Don’t you love a good acronym? My latest favourite I heard the other week was NETTEL. I read about it in the paper. Nettel stands for ‘Not enough time to enjoy life’. The article profiled couples with small children and full-time jobs that, in a nutshell had very very busy lives.
With a little more than a smattering of contempt, the author of the article noted how these couples ran their lives like a military operation, comparing diaries, outsourcing their drearier household chores and scheduling in catch-ups with friends weeks in advance.
The not-so-subtle implication of the acronym is that you can’t be really busy and enjoy life. Why is filling your life with stuff you like doing and offloading the stuff you don’t, such a bad thing? Well I don’t know about you but I personally think it sounded a pretty great life.
Who said you have to be lying in a hammock to really appreciate the world? People often think that being that busy is a health risk but the reality is being busy is not the problem. It’s only a problem when you’re busy doing things you don’t want to do.
It’s a known medical fact that one of the factors that you need to take into account when you are predicting how long it will take a patient to get over their back pain, or whiplash, or depressive illness is how much they like their job. And that’s irrespective of whether or not the injury is workers’ comp.
There’s a lot of evidence that stress is a health risk. But stress is not the same as being busy. There are many busy people who would not complain they are overly stressed and there are many stressed people who would not say they are overwhelmingly busy.
People who complain they are stressed are often complaining about unwanted demands being put on them, being busy doing things they have no control over. Stressed people may well include your high-flying female executive juggling a full-time job and a house and a family but it could equally include your 50 year old post office clerk who lives at home with his elderly mother.
Far from being a health hazard, there is plenty of research to suggest that being busy doing things you like to do is the lifestyle most likely to bring you both health and happiness.
At a recent medical conference I attended, a leading Australian psychiatrist was talking about depression. He said people with depression in its early stages often thought all their problems would be solved if they could get away and lie on a beach in Queensland for a while (not Queensland specifically but you get the drift).
The fact is, he said, people with early stage depression are actually helped by increasing their activity, focusing on doing things they enjoy, maintaining their job….keeping busy.
Of course not everyone wants to juggle a full-time job, a young family, a fitness regime and a hobby or two. Many might enjoy a little more free time in their day to day lives.
But for those people who thrive on being busy, who would prefer someone else to do their ironing and vacuuming while they enjoy wheeling and dealing, I say go for it.
Smart-arse social commentators who suggest they may not be enjoying life simply because they are ‘too busy’ are just perpetuating an urban myth that ignores the evidence.
No one said you had to be horizontal to smell the roses.