How are you doing? Are you hanging in there during this busy time of the year or are you feeling totally frazzled by all of days of non-stop work, shopping, holiday parties and preparing to travel to relatives or their visit to your house?
When I was a child I remember being told that life was going to get easier because my generation would have tons of leisure time due to space-age technology. What happened? We got the technology, but not the leisure time.
Most of my childhood friends and I had mothers who stayed at home and fathers who got home at the same time every day and didn”t have to work on the weekends. Families ate dinner together at the same time each evening. Today, most of my friends and I are tethered to work by smartphones 24/7. We work more hours than our dad did and our spouse has to work so we can survive.
I recently read a book by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., a psychiatrist who specializes in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). The name of his book is “Crazy Busy” and Hallowell wrote it to help people deal with life in the 21st Century. It”s a life in which, even if we don”t have ADD, many people suffer from the same symptoms as those who have the disorder.
Hallowell wrote that people with untreated ADD “rush around a lot, feel impatient wherever they are, love speed, get frustrated easily, lose focus in the middle of a task or conversation because some other thought catches their attention, bubble with energy but struggle to pay attention to one issue for more than a few seconds, talk fast or feel at a loss for words, often forget where they”re going or what they”re going to get, have bright ideas but can”t implement them, fail to complete what they”re doing, have many projects going simultaneously but chronically postpone completing them, make decisions impulsively because their brain”s circuitry is overloaded, feel they could do a lot more if they could just get it together, get angry easily when interrupted, feel powerless over the piles of stuff that surround them, resolve each day to do better tomorrow, and in general feel busy beyond belief but not all that productive.”
Does that partially describe you? The problem is that millions of people who can”t legitimately be diagnosed with ADD suffer from many of the same symptoms. Unfortunately, according to Dr. Hallowell, it is just “a severe case of modern life.”
A 2005 Boston.com poll on the question, “Are you too overworked to focus on your job?” returned these results: 62.8 percent answered “Yes, I”m overwhelmed,” 23.0 percent picked “Only sometimes” and just 14.2 percent chose “No, I focus fine.” The survey was well before the major reductions in force that occurred when the recession hit in 2007. The first two categories would probably be even higher today.
What can we do to provide ourselves with some relief from the continuous crush of modern life? Hallowell has a long list of suggestions in his book. I will just mention a few of his and one I learned from a friend. Hallowell wrote, “Do what matters most to you.” We may have to do what our boss tells us to do, but we can scale back on outside commitments. He said to “create a positive emotional environment wherever you are.” Everything is better when a person feels welcomed and appreciated. And, “Don”t waste time screensucking.” That is Hallowell”s term for spending too much time on computers, phones and watching television. Lastly, a friend of mine plans a daily adventure. Often it is just a 15-minute walk away from the office down streets he hasn”t walked before.
Life today may not be what we expected, but it is what we have, and we should do everything possible to enjoy it.
Gary Dickson is the publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
