Take Back Your Time

How to prevent busyness from ruining your life.

- Naomi K. Lewis with Ayushi Thapliyal

ARPITA KUMAR, 47, WAS NO STRANGER TO BUSYNESS. she started to work for the government at 20, got married, had two children by the time she was in her 30s and then got posted to the UK. Back in india, she jumped into a hectic career and family life. Work–life balance was completely thrown out of whack in 2007 after her husband moved abroad on work. When in 2014 her daughter left the country to pursue medicine, Kumar suddenly imploded. the fatigue that had been building up over the years set in with a vengeance. Before, there was no time to notice how overbooked and over scheduled her life was. all at once, she felt exhausted and lonely. Wrestling with her fatigue, she sensed that she was close to breaking point and that serious lifestyle changes were in order. she took a leave of absence for six months and started work to mend her tattered self. Her first stop was a Japanese martial arts class.

When we’re juggling a number of different commitments—familial, professional, personal—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. We go to bed sure we’ll never catch up and wake up feeling worse because we didn’t sleep well. Busyness is a kind of trap: Stress exacerbates physical and mental health problems and gets worse when we don’t take good care of our bodies and minds. Although it can be difficult to see how to break that cycle when you’re caught up in the fray, some smart strategies can help make your life better—and a whole lot less hectic.

THINK PRODUCTIVE, NOT BUSY

After Chris Bailey from Ottawa, Canada, completed a degree in business, he dedicated a year to exploring productivity, spurred by what he describes as “a lifelong obsession”. He published