Whitespace

Busy is the new fine! Sounds like an advertising slogan.
I don’t know about you but I find myself saying it all the time. Conversations generally go like this.
How was your day? Oh, busy but good.
How are you doing? I’m so busy.
Ooh any plans for the weekend? Weekend? What’s that? It’s always so busy.
And on it goes.

There is always another event, someone’s birthday, anniversary, appointment, deadline, something to do. How about stopping? Time is something that is out of control and because of this it’s one of the things we worry about the most. Christmas is on the horizon and what does that mean – more things to do and things to buy. We make ourselves so busy we don’t have time to enjoy any of the moments we are striving or working towards. Sometimes shutting down is the best way to improve performance. So how about creating some whitespace.

Ok, bear with me while I get a little technical. Whitespace is a term used in many different disciplines which leaves an area/space blank or empty to give room for all the other information to be processed easily. In a document, it’s as simple as pressing the space or return keys. It is the space with nothing in it.

For example, iwonderifit’saseasytoreatthissentencewithoutthespacebetweenthewords (the previous sentence reads – I wonder if it’s as easy to read this sentence without the space between the words). It’s amazing how we take for granted the spaces that exist in everyday life that make it easy for us to function and take in information. But how many of us make time to do that each day or even in our lives. How can we take in all the things that are happening on a daily basis if we never take time to allow the information to be processed?

Stop and start, off and on are buttons that ALWAYS appear together so I wonder why we always feel that we can continually go and never take time to slow down on even stop. Busyness creates overextension, overextension creates tiredness, tiredness creates irritability, irritability creates stress (on yourself and your relationships), stress creates burnout, burnout creates lack of motivation and energy which in turn creates reduced productivity. So, we think being busy helps us to get more stuff done but actually, it can make us become ineffective in all that we do. Wow, I feel exhausted just typing that.

So how do we even go about creating whitespace I hear you ask. It can be as simple as purposefully booking an hour in your calendar that has nothing scheduled. Use this time to do something to relax, enjoy or de-stress. Allow it to be a space where you reflect, create, think, let it be an opportunity for your mind to recharge.

Make it a priority, and let others know. Creating the space is only the first step, the next is making sure others respect the time you have set aside.