we’ve somehow built a society where busyness has become a status symbol. fancy houses, cars, and timepieces less and less mean influence and importance. how important is a person? just check their schedule and you’ll see.

meetings for this project, post-meetings for this other project, a pre-meeting for another. we have meetings for our meetings! status reviews and sync calls. an overflowing, seemingly bottomless inbox. a facebook account with 1000 friends and 100 messages.

if you’re too busy to make it home at night to tuck your son into bed before he goes to sleep, or too busy with your career that you don’t have time for a relationship right now, or too busy to read that book that’s been sitting on your shelf for three years, or you can’t even find the time to reach out and talk to someone you haven’t heard from in a long time, you really need to start asking why that is.

it might not be because you’re as important as you think you are. it might be because you’re not prioritizing the right things in life.

a person who invests just one hour in helping another person has exerted more influence on this world than the one who spends eight hours being busy.