Busy?

Are you too busy to read this entire article? As I observe my own life and the lives of those around me, it seems like we’re all so busy. We keep trying to pack more and more activities into our busy calendars to the point where our calendars fill up months in advance.

I’m not convinced that busyness, by its nature, is intrinsically bad. But busyness in the “wrong” activities can easily distract us from the things which matter the most. A couple years ago, Amy and I began making some huge changes in our lives in order to cut out bad, indifferent, and even some good stuff in order to pursue even better stuff. I have written this article to encourage you to pursue the things which matter most in your life through sharing some of the things we’ve learned from our lives.

Why Are You Busy?

Is it just me, or does it seem like it’s a badge of honor in our culture to be busy?

Me: “How’s it going?”

You: “It’s really busy right now.”

You’ve certainly got that right. You wake up at 5:00am and spend the next three hours getting yourself and everyone else in your family ready for work and school. Then you go to work until 5:00pm, knowing that you have so much more to do, but realizing you need to leave in order to keep your family in order. After driving home, you cook dinner for your family and drive you kids to baseball, softball, soccer, and gymnastics practice. On Saturday, you begin the process of cleaning the house, doing mounds of laundry, and cutting the lawn which seems to grow faster and faster every week. On Sunday mornings, you really want to sleep in, but instead, you rally the troops again to go to church. And then you spend the rest of your Sunday afternoon grocery shopping, finishing the laundry, and getting things ready for the upcoming week. Yeah, I’d say you’re pretty busy. You’re not a busy beaver; you’re busier than a beaver.

Why do you want to be busy? Seriously, I encourage you to ask yourself this question: Why do I want to be busy? Do you think busyness defines how valuable you are? Do you think more busyness equals more accomplishment? Does your busyness allow you to avoid being haunted by your “demons?” Does your busyness pacify the criticism of other people? Or do you have a different reason for wanting to be busy?

Now I’m going to ask you another challenging question: How’s your busyness working out for you? Is your busyness helping you live out your life purpose? Or are you like the average American who doesn’t even know his or her life purpose?

What Is Your Family Mission Statement?

Have you ever heard of a family mission statement? The first time I heard of a family mission statement was while reading a book called Family to Family.[1] In the midst of discussing characteristics of healthy families, the authors presented the idea of developing a family mission statement. A family mission statement describes the purpose of a family. It answers the question: Why does your family exist? I’ll be honest, when I first read the section about developing a family mission statement, I was like, “Are you serious?” It sounded so business-like. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw how important a mission statement was for us.

When Amy and I first got married, we were two separate individuals going in two different directions. Although our purposes for existing had some commonalities, we were not completely in alignment with one another. We didn’t yet know what it looked like to be a family who made decisions as a team rather than two individuals who made unilateral decisions, living as nothing more than roommates. To make matters even worse, neither of us was able to verbalize our individual mission statements. When we were presented with new “opportunities” such as changing positions at work, becoming more involved in our church, or attending training events, we took them thinking that they would somehow help us live out our undefined mission statements.

At this point, you can probably observe the missional crisis we faced. We desperately needed a common ultimate purpose to which both of us lived out which would serve as a guideline for making family decisions. We needed a family mission statement.

Are you experiencing a similar family missional crisis? If you are, I would encourage you to ask yourself: What is our family mission statement? Your answer to this question will be your guide to determine which activities you want to be busy doing and which ones you should probably stop doing.

You don't need to be married and have children in order to write a mission statement. Even if you're single, I still encourage you to write yourself a mission statement to guide you in the way you spend your time.

At this point, you may be wondering how to write a mission statement. Different people have different opinions on this, but my rule of thumb is to keep it short and simple. Write a one-sentence statement answering the question: Why does your family exist? Once you have developed your family mission statement, stick to it. It's perfectly acceptable to change it over time as you continue to mature and things change in your life, but if you find yourself wanting to change it every month, then I'd encourage you to force yourself to keep it the same and stick to it for at least a year.

Do Our Activities Support Our Family Mission Statement?

It’s easy to find ourselves in the place where Amy and I ended up. Seemingly everyone around us has a plan for our lives. Our boss wants us to work longer hours and travel more. Business owners want us to spend our money buying products at their business. Our church leaders want us to serve on the praise band, babysit toddlers in the nursery, or run the finances. When we let everyone around us dictate our schedules, then we find ourselves being busy doing lots of activities, but we may not be busy living out the reason for our existence. Instead of letting everyone else tell you where to spend your money, time, and energy, I would encourage you to be empowered to spend it in ways that enable you to live out your purpose.

Once Amy and I developed our family mission statement, we weighed all our activities against it to determine whether our activities served to help us live out our family mission statement. As expected, we determined that some of our activities weren’t helping us live out our family mission statement, so we decided to cut them out. After we narrowed down our activity list, we took another look at it to determine if it was still too big, which we decided it was. This forced us to eliminate things from the list which we thought were helping us live out our family mission statement, but not as well as other things on our list. Of course this process was very difficult, but it has proven fruitful in the long run.

To give an example, one of the things we eliminated was visiting multiple grocery stores every week in order to find the best deals on every food item. This activity was saving us money, but we decided we could use that time better elsewhere. We replaced it with intentionally spending more time with our friends since this activity aligns much better with our family mission statement.

If you want to keep up your sustainability for the long haul, then there’s one final piece to making it happen. We've noticed that it doesn’t take long for the “margin” we’ve created in our schedules to get consumed with more activities. I would encourage you to continue resisting the urge to agree to do things which aren’t helping you live out your family mission statement, even if you think you have the money, time, or energy to do them. Basically, I encourage you to continue saying “No” to the “wrong” activities and “Yes” to the “right” activities. When you agree to a new activity, I would encourage you to drop an activity you are currently doing in order to make room for the new activity.

Conclusion

It’s up to you and your family to decide upon your purpose for existing. Once you agree on a family mission statement, stick with it and don’t give in to the peer pressure to be distracted from it. And finally, continue evaluating your activities on a regular basis. Busyness for the sake of busyness is pointless; if you’re going to be busy, get busy doing the “right” activities.

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[1] Jerry Pipes and Victor Lee, Family to Family: Leaving a Lasting Legacy (Lawrenceville, GA: Jerry Pipes Productions, 1999).