on being too busy to sleep and exercise

​on a coaching call, i was working with someone who said almost these exact words to me:

“i basically get to a point where i have so much to do that i don’t have time to work out or sleep. i just have to keep going to make sure everything gets done.”

when i heard it, i sort of couldn’t believe what i was hearing. but then i had a visceral flashback of a time i said those same words to my mom. and i realized two things: (1) it wasn’t just me that felt that way so there must be some societal/systemic forces making that belief possible and (2) it’s possible to change and not be like that! these were great realizations and i will expand on them in detail some other time, but, for now, i want to write about the steps i took to get past that type of thinking. and to be clear, i think the idea that we have too much to do to be healthy (because sleep and exercise are necessary parts of keeping the body working) is a personal system design problem that is predicated on a broken socioeconomic system.

so how did i move past that type of thinking? i think most simply it boils down to two things:

1. learning how to say no better
2. realizing that, when i’ve said an appropriate volume of “no,” i get just as much done when i’ve slept well and exercised as when i don’t.

wow. it’s already been 10 minutes. guess i’ll expand on the above points and the ones below tomorrow.

points to expand on later:

• this broken idea this keeps oppressive systems functioning because it makes it possible for some people to find all their meaning in their work which makes it easier to create & maintain false class divisions. overwork also squeezes people out of work that could be distributed if our society actually wanted to achieve full employment instead of maximize profit for corporations. in the end, what we need is a society where everyone and everyone’s work is valued.
• bell hooks and why we can’t love well (which breaks our society) when we’re too busy