CrazyBusy Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handing Your Fast-Paced Life

The Agony of a Rotary Phone My family stayed at a lakeside cottage last summer where the only telephone was an old-fashioned rotary model. The cottage was so remote that there was no cell phone service, just the stolid black telephone sitting atop a tattered phone book on an end table next to a worn-out peach-colored couch. I remember the first time I dialed that phone. It was morning. I'd gone out for a wake-me-up swim, poured myself a cup of coffee, and was sitting on the couch to call a friend to see if he and his kids might like to join my wife, my kids, and me that night at a minor league baseball game. There was no urgency to this call, no need for me to hurry. Yet as I started to dial, got angry, and impatience flamed within me because on this phone I had to wait for the rotor to wind back to its starting point after each number. It was so slow! In addition, it made an irritating screeching sound as it retraced its cycle, like a rusty metal drawer stuck on its runners: 5 . . . 4 . . . 2 . . . 6 . . . I could have entered the entire number on a touch-tone phone in the time it took me to dial just one number on this obsolete contraption. Not to mention how much faster I could have done it with speed dial had I been able to use my cell phone. By the time I had laboriously cranked out the entire number, I was in a total snit. How could anyone still own such a slow phone? I fumed. What a stupid phone! How backward! How dumb! But then I caught myself. This was absurd. When my friend finally answered, I spoke to him, hung up, and then redialed his number, timing how long it took me: eleven seconds exactly. As if putting my life in danger, those eleven slow seconds had annoyed me beyond reason. What a fool I had become. What a modern man. I felt embarrassed at my automatic impatience. I had become a man in a hurry even when I had no need to hurry. As the vacation moved along, I changed. I made friends with that old rotary phone. I began to appreciate what it could teach me. The sound it made started to sound less like a stuck drawer and more like an old windmill still stoutly doing its work after all these years. I came to think of it as a wise counsel, ensconced on its end table like a Buddha cautioning me to take my time and enjoy, while they lasted, the summer, the childhood of my kids, the ripening of my marriage, and these best years of my life. Without intending for it to happen or knowing how it got started, many people now find that they live in a rush they don't want and didn't create, or at least didn't mean to create. If you feel busier now than you've ever been before, and if you wonder if you can keep up this pace much longer, don't feel alone. Most of us feel slightly bewildered, realizing we have more to do than everwith less time to do it. Look at what's happened to the usual "how are you" exchange. It used to go like this: "How are you?" "Fine." Now it often goes like this: "How are you?" "Busy." Or, "Too busy." Or even, "Crazy busy." If you're busy doing what matters to you, then being busy is bliss. You've found a rhythm for your life that works for you. This world is bursting with possibilities; its energy can be contagious. If you catch the bug, you want to jump out of bed each day and get busy, not because you are run ragged by details or because you are keeping the wolf from your door, but because you are in love with this fast life. At its best, modern life dazzles us, giving us a chance to get more done in a minute than used to get done in a month. But if being busy keeps you from doing what matters most to you, or if it leads you to do things you deem unwiseHallowell, Edward M. is the author of 'CrazyBusy Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handing Your Fast-Paced Life', published 2007 under ISBN 9780345482440 and ISBN 0345482441.