It's a Matter of Attitude

Simple Yet Astounding Ways to Calm Down

By Norman Fischer

If you're so crazed that you have to pencil in time for a deep breath, here's how to become more relaxed—and efficient—in less than a minute. All together now: Ahhhhh…

You keep a to-do list, but you can't get through it by the end of the day, and you're frustrated because you feel like you haven't been able to get enough done. You find that things take longer than you thought they would. And when people ask how you are, "Fine" has been replaced by "Too busy."

Welcome to the "too busy" club.

In this technology-driven world, we can do more, so we do—and we love it. We feel effective and powerful as we check items off our lists and use our cell phones, BlackBerrys, and computers, sometimes all at once. We're multitasking, doing as much as we can in the least amount of time. We're active, creative, and engaged! In demand! Being too busy makes us feel as though we're making an impact.

On the other hand, feeling too busy drives us crazy. Falling ever further behind as the to-do list relentlessly grows (each item generating many more items almost as fast as we can think of them) is nerve-racking and stressful. We begin to feel like prisoners of the list, prisoners of our lives and our desires, prisoners of time. There just aren't enough hours in the day. It's as if we're doing battle with time—and losing.

But the point is not how many things we have done or will do in a given amount of time; the point is how we do what we do. If we're rushed and frantic, we're too busy. If we move through our tasks with equanimity, patient and composed, we're not.

(to be continued)