Is it busyness or mental load?

How are you, busy?

We hate to betray our generation, but you’re probably not actually as busy as your parents and grandparents were. While it may seem that life is moving at warp speed, the amount we work has decreased since the 1960s. In a surprising twist, technology may have actually delivered on its promise of giving us more time. 

Granted, that spare time hasn’t been shared equally. Because women now juggle more paid work alongside unpaid labour, we only have 17 extra free minutes a day. A small gain, but a gain nonetheless. We’ll leave you to negotiate a fairer household load, while we dig into why it feels like we have more on our plates than ever.

Busyness or bandwidth?

Busyness isn’t just about how much we do, it’s also the mental bandwidth we’re using – often unnecessarily. Many of us weigh ourselves down with the mental load of all the stuff we could and should be doing. Think about how much time you spend worrying about:

The email you haven’t replied to yet.

The hard conversation you need to have.

The school sports day you missed.

The unfair decision you landed on the wrong side of.

The big piece of work you really should have started by now.

The friends you really should catch up with.

The worst-case scenario – before knowing if it’ll even happen.

None of that mental gymnastics actually achieves anything. It doesn’t take you closer to your goals, tick off any tasks or deliver on your priorities. What it does do, though, is add to a sense of constant cognitive clutter. 

Your brain is full, even if your calendar isn’t. 
 

3 ways to reclaim your headspace

Like it or not, busyness is still a badge of honour. It serves our egos by making us feel important, needed and impactful. 

When we mistake busyness for effectiveness, it becomes quite a hard habit to break. But break it we must. Because if microwaves, computers and Uber Eats have given us an extra 17 minutes of leisure time, we shouldn’t spend ten times as much doing busy work in our brains.

So, here are three easy ways to quiet some of that mental weight so you have time to, you know, rest.

1. Challenge your perception

Lawyers infamously charge in 15-minute increments. Painful if you’re fitting the bill, but super useful for tracking the time you’re actually productive. Because a significant study suggests we vastly overestimate how much we work.

If you want to challenge your perception of how much you achieve, act like a lawyer. Note down everything you do in a day, and you may well be surprised by all the time that’s chewed up scrolling, eating, chatting, and staring blankly at a screen.

If you’re productive for 6 hours a day, how can you intentionally design it so that the rest of your time isn’t unconsciously frittered away?

2. Audit your mental load

Write down everything you’re thinking about. All those “what ifs” and “I shoulds” should either be turned into tasks or left on the piece of paper.

We know that’s easier said than done. So if your brain is stuck in a constant cycle of scenario planning, start by changing your language. Instead of defaulting to “I’m busy”, say “my brain is full” – words are important, and it’s helpful to distinguish between having a lot on your plate and a lot on your mind.

3. Beat procrastination

If you’ve read our deep dive into procrastination, you’ll know how often our brains work against us. It’s easy to spend more time thinking about doing something than we do actually doing it. Case in point: Nat has moved a calendar block for ‘sorting insurance’ about 10 times in the last week. When she finally did it, it took 2 minutes. 🙄

If you find yourself doing the same, check out our simple tips for tackling procrastination.

Clear out the mental clutter

The mental burden is real, and it has a real impact on our energy and performance. If your brain space is taken up with all the stuff you should, could, or worry about doing, you have less of it left to do the doing.

So, next time you catch yourself saying, “I’m so busy,” pause and ask yourself: Is it my plate, or my headspace that’s too cluttered?