 About six years ago, I arrived home from work, and my five-year-old son was already holding up a baseball. We can play, but I don't have a lot of time, I warned him. All I could think of was my to-do list. I had a department meeting to plan, papers to grade, and small projects I had to finish. But as I slipped on the baseball glove, something changed. I forgot about my list. We tossed the ball back and forth, back and forth. But then my son asked me something. Is there still time? Is there still time? I couldn't answer it. So that night, I broke up with busy. I quit committees. I limited projects. I set up a curfew for myself at work. I learned to give 110% on things that mattered and to give 11 or 12% on things that didn't. See, I had been drowning in a sea of busy, and yet I'd been wearing busy like a badge of honor. Like I was winning some kind of imaginary competition, but life isn't a game. Okay, it's actually technically a board game, and I think it might also be a cereal. But here's the thing. You don't get a trophy for packing your schedule with more projects and more accomplishments and more meetings. All you get is a bigger load of busy. But busy is hurried. Busy is overwhelmed. Busy is fast. Busy is careless. Busy is a hamster wheel that never ends and a sprint up the ladder without ever asking where it leads. There are moments when life gets busy. I get that. But I never want busy to be the new normal. I never want to look back at life and say, wow, I was really good at being busy.