{"product_id":"crazybusy-isbn-9780345482440","title":"CrazyBusy","description":"Look at what's happened to the usual how-are-you exchange.  It used to go like this: \"How are you?\"  \"Fine.\"  Now it often goes like this: \"How are you?\" \"Busy.\"  Or \"Too busy.\"  Or simply \"Crazy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWithout intending for it to happen or knowing how, when, or why it got started, many people now find that they live in a rush they never wanted.  If you feel busier than you've ever been and wonder how this happened and how you can keep up the pace much longer, you are hardly alone.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCrazy? Maybe not. Dysfunctional? Yes, indeed. We all have more to do than ever before -- and less time to do it. In this highly listenable audiobook, the foremost expert on ADD, Ned Hallowell, explores the society-wide phenomenon of culturally induced ADD.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeing busy may very well keep you from doing what matters most, or it may lead you to do things you deem unwise (like getting angry, for example). Being busy is a problem for almost all of us.  This audiobook is about both the opportunity and the problem -- where this peculiar life comes from and how to turn it to your advantage. Offering solutions to this difficult, complex problem that might work for you, most importantly, \u003ci\u003eCrazybusy\u003c\/i\u003e may prompt you to create solutions of your own.\u003cb\u003eEdward M. Hallowell, M.D.,\u003c\/b\u003e was an instructor at Harvard Medical School for twenty years and is now the director of the Hallowell Centers in Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, and the Boston area. He is the co-author of \u003ci\u003eDriven to Distraction,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eDelivered from Distraction,\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Answers to Distraction,\u003c\/i\u003e as well as the author of \u003ci\u003eCrazyBusy, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWorry,\u003c\/i\u003e among other titles. He also hosts a weekly podcast called \u003ci\u003eDistraction\u003c\/i\u003e that offers practical solutions on how to focus and regain control in today’s digital world.The Agony of a Rotary Phone\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My family stayed at a lakeside cottage last summer where the only  telephone was an old-fashioned rotary model. The cottage was so remote  that there was no cell phone service, just the stolid black telephone  sitting atop a tattered phone book on an end table next to a worn-out  peach-colored couch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I remember the first time I dialed that phone. It was morning. I’d gone  out for a wake-me-up swim, poured myself a cup of coffee, and was sitting  on the couch to call a friend to see if he and his kids might like to join  my wife, my kids, and me that night at a minor league baseball game. There  was no urgency to this call, no need for me to hurry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Yet as I started to dial, got angry, and impatience flamed within me  because on this phone I had to wait for the rotor to wind back to its  starting point after each number. It was so slow! In addition, it made an  irritating screeching sound as it retraced its cycle, like a rusty metal  drawer stuck on its runners: 5 . . . 4 . . .   2 . . . 6 . . . I could have entered the entire number on a touch-tone  phone in the time it took me to dial just one number on this obsolete  contraption. Not to mention how much faster I could have done it with  speed dial had I been able to use my cell phone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By the time I had laboriously cranked out the entire number, I was in a  total snit. How could anyone still own such a slow phone? I fumed. What a  stupid phone! How backward! How dumb! But then I caught myself. This was  absurd. When my friend finally answered, I spoke to him, hung up, and then  redialed his number, timing how long it took me: eleven seconds exactly.  As if putting my life in danger, those eleven slow seconds had annoyed me  beyond reason. What a fool I had become. What a modern man. I felt  embarrassed at my automatic impatience. I had become a man in a hurry even  when I had no need to hurry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As the vacation moved along, I changed. I made friends with that old  rotary phone. I began to appreciate what it could teach me. The sound it  made started to sound less like a stuck drawer and more like an old  windmill still stoutly doing its work after all these years. I came to  think of it as a wise counsel, ensconced on its end table like a Buddha  cautioning me to take my time and enjoy, while they lasted, the summer,  the childhood of my kids, the ripening of my marriage, and these best  years of my life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Without intending for it to happen or knowing how it got started, many  people now find that they live in a rush they don’t want and didn’t  create, or at least didn’t mean to create. If you feel busier now than  you’ve ever been before, and if you wonder if you can keep up this pace  much longer, don’t feel alone. Most of us feel slightly bewildered,  realizing we have more to do than ever—with less time to do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Look at what’s happened to the usual “how are you” exchange. It used to go  like this: “How are you?” “Fine.” Now it often goes like this: “How are  you?” “Busy.” Or, “Too busy.” Or even, “Crazy busy.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    If you’re busy doing what matters to you, then being busy is bliss. You’ve  found a rhythm for your life that works for you. This world is bursting  with possibilities; its energy can be contagious. If you catch the bug,  you want to jump out of bed each day and get busy, not because you are run  ragged by details or because you are keeping the wolf from your door, but  because you are in love with this fast life. At its best, modern life  dazzles us, giving us a chance to get more done in a minute than used to  get done in a month.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But if being busy keeps you from doing what matters most to you, or if it  leads you to do things you deem unwise, like getting angry at a rotary  telephone, then being busy is a problem. This book is about both the  problem and the opportunity—where this peculiar life comes from and how to  turn it to your advantage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In order to make this crazy world work for you and not against you, you  must decide what matters to you most and focus your attention on that. In  days gone by, this was not nearly as difficult as it is today. That’s  because the selection was not nearly as broad, and the thieves of time,  attention, and mental energy were not nearly as common or as clever as  they are today. Today, these thieves have never had it so good. If you’re  not wise to their tricks, it is likely that they will run you faster and  faster as they steal more and more of your time, attention, and energy,  leaving you less and less for what you want to do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Being too busy, which can seem necessary and unavoidable, can become a  habit so entrenched that it leads you to postpone or cut short what really  matters to you, making you a slave to a lifestyle you don’t like but can’t  escape. You can be so busy that you don’t even take the time to decide  what actually does matter most to you, let alone make the time to do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Others created this lifestyle. It looked like the only way to go, the way  of the future. What were you supposed to do, be a Luddite and refuse to  buy a cell phone or a BlackBerry? Not go wireless? Refuse to enroll your  kids in soccer, violin, and SAT tutoring? Refuse to take on the added debt  of the extra week of vacation your spouse and kids were counting on? Have  simple birthday parties the way they used to in the 1950s and 1960s?  Figure out a way to live with just one car? Or just two? Say no to braces  for your daughter? Let your yard go to seed? Refuse to give your time to  the cancer foundation your friend is heading up? Refuse to do the extra  work your boss asks you to do because half your staff got laid off? What  if you’re next?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Unaware of the hidden consequences, and without making a conscious  decision to do so, soon you found that you and your family had joined  right in. It happened slowly, over the past five to ten years. Had you  known then what you know now, you might have done things differently. It  is like the story of frogs in water. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling  water, he will try to jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of cold  water and heat it up slowly, you will end up with a boiled frog.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Someone turned up the burner on us in the mid-1990s. We’re not boiled yet,  but we’re definitely feeling the heat. Before the water boils, it might be  a good idea to jump out. Not jump out of modern life and head off to  Walden Pond (though even it swarms with busy tourists), but adjust the  temperature yourself instead of letting some diabolical chef set it for  you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The greatest damage from being too busy is that it prevents people from  setting their own temperature, controlling their own lives. It does other  harm as well, like increasing toxic stress, making people sick, causing  accidents and errors, turning otherwise polite people rude, and reducing  the general level of happiness in the population. But the greatest damage  it does is that it keeps a person from what’s most important.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Being too busy is a persistent and pestering problem, one that is leading  tens of millions of Americans to feel as if they were living in a swarm of  gnats constantly taking bites out of their lives. All the screaming and  swatting in the world does not make them go away. Being too busy plagues  the best and brightest people in this country, if not the world. Legions  of smart people everywhere feel overly busy; they rack their brains to  find a better way, struggling to regain control of their lives. I want to   explore this difficult problem, offer some solutions that can   work for you, and most important, prompt you to create your own solutions.Co-author of Delivered from Distraction [quote]--USA Today","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300375711973,"sku":"NP9780345482440","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345482440.jpg?v=1767724215","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/crazybusy-isbn-9780345482440","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}