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CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Are you saying, “Defnitely me!” Before thinking you’re about to feel even more stressed, read on… The book title we’re telling you about has a second part: Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life.
-Rebecca Klein
Author Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, who has spent 25 years diagnosing and treating Attention Deficit Disorder patients, and lives with ADD, believes life’s often frazzled pace, fueled by technology and other culprits, has created “culturally induced ADD.”
“I have come to see it as a metaphor for modern life, offering a model – as well as a guide – for what’s happening today in a world where we are living a kind of life never lived before. Once applicable only to a relative few, the symptoms of ADD now seem to describe just about everybody,” writes Dr. Hallowell, later explaining, “Everyone’s attention span is shrinking because our attention has more possible targets than ever before, while more thieves try to steal our attention than we are able to fend off.”
In CrazyBusy, the former Harvard Medical School professor shares practical solutions including the need to prioritize, build barriers against 24/7 access, and to track where your time goes and to make adjustments.
Take the time management predator of “screen sucking” or unproductive screen time. Dr. Hallowell shares the story of an executive moving her computer from the center of her desk to behind her. “When the computer was front and center, it was like a jar of M&Ms,” he explains.
Of multitasking, often equated with efficiency, he writes, “…the notion that it is as effective as single tasking is wrong. When what you are doing is important, multitasking is a practice to be avoided. Just think of it as playing tennis with two balls.”
While Dr. Hallowell sees his book as a wake up call, he wouldn’t trade life now for the past. “I love it. The caution is to be careful that you exert the control you have or you’ll be swept away in a tsunami of data points.”
During our interview, he shared this childrearing advice: “Don’t overbook your kids. Don’t over involve them. Preserve and protect their downtime. When I was a kid, after school I did something that is obsolete. I went out and played,” he explains, asking parents to limit screen time and to promote imaginative play. “Don’t feel that you’re the attendant on the cruise ship, and it’s up to you to entertain your kids all the time. Your job is to make sure they’re safe. Let them invent their activities. That’s what childhood ought to be about.”
Coincidentally, Dr. Hallowell’s personal efforts to avoid a “CrazyBusy” life include an annual family retreat to Connecticut’s Doolittle Lake (yes, pronounced Do-Little).
Dr. Edward M. Hallowell is the director of the Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He has written a number of books including The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Kids Create and Sustain Lifelong Joy. For more information, visit www.DrHallowell.com.
For advice from local pediatricians on how to help your kids slow down and build more downtime into their lives, visit www.ModernBabiesandChildren.com.
