How our obsession with being SO BUSY is wrecking women’s lives
STANDING outside school the other day I tried to make conversation with a fellow working mum by recommending a novel I had enjoyed. How I wish I hadn’t.
‘I don’t have time to read,’ she scoffed, before launching into the long list of tasks she juggles each day.
Her parting shot? To add, rather pointedly: ‘How lovely for you, though, to have the time to sit down with a good book.’
I should have left it there. I really should. But no woman wants to lose the ‘I’m busier than you’ game so I raised the stakes. ‘I’m just very organised,’ I said smugly, before reeling off all the things I’d managed to get done before breakfast that morning, owing to a 5am start.
Churlish, I know. Thank goodness our children came running out of school midflow, bringing the ‘busy-off’ to an end. But our rivalry is sure to be picked up again, when instead of being horrified by our inability to switch off, we’ll each quietly wonder: ‘Am I doing enough myself?’
The problem is that like countless women of our generation, we seek validation from having too much to do. If we’re not working, we’re ferrying our kids to extracurricular activities while micromanaging our family’s diaries as well as our own.
We feel guilty if we don’t cook every meal from scratch and see folding laundry as a chance to catch breath. And what mother doesn’t know the whereabouts of every member of her household at any given moment? Not least because it’s often our job to get them there in the first place.
At the crux of all this is the fact that, unlike other addictions, you don’t keep quiet through shame. Quite the opposite, busyness is worn as a badge of honour.
Our role models? Multitaskers such as Joanna Coles, former Cosmopolitan editor, author and now key player within Hearst’s global media empire, who admitted working at a desk with a treadmill so she can exercise (in high heels) while emailing. Crazier still, she fits TV into her life by watching shows at double speed.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer described her 130-hour working week, which is made possible by toiling through the night and scheduling the minutiae of her life — including toilet breaks. She was working from her hospital bed soon after giving birth to twins in 2015.
Few of us would want to try to compete with their frenetic lifestyles, but this cult of relentless activity is affecting women of all ages and backgrounds. And it is starting to seriously affect our mental and physical wellbeing.
Research by Ovarian Cancer Action showed more than a quarter of women prioritise work over doctor’s appointments, even when they have worrying symptoms. More than a third said that they always put their family’s needs before their own.
Last year an American study found an alarming link between women working ever longer hours, often while juggling domestic chores, and a rise in cancer and heart disease.
Meanwhile, a UK survey showed that
though the average woman typically completes 26 tasks each day, 80 per cent still don’t think they’re good enough; a worrying four in ten felt on the brink of burnout.
The fact almost half of women say they struggle to switch off at bedtime and aren’t getting their full eight hours of sleep can’t help.
Sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley says poor health is the inevitable price paid for never switching off.
‘Our bodies and brains repair and regulate during sleep,’ he says.
THIS is a vital process. The brain doesn’t have an off switch you can simply press at bedtime — it needs to be allowed to relax at various points through the day, otherwise it won’t be able to stop whirring at night.’
So why do we find it so hard to stop? Psychologist Dr Sandi Mann, author of The Upside Of Downtime, says the problem is that busyness feeds our psyche.
in a productivity-led society, being constantly on the go commands respect among our peers and makes us feel valued.
Activity, stress and a sense of accomplishment trigger the brain into releasing the addictive chemical adrenaline and the feel-good hormone dopamine into the blood.
Even when we’re on holiday and have nothing to do, we feel restless and look for things to occupy our hands and our minds so we can get another hit.
‘Being perpetually busy isn’t good for us, and yet it’s treated as a modern status symbol,’ says Dr Mann. ‘Society associates being busy with being important and successful.
‘This puts women under phenomenal pressure, and means that being busier than your counterparts becomes something to brag about rather than worry about.’
Busyness isn’t exclusive to younger women. Female retirees no longer seem content to potter in the garden or knit baby blankets either.
You’ve only got to join a daytime yoga or gym class to find they’re dominated by baby boomers fitting in exercise around packed social lives and caring for their grandchildren.
is it any wonder extended families struggle to stay connected when everyone’s lives have become so hectic?
Saran Forshaw, 47, is not alone in admitting she finds it more stressful to slow down than to just keep on ploughing through her daily to-do list.
‘i can’t stop,’ she says. ‘Even if i feel worn out and sit down with a cup of tea, i’m soon looking around the room for something to clean up or tidy.’
SARAN combines her full-time job as an office administrator with being mum to Freddie, 11, and four-year-old Arthur. She lives in Cheshire with her husband, James, 47, a university welfare officer.
She’s up by 7am and immediately starts chivvying the boys to put on their school uniforms before she makes breakfast and ensures their schoolbags and PE kits are packed.
‘i wake up with my brain going “ping, ping, ping” with all i must do,’ she says.
‘The boys are at different schools, so that’s two drop-offs six miles apart. Driving to and from school and work takes up two hours every day.
‘i cram a full-time job into school hours, so inevitably have to catch up at home. The children have after-school activities and need ferrying to swimming, rugby, karate and music lessons. There’s something on most days.
‘i do all my own cleaning and almost every night i cook from scratch. By the time they’re in bed and i’ve got the house straight and my head round the next day’s work, it can be 10pm.
‘All that leaves time for is a quick glass of wine and an episode from a box set with James before bed, ready to start the whole cycle over again.
‘i worry that our relationship gets neglected as it’s hard to find time to relax together.
‘i don’t sleep well because my brain struggles to shut down at night. i often feel shattered.’
Much of what’s on Saran’s todo list is part and parcel of all family life. ‘The problem is i resist delegating chores to James and the children, because they don’t do things to my own exacting standards,’ says Saran. ‘Then, instead of crashing at the weekends i feel under enormous pressure to make sure we’re busy having fun, so we go on lots of day trips. ‘i rarely leave the boys to amuse themselves and i fill any rare gaps i have with hobbies — for example, i’m a member of a bake club.’ Clearly Saran takes pride in cramming so much into her life. ‘i’m in several online chat groups where the conversations often turn into contests over who is the busiest and the most exhausted. ‘i take part, of course — i’m as guilty as the next woman of wearing an “i’m oh-so busy” badge.’ She’s far from the only one boasting of being busy, says Dr Mann.
‘Social media plays a part in promoting this fear of missing out if you’re not for ever on the go. Sites such as Facebook really perpetuate the idea that pressing pause amounts to laziness.’
Dr Mann cites the recent female obsession with colouring in — an activity that is supposed to help us to switch off.
‘Women use these books so that when they’re watching TV they’re still busy doing something with their hands. That’s how afraid of boredom we’ve become.’
Meanwhile, a generation of children is being brought up without experiencing boredom.
Family psychologist Dr Pat Spungen says keeping children permanently on the go creates problems for them, too.
‘When mine were little they used to come home from school and crash in front of the TV,’ she says.
‘Like most mums back then my feeling was that they’d been working hard all day and just needed to rest and let things
wash over them for a few hours. When they became bored they’d get up and think of something to do. They’d play, they’d be creative and they’d use their imaginations — having motivated themselves through sheer boredom.’ Dr Spungen warns that micromanaging children’s activities — making sure they never get bored — doesn’t just make life harder for us, it also stops them from knowing how to spur themselves into activity. ‘Yes, a child might be phenomenally busy, but if the motivation and drive to do all those extracurricular activities is coming from their mum, then they’re just freeloading on her energy. ‘Once she stops running the show, where will that drive come from in adulthood?’ Certainly my mother says she never felt guilty about putting her feet up in the afternoon for an hour. That’s shocking to Jin Dhillon, who care for her sevenyear-old daughter, Jaya, while her banker husband is in the City. Jin, 42, from Oxford, says being a full-time mother leaves her stressed through a sense of being on duty 24 hours a day. ‘I consider myself to be my daughter’s carer, friend, big sister, cook, cleaner and organiser and I get validation from these roles. ‘But I also feel under constant pressure not to slip up; I don’t work, so I don’t have an excuse to drop any of the balls.’ Jin says that most of her friends work full-time, so she feels a need to not just be busy, but to be seen to be busy. ‘I’m sure many of my friends assume I’m having a great time as a lady of leisure and I sometimes worry they look down on me. ‘In fact, I never stop. After doing the school run I’m at the gym for two hours. In the afternoons I’m volunteering at my daughter’s school or doing charity work. ‘Also, as I’m at home I feel there’s no excuse for me not to cook every meal from scratch. I would never be that mum who pulls out fish fingers and chips from the freezer as an easy option. ‘every minute of each day is filled with domestic chores, running Jaya to various activities and organising playdates.
MY hUSBAnD is out of the house at 7am and doesn’t return until 7.30pm, and I don’t have any family living nearby, so it is all down to me.’
Sleep rarely comes easily to Jin. ‘I’m constantly anticipating how my daughter and I will fill our time the next day.
‘If we’re going to see a friend, I’ll be awake into the small hours compiling lists of what we will need to take: the sat-nav, snacks, the iPad so Jaya isn’t bored.
‘I’ve recently been diagnosed with arthritis in my knees, which I’m convinced is because I’m always on my feet.
‘each night my mind is constantly turning over what I need to do for the following day.
‘It’s exhausting and I get anxious just thinking about everything I need to do. I’m sure so much stress can’t be good for me. I also regularly forget to eat, because I’m so busy it just slips my mind.’ But it’s not just stress and missed meals that can have a negative impact on women’s health.
Being busy can mean that we also fail to prioritise health screening checks, such as smear tests and mammograms.
I’ve cancelled several important check-ups over the years having allowed a work commitment or child-related activity to take precedence in my diary.
I am appalled at myself that my last smear test was two years overdue. I once put off seeing my dentist over nagging toothache for so long that I developed an abscess that left me crying in pain in the waiting room. I was lucky to keep the tooth.
‘I genuinely despair of the women who let their own health come after everyone else’s in the family,’ says Liverpool gP Dr Arun ghosh.
TheY make appointments for their husbands and are scrupulous about getting their children seen by a doctor, but then don’t bother about themselves and miss important screening tests.
‘They put symptoms such as extreme tiredness or chronic headaches down to their hectic lifestyles, claiming to be too busy to get ill themselves. It doesn’t work like that.
‘This is why, when a busy mum sits in front of me because her child is ill, I always make a point of asking her some basic questions about her own health just in case she’s wilfully ignoring something that might be a problem through lack of time.’ So, what’s the answer? ‘Busyness is a hard habit to break,’ says Dr Mann.
‘For some it’s even an avoidance technique to stop them from dealing with unhappiness in their lives because they are too busy to think about that.
‘But it’s important to understand that we all need time each day when we can just “be” rather than constantly “doing”, because this isn’t a lifestyle that can be sustained healthily.
‘That means getting into the habit of spending time switched off from social media, mental work and physical tasks.
‘The more you allow yourself to stop, the easier it becomes.
‘We simply aren’t meant to be constantly on the go and our brains can’t keep functioning properly if we don’t give them time to rest and recalibrate.
‘Our bodies need rest and our minds have to get an opportunity to simply wander — otherwise we run the very real risk of burning out and then we will be no use to anyone.’
In other words, if you’ve become so busy you can’t even find a few minutes to sit and relax with a good book, using that fact to score points against other women, is far from a good idea.
‘Instead that should be the point when you realise that something really does have to give,’ says Dr Mann.