98 Quotes About Busyness

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

A person can hurry through or sleep walk through life, but whenever they stop to catch their breath or awaken from a long nap, they will find apprehension, disquiet, and fretfulness waiting their directed attention.

I don't have any talent for vacations.

I once heard someone say we are addicted to busyness and activity. When we look all around us, that statement seems to be pretty dead on. Busyness certainly does not mean progress. It certainly does not mean productivity either. I think one of the traps we can fall into in business is the allusion that what people think we are accomplishing is really what we are accomplishing. All of us must learn the fine art of learning to work smarter and not just harder, productively and not more actively.

With text messaging and e-mails buzzing in our pockets, our constant availability for phone calls, and hot new apps and social media on our phones, we are more distracted, more unfocused and more enmeshed in sweating the small stuff than ever before. And this leads to many of us feeling like we're sprinting every day but really not getting anywhere.

It's surprising how much free time and productivity you gain when you lose the busyness in your mind.

Be strategic about productivity—do less exceptionally well, instead of doing more in an average way.

Perhaps, it is not necessary to have so many things. Perhaps, it is not necessary to do so many things. Do we really need it all? Or are we drowning ourselves in things and busyness?

Sometimes we feel that the busier we are, the more important we are--as though our busyness defines our worth...We can spend a lifetime whirling about at a feverish pace, checking off list after list of things that in the end really don't matter.That we do a lot may not be so important. That we focus the energy of our minds, our hearts, and our souls on those things of eternal significance--that is essential.--Joseph B. Wirthlin