We're All So 'Busy'—but What Does that Mean? Psychologist Candice Norcott Offers a Deeper Look
written by Stacey Lindsay
It’s the motto of our times, the answer to ‘How are you?’, and the habit we can’t seem to break: we are all so ‘busy.’ The state of moving from meetings to pick-ups to dinners to Zooms is so ingrained that even when being busy lost its grip in the throes of the pandemic, it found its way back. Here we are in 2023, all so damn busy.
But is there something underneath this busyness? Is it detrimental? And should we look at the state of being busy with a more discerning eye?
Licensed clinical psychologist Candice Norcott says yes. Candice posits that often, we wrap ourselves in being busy to avoid things, such as a fear of becoming irrelevant or unimportant, or to avoid specific thoughts or memories that quietness may bring. The danger in being too busy, she adds, is that we may miss out on critical messages and the creative freedom that comes from leaning into stillness.
To break the vicious habit of being busy, we asked Candice to dig deeper with us.
Chatting with Jen Gottlieb
You've said that we often hide behind the word 'busy.' How so, Candice?
When I reflect on my relationship with busy, I look at it as a badge of honor. If I'm busy, that means I'm productive and important. And so it became something that I aspired to; something I felt demonstrated that I was important and doing important things. But I remember having a conversation with my sister, and she started riffing on how many people said to her that they were 'busy,' She just went, 'Busy, busy, busy, everybody's busy. You ask everybody how they are, and they are busy.' This planted a seed. And I started paying attention to how people used the word and how I used it. I realized it was my default. I wasn't telling people how I was; I was saying, 'busy' and feeling like that meant I was thriving, which was not always the case.
Then, like nearly everyone, in 2020, I started realizing just how much I had booked my calendar and how much I was dreading. I had been in the cycle of being 'busy' with booking things, having packed parts of days and months, thinking: How am I going to get it done? So, when everything got canceled, I felt some relief. The amount of stress I was experiencing didn't result in any tangible reward.
What drives this tendency to be busy, particularly for women?
There's certainly a capitalist-entrenched culture of being in the States. There's a push to be a boss, have side hustles, and grind. In our culture, we use these cool words to mean we're always supposed to be working.
Another part of it is how it's been modeled to us. There's also a culture of mentorship with women, a very intimate mentorship that women do for each other and to support each other. Over the generations, women who are successful have really had to work very hard. And they've had to balance a whole bunch of things. All of that gets passed down. When I think about my female mentors, one mentor, in particular, was always working—always always working. So, some of my work ethic is a carbon copy of what I learned from and saw in her. But that is not sustainable for me. I want to follow and model many things from her, but some of them are not how I want to do things today. I want to do things differently.
So, how do we start to do things differently? You have mentioned the power of leaning into stillness. Where do we begin?
It's important to know that it's really hard to be creative and busy. If you're dealing with everyday minuscule checkbox tasks and you're constantly in motion to be your most creative, and you're and to really have rich ideas that juice you and are fruitful, you can't always be working. You have to be still because you have to listen. So stillness becomes necessary. I love aspects of The Napa Ministry, where they focus on the importance of sleep and rest in moving toward whatever goal you have.
The other important piece is that as you get older, you have more responsibilities, making it even harder to be creative. There are so many other things crowding out our ability to be creative. So this makes it necessary and more important to be intentional about taking space, especially in our forties and fifties, so we can listen.
I get so many ideas when I've just taken time to be on my Peloton. That's when I think of so many ideas. Now, do I remember all that when I get off? That's the piece I'm trying to bridge!
What is one thing we can all do today to start moving away from being busy and leaning into more stillness?
We are very unaware of how we invite distraction and occupation of our minds. For instance, I think about—and I see and do this myself—people walking from their cars to their offices. Where I park, it's almost a 10-minute walk to my office, and everyone's on their phones. So start there: Can you walk and not be on your phone? Can you walk and not have an earbud in your ear? Can you just... walk? Can you walk and be with your thoughts? Can you walk and notice the things around you? That is stillness.
You can then think about this in other ways. If you're going to watch a movie, are you going to scroll on your phone? Or can you sit and watch? If you're going to sit outside on a bench, can you look around and take it in? It's about allowing yourself moments of doing just one thing, from eating to having a conversation to sitting on a bench.
In many ways, this is about unstacking. It is it being with the one thing and place that you are. That approximates stillness for a lot of people. And it's the lowest-hanging fruit for people. Because inviting stillness, as a concept, can feel very scary for people, especially when so many have histories of trauma and anxiety disorders. It can feel like if we slow down, our thoughts will catch up with us. And we may not want that smoke.
So stillness can be starting to do that one thing. In my family, the one thing I say over and over is: One thing at a time.
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Candice Norcott Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at The University of Chicago. To learn more about Candice, follow her at @drnorcott
Interview by Stacey Lindsay, conducted exclusively for Liberty Road.
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