At the beginning of the year I listened to the “Crappy to Happy” podcast by Tiff Hall and Cass Dunn. It’s first topic was on “The Cult of Busy”. They talked about how everyone is so busy nowadays and that people often wear their “busy-ness” like a badge of honour. I have been one of these people, and strangely enough I enjoy being busy, and on many occasions I am busy, but not always.

I’m a huge advocate of having breaks. At work, I’m constantly reminding my colleagues to have a lunch break and leave work on time. Work is important to me, it gives me a sense of purpose and makes me feel like a valuable and contributing member of society, but my work is not my life. My life is my life.

I think I started really breaking up the idea of “work” vs “life” in my last year of University. I started to appreciate how much my environment impacts on how well I can focus. I also started to realise the impact “timing” had on my mental health and the quality of my work. I finished my honours thesis at Blacktown library. For a whole semester I worked every weekday for three hours in the morning (after going to the gym) and three hours in the afternoon (after an hour lunch break) I never pulled an all nighter or did a single shred of work once I came home or on the weekend for that matter yet, I got a great mark.

Since then, I resolved  never to do work at home. Nowadays, I won’t touch work with a ten-foot pole at home. To me, work is to be done at work, and if that means I have to travel 45mins on a Saturday to sit in my office and get crap done, that’s exactly what I will do. To me, home is for watching TV, showers and bedtime. Home is for feeling utterly and completely relaxed. If I took my work home I’d be stressed out of my mind and I wouldn’t be able to do the most important thing associated with focus and productivity and that is – recharging.

So here I am now, sitting at home – doing nothing particularly important (prior to this I was playing candy crush and am now waiting for my lives to recharge as I refuse to pay good money for them) while my partner is doing a university assignment and my work colleagues are planning weddings and studying french in their spare time. All I can think of now, is that about six months ago I would’ve felt bad about having nothing of import to do (like everybody else in my life) but right now I’m so happy that I’m not busy.