Barack Obama Had Time To do an NCAA Bracket Why didn’t You? (Owning Your Busy Problem)

This is one of my favourite Saturdays on the calendar. Me and my 8 loser friends will spend 8-10 hrs drafting a pretend baseball team to compete in a fantasy league that has no tangible prize (other than a trophy which was created) and that only two people have ever won in the 11 years we’ve been doing it because they are just way better at it. (Big ups to Jason and Shane). I am three weeks away from finishing my masters so I have a thesis presentation I really should be working on, I have family responsibilities, work responsibilities, house responsibilities yet I will still get up early on Saturday morning to go hang with the guys.

Fact 1 - I am busy.

Fact 2 - I like these people and I love baseball

Result - I will make a sacrifice of other things to go spend the day with guys and get to follow my fantasy team all year.

‘Too busy’ is probably the most common and lame excuse we hear. You ask someone to do something or to go somewhere with you and they come back with “Sorry I’m just too busy”. In reality they mean “sorry I just don’t want to fit your thing into my schedule right now” but “too busy” sounds more polite. Everyone has choices they make as to what they will or won’t make time for. No one is actually that busy. Change the circumstances or the person who is asking for their time and magically all of a sudden they are not too busy. Funny how we can be “too busy” when a person we don’t like asks us or we get invited to a place we don’t want to go but it all changes when it’s free tickets to a game or a favour for a close friend. Of course we’re all busy. We could probably fill our days twice over with the things we could do. It’s all about choices.

Sadly I think some people really believe that they are just that busy. Usually if you break down the way they actually spend their time you can see that there are hours of the day that have been used for pleasure, relaxing or other purposes, but so many of us walk around carrying this mantra of “I’m too busy” that we become inflexible and sometimes even a bit intolerable. Nobody wants to hear how busy we are, and in reality, nobody really believes you are that busy. We all do it. It’s choices.

* Barack Obama was not too busy to make choices for the NCAA tournament this year but some of my college aged friends told me they were.

* My friends who are international lawyers and investors have season’s tickets to the Raptors but sometimes I feel too busy to catch a game on TV.

Own your busy problem and feel good about the choices you’re making. I’m going to draft fake baseball players tomorrow and I feel great about it. I guess I’m not too busy.