Breaking Busy: How to Slow Down When Life is Moving Too Fast

Have you ever said to yourself, I just don't have enough hours in the day? Have you ever felt like the year has gone by, the month has gone by, the quarter has gone by, and what have I done with it? Well, the key to doing better and living a fuller life is not always about doing more faster. Sometimes it's about doing less better, and we're going to talk about that today. Y'all, sometimes in my life, my weeks look like a CVS receipt. Y'all know what a CVS receipt is like? It just keeps going and going and going and going and going. You get the receipt for what you were supposed to do, but then they add all of these coupons on the end of it. It's like complete waste of paper and lack of responsibility when it comes to the woods in the world. The CVS receipt doesn't end. And sometimes my to-do list feels that way. And I'm doing all of the right things. I'm serving, I'm working, I'm showing up. But often when I look at my life or pay attention to how I feel about my life, I'm just weary thinking about it. Now, I'm a high-energy, high-capacity person. Person. I can do a lot, I can do a lot fast, and I can carry a lot, and I'm built that way. But that does not mean that I am not soulfully weary if I'm not doing enough of the things that actually matter and that make me feel full and that I am engaging with my life in a very full way. You can be living life well, check everything off your to-do list, and still have an empty soul. In our world, busyness is like a badge of honor, and I'm not gonna lie, I wear it like a badge of honor, all the things that I'm able to get done. But I have also learned that the busyness that I often operate with robs me of something else, and that's enjoying the life that I have. It's not possible to drive down the freeway at 85, 90 miles an hour and enjoy the scenery. If you're on the Autobahn, you're going to get there fast, but will you actually enjoy the journey? And sometimes we realize too late in life that we did all the things, but we didn't enjoy the things we did. And in order to do that, you have to choose to live differently. Busy is not the same as truly being productive, and enjoying your life is not the same as checking everything off your list. What if our need to do more or the pressure that we feel to do more is actually costing us what matters most? So in order to break busy, there are some things that we can keep in mind that we can do and some things that we need to be aware of. God has his best in mind for you. Psalm 46:10 says, "Be still and know that I am God." How are you supposed to know God? How are you supposed to know him and in knowing him, know what he wants you to do with your life? You have to be still. Stillness needs to be a part of your life. I love the paraphrase from The Message version. It says, step out of the traffic, take a long loving look at me, your high God. Now many of us, when we go somewhere nowadays, you know, I used to have a big thick map in my car. I'd have one folded up of the United States in my glove compartment and one folded up of the great country of Texas in my glove compartment. I don't need that anymore because I've got Google Maps, Apple Maps— Google is better than Apple still— and definitely Waze. If you use Waze, you need to be prepared to go all off-roading in the backwoods neighborhoods around in the rural to see the chickens and the goats and the cows. And you may find yourself in neighborhoods you didn't even know existed. But as many turns as the Waze app will take you on, it saves you time. Step out of the traffic. If you actually want to save time, if you actually want to have a meaningful journey, you've got to get off-road and do things differently than everyone else. And everyone else is living busy. They're living in the do, they're living in the done, they're living in the check things off. And believe me, I believe in checking things off. I mean, my goodness, I'm creating whole planners over here for 2026. I'm a believer in writing things down and making sure that you're doing the most important things. But the reality is it's not about doing them or doing them faster. It's about doing them and engaging with your life. If you're like me, your to-do list is a million miles long. There's just always more to do than there is day. So I love checking things off, but let me tell you something, that's a problem. If you check off things on your to-do list, without checking on you, you are not living your life well. Listen, you've got to pay attention to your life. So I have created a tool that's a planner and a personal coach in one place to help you do just that. Let me introduce you to the Full Circle Planner. I meet you in these pages every week, the beginning and the end of every month and every quarter, at the beginning and the end of the year to help you make sure that you're checking on you while you're checking things off your list. Because what good is your life if you do all the things, but you are not good? I want you to live a life you love. I want you to own your life, and I want you to pay attention to the life you've been given to live. How can you do that? Check it in on you, and these pages will help. Get your Full Circle Planner today. Often, y'all, we are busy because we want to be avoidant. We are avoiding things that we either don't wanna do or that are painful to do. We fill our time so that we don't have to feel our pain. In every moment, when every moment is full, there's no room for the Spirit to speak. The busyness that you keep in your schedule to avoid the things you don't want to feel or experience, the fact that you don't want to go home because you live alone, the fact that you don't want to go home because you don't like who you live with, the fact that you don't have anything else to give your life to, so you work too much. Not only are you preventing yourself from feeling the things you don't want to feel, you're preventing yourself from hearing the Spirit speak. How in the world are you supposed to know God and know his desire for your life he has no room to speak. And you know where God speaks the best? In stillness. His best often comes in quiet, hidden, unhurried spaces. And can I add to that? His stillness and his voice, the beauty of his voice, often comes in the places where we're allowing ourselves to feel pain and feel loneliness, even feeling a lack of purposefulness. We want to feel like our lives have purpose. So what we do is engage in a bunch of activities so that we feel like we're doing something. What if doing something is doing nothing so that you can get the download for the actual important thing that you're supposed to do? Stillness should be a part of your schedule. Breaking busy involves adding stillness in. Sabbath, rest, time on the calendar where you actually don't have a plan so you can just wander around your house, the mall, the park, stillness. We've heard the quintessential example of a jar. If you wanna fill up the jar with the most important things, rocks, pebbles, and sand. If you start with the sand, you're not gonna be able to fit in the rocks, I guarantee you. If you start with the pebbles, you'll have room for the sand, but you won't be able to fit in the rocks. The only way that you can make sure you fit in the important rocks is when you start with the big things first, the big rocks in your life. One of the things I prioritize every month and every quarter and every year are the 3 most important things that I've gotta focus on. Because if I focus on everything at once, I'm actually focusing on nothing. I'll make a little bit of headroom in a little bit of everything and not make major headroom in the things that matter most. Prioritization is the key. And being able to prioritize and focus allows you to fit everything else in, but around the things that matter most. So what are the big rocks in your life? What are the things that really matter? This year for my life, I have a focus on money and just getting clarity with money, business and personal. This year for my life, it's a focus on health. That will be a focus of my life every year for the rest of my life, probably. Probably. But this year, and probably into next, there are some major things that I want to accomplish. Um, and then I have some major things that I want to accomplish at work with the creation of content. Now, it doesn't mean that I don't want to be close to my family, and it doesn't mean that I don't want to, uh, engage in my community. It doesn't mean that I don't have some goals in other places. It just means if I am not always in my life having something that is front and center in those three areas, I'm not going to make the moves that I need to make because they take such big effort on my part. So if the devil can't take away the good things in your life, he'll just make you too busy for you to engage with them fully. He's like, I'm not going to take them away from her. She won't let me do that. She's not going to let me convince her that her health is not good or that her money's not good or that her purpose isn't good, but I'll just make her so busy that she actually can't fit them in like the big rocks they should be. Corrie ten Boom said, if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy. So women that are rushing around, who are in their morning routines, always running late, juggling coffee, keys, and kids— listen, I want to tell you this. I struggle with being late. It's a thing. I'm working on it. I'll be working on it for the rest of my life because my brain just doesn't work well that way. I always think I have time, so I am developing systems that help me. But when I find myself running late, here's what I realized: if I speed and get there faster I probably only gained 2 minutes. Is my life worth those 2 minutes? If I rush around in the morning and try to get out the door, but I leave something, was that worth it? The extra minute or 2 that I gained? Most of the time when we're rushing around in our lives, moving fast, what we gain isn't worth the stress, the extra cortisol, or what we forget or how we crash. So even if you are stuffing your life because you're trying to get in, is it actually worth it? If it takes you a year or two longer to finish your degree because you actually wanna live while you're working on the degree, is that extra year or two worth the missing life for 4 years? Is it worth you not enjoying your life? I say take the long way. Take the long way and live along the way, because I want you to enjoy your life, and life goes fast. Not only does busyness blind us to God's best, because God works in the stillness, but the busyness that we are engaging in, it can breed burnout. And that's the opposite of what God wants to give us, which is rest. Matthew 11:28 says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So if you're tired, you're worn out, burned out on your own life, or even on religion, on God, he says, come to me. Like, come to me. So the relationship that you have with Jesus is the most important relationship in your life. It just is. He is waiting for you to talk to him, and he's waiting for you to create space so you can hear him talk to you. He's not just inviting you to rest and move in rest because he wants you to enjoy your life. He's inviting you to rest in him because he gives you life. So when the world says push harder, Jesus says come closer. And true rest isn't about taking a nap, although there's nothing wrong with a nap. It's about alignment. So one of the things that we are now doing in our home are digital breaks. And those are for our house. We are shifting the expectation in our home. So on Sundays, it is a no digital day. And if the kids have schoolwork to do or, you know, if I have work to do, I'll do that. But in terms of just sitting around all day watching TV, scrolling on the phones, We've decided that's not the temperature of our house, and we currently have another day during the week when it's just phones down. If you want, once you're not working or doing school, phones down. It has shifted not only the time that we have as a family to connect, uh, to cook together, to walk together, even though the boys roll their eyes. It is transforming, um, the way we engage with each other and with the Lord. I feel less rushed. It can feel odd. Oh, that's how you know that there's addiction or habitual practices that are directing your life, but it changes how you engage with your whole life. So when the Lord invited us to Sabbath, uh, and we'll read about that in Exodus, like, what does the Ten Commandments mean for us today? But he said keep the Sabbath holy. It was to be obedient, but it was also for us. The average American checks their phone 144 times a day. 144 times a day. Even if you check it and look at it for 5 to 10 seconds and put it down, Do you know what that adds up to? A minute, 144 minutes in the day. That's a couple of hours of your life gone. Do you know what you could have done with a couple of hours? Read a good book, had a good conversation with your husband, went on a walk with your kids, talked to a girlfriend on the phone, went for a long drive, took your time around the grocery store. You know what you could do with that? So I want to encourage you, at least once a week as a part of your Sabbath, even if you don't get rid of the phone for the whole day, for there to be a period of time where you put it down and use some of that time to do something meaningful that connects you to the Lord and to what he wants to do in your life. 77% of women say they feel burned out always or often. And the question I want to ask is, if we were truly connected to other people or to the purposes and plans for our life or to what we need, would that burnout lessen? Because what's happening is we're constantly connected to everyone else, people that we don't know, And we are running out of time and we don't feel present in our own lives. Maybe we're connected to the wrong thing. Anne Lamott, who is a great writer, said, "Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you." So I want to encourage you to look at the role that burnout may be playing in your life because of busyness, because busyness breeds burnout, and look for places where you can inject more rest. And the scriptures are clear. If you want more rest, what do you do? You come to Jesus. And Jesus gave a prescription for that in the word: remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. So enjoy your family around the dinner table, go for a walk with your husband or with a girlfriend, get to know one of your neighbors, put out an APB. When we moved here, I put cookies in everybody's mailbox. It was during COVID they were sealed professionally. I still think some people threw them away, but I introduced myself. Later on, another neighbor— I guess they were growing onions in their backyard— they shared their onions with me. And a group of women in our neighborhood, they walk. And one of the ladies invited me to walk once I shared the cookies. Somebody in your neighborhood is waiting on you to go first. And what if the connection you need is on your street? You just have got to make the time and create the invitation. Doing less is an invitation for you to be more. We know the story of Martha and Mary in the Bible, Luke chapter 10. Mary has chosen what is better. Now let's not get it twisted. We need Marthas to get things done in the world, but either can be at extreme. Some of us want to lay down and rest all the time. We get off work, we come home, and we veg out because this is what we need to do. We need to decompress at the end of the day. And some of us come home and we start our second jobs. Martha wasn't wrong for serving, she just missed the moment. Is your service, is your productivity causing you to miss moments? If you've ever thought to yourself, man, I should have been there for that, then you're probably living your life in a way where you miss moments. I've had to ask myself, I literally have to tell myself sometimes, Chrystal, you work for yourself. What do you mean you can't do that? What do you mean you can't do that? Yes, you can. Many of us who own businesses or have side hustles, we've heard people say, you know, don't get your own business and then end up with a more expensive job. You've got to look for the cracks in the crevices, even if you're working for someone else, to control the narrative of your story. What is it that you want in your life and where are you going to make room for it? Where can you make room for being? And that will normally mean you have to exchange doing something else. So I talked about school. I know a lot of us are in school because we wanna make our lives better. And I know we just want it to be done. But are you exchanging being to be done? If you have a life full of "I did it," you will have a life empty of "I was." I enjoyed, I experienced. And when you get to the end of your life, the check marks don't matter as much. It's engaging in your life that matters the most. So you're going to have to choose wisely what matters the most. So what does this look like for me? This looks like I really want to finish decluttering my living room, my game room, my guest room. I want to declutter my house. I really need to finish my finance. These are my goals. Like, I really need to finish my financial work. But being means I'm gonna go take the walk. I will have less satisfaction with my to-dos because I'm gonna go take the walk. I'm gonna make my son walk with me while we walk his dog. This means I'm gonna invite my husband to come to Costco with me or the grocery store, even though it's gonna take 3 times as long. And I just wanna get it done. But being is more important than doing. How do you break busy in your life? It's simple, but it's not simple because we're addicted to busy. We're addicted to accomplishment. We're addicted to making sure we're moving the needle in our lives. And I believe in that, but it has to be balanced. It has to be balanced. So the thing that you want to do is be still, create stillness, because God is inviting you to do that. And in the Commandments, we are commanded to keep some time on the calendar for stillness. You need to come to Jesus, making time for that, because it's not about rest always, it's about alignment. So the Sabbath is not just taking a break from digital things, it is— and other busy things, it is also spending time with the Lord in a way where you actually get to hear from him. And then it is also making sure that you are taking something off of your calendar. Like, there is no breaking busy without something that's on your calendar, probably going away or waiting until later or doing less of it. It's going to feel like pruning, but whom the Lord loves, he prunes. If you want something to blossom, you've got to cut off the sucker shoots. And many of us are busy with a lot of things that are sucker shoots, and it takes discipline for us to say, this doesn't matter as much. So let me tell you what sucker shoots are right now in my life. Sucker shoots are They're things I enjoy and it's not that I can't do them, it's just they can't require so much of me. I'm having so much fun with my AI and my custom GPTs, but if I spend 4 hours playing with it, it's a whole sucker shoot. Do you know what I could have done with 4 hours that's more meaningful in my life beyond sleep and connecting with my people, reading, writing, the things that actually drive it forward? Sucker shoots. I can talk to a million people on the phone that I really want to talk to, but that's a sucker shoot if my kids are in the kitchen and while I'm fixing dinner with my kids, I'm on the phone with someone else. The most important thing in that moment is paying attention to my children who are with me in the room. What is it something that is sucking your life that it's not bad, it's just stealing life away from the things that actually will invite you to not miss the moment? I recently went to Knoxville, Tennessee because I was headed to Pigeon Forge. Pigeon Forge, there's no way to get there easily. You've got to drive an hour, which way? Matter which way you cut it, coming in from the airport. And there are 3 routes to get to Pigeon Forge. I have taken this route a few times because I've spoken at a certain women's event multiple times. The past that I've been there, I've always loved the drive in. It turns into a very windy road. And then you're able to see this, this, this, this bubbling brook all to the side. And we've stepped out many years and got out and taken a picture, beautiful scenery. You're weaving in and out of the valley of the mountains, seeing the leaves change. Gorgeous. This time when I went, apparently we went another route because I didn't see any of the water, the rivers and the brooks and the— it was just different. And so on the way out, I went into this random restaurant and I said, listen, I'm heading back to the airport. I can see there are 3 routes that we could take. I want to take the scenic route, but apparently we took the wrong one coming in. And she said, oh yeah, you need to go from here through Townsend back to Knoxville. And so I put in Townsend to make sure I took the scenic route. Why? Because the scenic route was going to take me an hour and 4 minutes. The faster way was going to take me 54 minutes. It added an extra 10 minutes. It took more time, but it was so much more beautiful. Can I spare the 10 minutes? Yes. Let me tell you what the 10 minutes cost me. Had I not done the 10 minutes, when I got to the airport, I would have been able to go to Quiznos and get a sandwich. I didn't get Quiznos. I bought something that was super quick because we hadn't eaten lunch, and I ate that on the plane. Would I have traded Quiznos for the scenery and for the photos? No. I can get a sandwich anytime. But I did have to say no to the extra time at the airport to get a sandwich in order to take the more beautiful route. Yes, breaking busy means letting go of some things. There are some things you won't be able to enjoy, but will the scenery of your life be better because you took the longer route? I bet it will. Will you enjoy the journey of your life better? Will you have better memories that you are able to capture and share with other people? And will that mean you lose the quiznos? Maybe. But which mattered more? I think the scenery did. And in the same way in your life, for you to take the scenic route and slow down will require you to miss out on some things. But if you have the quiznos and not the beautiful life, I think you'll realize that was the wrong choice. What are you doing that's your quiznos? It's satisfying, it's filling, it's enjoyable, but it's not the scenic route. You should die with a list of things still to do, but you should die with the important things on the list done. When my mom passed away, there was a list in her Apple Notes of all the things she still wanted to do. She looked at my father one night in the hospital and she said, "Well, we made it to all but one continent. What a beautiful life." Now, was Australia on her list? Yes, it was. But she made it to all but one continent. Keep your lists, just move through it slowly and in the right order. And if you are moving too fast, here's what I can guarantee you. The things that are the most important things on your list, you will be working from the bottom up and die with the most important things not done. Top down, keep working your way through the list. Just put it in order and keep the things that don't matter as much on the list, but not at the top. Break busy so that you can enjoy. Your beautiful life.