confusion? Develop the habit of truly listening, and learn to communicate effectively. Also, simply learning to Reduce Email Overload and Frustration goes a long way in promoting effective communication. Pick an area of communication and focus on improving there if for no other reason than to ease the stress and overload another person is experiencing.
- Drama. Do you constantly tell stories about your busy and stressed life? Are your stories filled with exaggeration that stresses busyness? Consider that constant drama may be exhausting to others. How long can you go without saying you’re busy? Can you have a conversation without telling a dramatic story of the events that make every moment of your life exhausting? Purpose to not be someone who brags about being too busy and stressed.
- Nosiness & Gossip. Often, hearing about the pit others find themselves in makes our own pits not seem so miry. When we talk about others problems, our own don’t seem so bad. While that can give a needed perspective switch, it can also backfire by leading us to feel like change in our own lives isn’t necessary. Consider how projection and magnification might exist in your life to the point of causing you to not see needed change in your own life.
- Neediness. Some people just need others to listen to them, and borrowing a friend’s ear certainly has its place and time. Unfortunately, some take this to an extreme and live in a constant state of neediness. Part of refusing to constantly add to others busyness and overload means avoiding being needy and always taking. It means choosing to give, whether by helping in a tangible way or simply by not staying too talk long when the person is obviously busy. Instead, schedule time to vent and talk when both parties can have the mental space to focus.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, Paul gives advice for living that results in respect from others as well as lives that do not put unnecessary burdens on others. His advice? “Live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands.”
A quiet life means a simple life, however you define that, and a simple life comes in small, deliberate steps that add up over time. Not only does a simpler life reduce our own stress, busyness and overload, but it reduces those aspects in the lives of others too. When we are less stressed, busy and not as overloaded, we tend to have the energy to communicate more effectively and to be a source of peace to others, which then allows us and them to progress further along the path to victory over busyness and overload.
Subscribe to Struggle to Victory by Email or 
Subscribe in a reader
Related Reading:
- Simplicity Principles, Part 1 of 5
- Simplicity Principles, Part 2 of 5 – Relatively Simple
- Simplicity Principles, Part 3 of 5 – Joyfully Simple
- Simplicity Principles, Part 4 of 5 – Trapped by Complexity
- Simplicity Principles, Part 5 of 5 – Simplicity Has It’s Drawbacks
- Pursue Simplicity
