Are You Too Busy or Too Bored?

Recently we had a few families over for dinner, and if you’ve been to a dinner party at my house, you know that my guests always have to humor me by playing along with my “cube of questions” towards the end of the meal. (You know that lag time when everyone is full, but nobody wants to quite get up yet, so you all just… sit. That’s when the cube comes out!)

It sits conveniently on our sideboard just two feet away from our kitchen table, and the discussions that stem from these little cards (called TableTopics) are often hilarious and fascinating, but also sometimes quite serious too.

I pulled a card at random on this particular night that simply questioned “In general, are you too busy or too bored?”

And everyone fell silent for a minute (which I found fascinating in itself!) This question had everybody thinking, and the round-table responses were really varied and interesting. Everybody had an answer and a reason why they were in the spot they are in.

A common thread that most responses shared is that most people were a bit unsatisfied with how bored or how busy they were. It was interesting; Nobody felt like their current balance of schedules and obligations was “just right”.

As for Jamie’s and my responses, they mirrored each other. We both agreed on how often we felt too busy, but we also know that that feeling stems for our introverted sides that seem to be growing as we age.

When we look at our calendars, we don’t actually have that much going on. Our kids are little and not overly involved in activities by any means, and our volunteer commitments are pretty much limited to church (and our neighborhood HOA for Jamie). He works two jobs (his full-time job and then the Reserve one weekend a month), but he really, really super enjoys both jobs, neither of which require any crazy hours or demands.

Balancing my current priorities keeps me busier than I’d like some days, but I also know that keeping a semi-full daily schedule makes me feel routinely happier and more satisfied than I would be if I didn’t have much going on (because I am a true extrovert at heart after all). I don’t mind seeing full days written into my planner JUST AS LONG as there are a good chunk of days that have absolutely nothing written on them too. 😉 I 100% crave a balance of the two.

So… we lean toward being “too busy” when answering this question, but in reality don’t feel like we’re pulling our hair out from being “too busy” just yet. The goal would be to not get to that point, and if/when we do, I hope we have the wisdom to scale back ASAP.

Let’s chat!

How would you honestly answer this question? I really love that there is no right or wrong answer to this question because everyone thrives off of drastically different levels of activity. Would love for you to weigh in. xo