Busy has become a way of life. Ask yourself how many times you answered, “I’m so busy” or “I’m so tired” when someone asked you “how are you?” The word seems to be automatically come from your mouth without thinking much.

Being busy seems an inevitable part of modern daily life. We all have things to do, places to go, time and energy to spend on, and freedom to sacrifice. No matter how busy we are, we often seem to be beyond our control and accept it as a part of our daily life.

When we’ve got too much on our plate, it affects our bodies and brain’s reaction. Feeling overwhelmed, burnout, and lethargy are signs that perhaps we need to slow down, check in with ourselves and find a little breathing room out of our busy day. Here are a few ways to help you to become less busy so that you can live your life to the fullest.

1. Define Your Priorities

Busy is different from productive. You can still be busy and not get much done. Focus on your priorities and avoiding distractions is the best method. Priorities are things that matter the most to you. Not everything you do is your priorities if you don’t define them well. Decide what’s your priorities at that time. Once you get to know what’s your priorities, you’ll be able to work smarter and not harder while getting the right things done in less time.

2. Say No

Many of us don’t know how to reject or simply say “no” to someone. We often shy away from it because we don’t want to miss out, upset someone, or make someone thinks we’re selfish. This makes us feel guilty and bad. Instead of thinking this way, switch our minds to think from a different positive point of view. Every “no” is a “yes” to something else. We might say no to dinner with colleagues after work, but we are actually saying yes to get more sleep at night. Saying no is very difficult. It required a lot of practice, but once you get the habit of saying it, your body will thank you for doing so.

3. Pay More Attention to Self-care

You probably heard a lot about how self-care is the best cure for a busy life. But self-care isn’t just about taking warm baths and applying skincare to your body and face. Self-care is what you do to feel better about yourself. This can be reading your favourite book, watching the movie you’ve been longing for or taking a nap by the beachside. Slow down the rushing and listen to yourself on what to do to feel better. Commit the time and pay more attention to yourself. Try to block the time ahead when planning your weekly schedule so that you can free yourself ahead of time.

4. Stop Multi-Tasking

Multi-tasking seems like a clever little thing to do to speed up our tasks and get a lot of things done in a short amount of time. But it actually makes us feel busier. When we’re multitasking, we’re forcing our minds to focus on different things at the same time, and this makes our brains don’t know which to focus properly. This not only reduces our efficiency and performance because our brain can only focus on one thing at a time but also increase the chance of getting burnout and overwhelmed quicker. If possible, reduce the amount of multitasking and just focus on one task at a time.

Being busy is largely in our control. Some people might think that being busy is good. Busy means productive. Instead of thinking that way, explore the benefits of being less busy. You might have more time for yourself, less stress and rush, more time for your family and loved ones. Slow down and re-connect with yourself and what really matters.