College, graduate school, and just about any time thereafter is remarkably eventful. We are pressed to do so many things just to stay in place. Usually quite innocently, when people ask how we are, we respond with some variation of “I’m really busy.”  When they ask us the next time, we’re are likely to repeat the same exact thing.

What is up with this glorification of being busy? Is it like talking about the weather in that it makes for a conversation filler? What if it is actually a conversation killer.

Some time ago, blogger Tyler Ward argued in this clever piece that our little over-used phrase leads nowhere good, and it doesn’t make us that special. He describes how one couple  decided to stop using the word “busy” for one entire year. The finding?

“We were forced to describe our own situations with more clarity, and without our best friend ‘busy’ to blame, we engaged with people more authentically. As we did, we noticed the general depth of conversations increase as we and those we were sharing with, were invited to communicate differently about our actual states of being.”

In his post, “Busy Isn’t Respectable Anymore” you can explore other compelling reasons to avoid communicating your busyness with the world.

Be sure to share your thoughts and reactions in the comment section. I’d love to hear reactions you get to saying or hearing “I’m really busy” – and ways to substitute the phrase with something better.

As the calendar just turned over to 2016, it’s as good of a time as any to try something new.