I'm too busy; I'd love to but I'm very busy; I'll get round to that when I'm not so busy.

How often have you said any of those phrases? How many times a week do you hear someone else say those phrases? They're very common and busyness seems to have become a way of life for many people.

I've just finished writing my first ebook called Take Control of Your Time: 7 Straight Shooter Strategies for Success, and when I was doing some research two of the most common problems people said they faced were too many priorities and too busy to plan and take time for themselves.

So why is that? What is it about being busy that seems to dominate our lives? We moan about it and spend time trying to figure out why. In Japanese the word busy when translated literally means "dead-hearted".

So when you say I'm busy, you are in fact saying I'm dead-hearted. Well that sounds a bit morbid to me yet isn't that sometimes how you feel when you feel busy?

In this article, I'm going to answer 3 questions.
* Why do you get so busy?
* What is the single biggest cause of your busyness?
* What are the problems with allowing your busyness to take control of you?
I'll then reveal to you the top secret, "highly complicated" solution to how you can take control of your busyness!

So why are you so busy?

Well some of the excuses – sorry - causes might be too much work, too much trivia, too many priorities, too many emails, too many meetings too much of everything!

Well actually I disagree. There is only 1 reason for your busyness. It's true. There is only 1 cause of your busyness and it's not email, phone calls, meetings, school runs or anything else like that.

What is that 1 cause? Because U Say Yes

What is it about your need to take on more stuff? What is it that drives a sane intelligent person like you to take on more jobs and more responsibilities? Because You can; Because YOU say yes.

This can cause numerous problems. Once people around you learn that if they want something doing, you'll do it, they develop a habit and so do you. Once you become used to taking on extra jobs, doing other people's work and making "favour doing" a part of your every day life, time no longer becomes your own but driven by the needs of others – because you say yes.

If you work in an office and you become known as the PC fixer or IT expert, whenever anyone has a problem they come to you for help and guess what? that soon becomes the way we do things around here.

Now I'm not saying don't help others just be mindful that when you do you are making a conscious decision to take on an extra task, which may mean you have to stop doing what you were doing, take time out and suddenly time slips away; your time slips away; because you said yes. You said yes to a change of priorities, which may have the consequence of making you feel even busier. I say this to my clients and many of them immediately say,

Yes But.You don't understand my situation
Yes But... that's not true in my case
Yes but... I can't not do that
Yes but. followed by a whole line of excuses.
Well you can yes but all you like, however the fact remains, you are constantly saying yes, consciously or sub consciously, to everything you do. You are choosing to do everything.

You choose to answer the phone.
You choose to take the children to after school activities.
You choose to react to your email.

Equally you have the choice to not do all of those activities.

You can choose not to answer the phone every time it rings.
You can choose not to take the children to their after school activities.
You can choose not to react to that "you've got mail" ping!

As Robert Orben says "Time flies its up to you to be the navigator."

Your level of busyness is 100% down to you.

Now I sense some yes buts out there. In saying you have the choice, which you do, of course there are consequences to those choices.

If you choose not to pick up the phone - there are consequences.
If you choose not to go to those meetings – there are consequences.
If you choose not to take the children to their activities – there are consequences.
The point is ultimately you decide. You choose whether you are busy or not
Because U Say Yes.

Now I said I would give you the top secret, highly complicated solution to controlling your level of busyness so here it is.

SAY NO!

About the Author
Beverley Hamilton is the author of Take Control of Your Time: 7 Straight Shooter Strategies for Success - http://www.takecontrolofyourtime.com To learn more, subscribe to Quickstart her free ezine and get more tips, tools and articles visit at http://www.onestepfurther.co.uk.