What I Reclaimed When I Stopped Saying I Was "Too Busy"
A few months ago, I caught myself saying it again: “I’m just too busy.”
It slipped out almost automatically, the way it always does. But this time, I heard it differently. It landed not like a throwaway excuse, but like a hollow echo, one I’d repeated so many times it had started to sound like truth. Only it wasn’t. I wasn’t busy. I was overloaded. Overextended. Overstimulated. I was quietly drowning in emotions I hadn’t made space for.
“Busy” had become my cover story.
It let me avoid what needed tending.
It disguised my disconnection as productivity.
It gave me a way to seem functional while my internal world was fraying. And maybe most of all, it allowed me to keep outrunning myself.
Culturally, we treat busy like a virtue. A badge of honor. A shorthand for importance. When someone says “I’m busy,” what they often mean is: “My time matters.” It’s become a kind of status symbol, a way of saying you are in demand. But if you scratch beneath the surface, busy is often not about importance at all. It’s a shield. A deflection. A way to avoid admitting what’s really going on.
Because when we say busy, what we often mean is:
I don’t know how to rest.
I’m afraid of what I’ll feel if I slow down.
I’m so used to chaos that calm feels unsafe.
And the world rewards us for it. The hustle gets praised. The overcommitted get promoted. The person running on fumes gets labeled “dedicated.” Our culture claps for the exhaustion we normalize, but no one asks what it’s costing us. The truth is: most of us aren’t too busy. We’re too full.
Full of grief. Full of resentment. Full of unprocessed fear and unmet needs. When I stopped saying “too busy,” I started to hear what I had buried. I heard my nervous system screaming no while my mouth kept saying yes. I heard my longing for space, buried under calendar invites. I heard my anger that no one seemed to notice how much I was holding. “Busy” was never about my schedule. It was about my survival.
We mistake disconnection for efficiency. We confuse exhaustion with discipline. We applaud distraction as multitasking. But focus doesn’t come from better time management. It doesn’t return because you’ve bought a shinier planner or downloaded another app. Focus returns with honesty.
Sometimes what we call distraction is simply the brain saying: I need a minute.
Sometimes procrastination is the body whispering: I’m not ready.
Sometimes the endless scroll isn’t laziness at all, but grief in disguise, a way of seeking relief in motion, because stillness feels unbearable.
This is the part no one names: we are living in an age of fractured attention. A constant flood of notifications, obligations, feeds, and demands. The nervous system was never designed to withstand this much input, and yet we call it normal. We wear busy as if it’s proof of resilience, when really it’s evidence of how far we’ve drifted from what makes us human.
When I finally stopped hiding behind busy, I started reclaiming pieces of myself I hadn’t realized were missing. I reclaimed focus, not the polished kind that makes you look efficient, but the kind that helps you notice your own life again. I reclaimed presence, the ability to sit across from someone I love without mentally scrolling through my inbox. I reclaimed truth, the freedom to say “I can’t take this on right now” without feeling like I’d failed.
And maybe most importantly, I reclaimed myself, not the curated version that performs competence, but the raw, tender, still-in-process version that is fully human.
So if you find yourself saying “I’m just too busy,” I wonder what’s beneath it. I wonder what you might reclaim if you stopped using it as a shield. Because the truth is, you’re not too busy. You’re too full. And something inside you is ready to breathe again.
And that’s the invitation. To pause. To tell the truth about what you’re carrying. To create a little space for your nervous system to land.
Not because the world will stop asking for more. It won’t.
Not because your to-do list will magically shrink. It won’t.
But because your life deserves more than survival. Your presence deserves more than scraps.
This is where focus begins again. Not in a planner. Not in another hack. But in choosing honesty over hustle. In creating the kind of relationship with yourself that makes attention possible.
So as you step into this week, I hope you choose one small place to set busy down. Even just for a moment. See what truth rises in its place. Because your life doesn’t need more from you. It needs more of you.
Learn more in this weeks resource: Breaking Busy, A Guide to Healing Emotional Fatigue and Reclaiming Focus
Finding Focus: Own Your Attention in an Age of Distraction — out September 16th. Learn more here! Pre-order incentives included.
With you in this.
Love,
Zelana