I hear the phrase “I’m so busy” or “We’re so busy” so often that I’ve lost count. Heck, I’m prone to use the phrase from time to time. Are people busier today than years past? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Why? I hear/use the b-word so often these days that I start to wonder if we’re all so busy or if it just seems like we’re that busy.

Think about it. We have so much technology at our disposal that we should have more time on our hands right? What I mean is, shouldn’t we be more efficient today than we were in the 1950s or 1960s? Have we picked up more activities to fill in the time we must have gained over the years? I think the technology is partially to blame. We did gain efficiency with computers and email, but we’ve also created time sucking activities like facebook, online games, etc.

Busy must be a relative term. When you’re single, you think busy is having something to do each night of the week or having a few nights of partying every week. Then, when you’re married, you realize you weren’t really that busy when you were single. You now have other activities to attend because you now have two people to worry about. Finally, once you have kids, you realize that you were NEVER busy before because your life is now total chaos. The chaos grows exponentially as you have more children. I’ve had many friends describe this busy conundrum in the same manner.

I then think back to what it was like for my parents when I was a kid. My sister and I played many sports and participated in various other activities as kids. They obviously had many of the same busy issues to overcome, but I guess as a kid you don’t see things in that light.

I don’t have a problem with being extremely busy, but I do have a problem when busy becomes the reason I am unable to spend time with family and friends. I guess that just means that I have to enjoy the time spent when we’ve all made time in our busy lives.