Yvonne Tally - Breaking Up with Busy: Real-Life Solutions for Overscheduled Women

Praise for Breaking Up with Busy

Yvonne Tally delivers her message with a light hand and a sense of humor, making hers a voice that people trust and find inspiring.

Kat Gordon, founder of the 3% International Conference

Yvonne Tallys energy is boundless, and her clients wish they could buy a bottle of it. With this book, now they can!

Robbie Baxter, author of The Membership Economy
and founder of Peninsula Strategies

As a consumer reporter, I have done countless stories on the next best thing to get in shape and get healthy. I have heard it all and done it all! But what I never had done before was exercise and train my mind to work in a productive and positive way to change my most challenging habits. Working with Yvonne Tally has helped me create a new way of thinking and living. It is one of the most powerful things I have ever done.

Jeanette Pavini, two-time Emmy Awardwinning
journalist and coauthor of Raising Baby Green

Yvonne Tally seems to have unlocked the secret formula for a truly balanced and mindful approach that addresses our inner sense of calm, presence, and well-being. I have shared her intuitive, highly effective, groundbreaking method with entire families, and it works. Today, tomorrow, and for years to come, it works.

Dave Grandin, MFCC therapist

What a refreshing and deeply useful guide to busting your stories and beliefs about why you must be so very busy. I made tons of notes and immediately implemented several ideas. But most of all? I felt far less alone in my busyness and more willing to do something about it. This is one of those books youll want to revisit again and again as you change your story about busy.

Jennifer Louden, author of The Life Organizer
and The Womans Comfort Book

In an environment crowded with overwhelming and often conflicting information, Yvonne Tally provides a streamlined and comprehensive approach to living well, from the inside out. Her attitude is everything philosophy is the cornerstone for balanced modern living.

Sarah Lucas, cofounder of Beyond Type 1

Breaking Up with Busy is a wake-up call (and revelation) to overscheduled women everywhere. Chock-full of engaging stories, illuminating exercises, and highly practical busy-busting solutions, this is the book you want by your side so you can put your well-being at the top of your priority list without sacrificing your ambition or success to do it.

Alexia Vernon, author of Step into Your Moxie

Yvonne Tally hits the busyness epidemic head-on and gets to the root of what is driving busy habits, by methodically laying out the traps and the solutions to help you break up with busy once and for all. And if youre tempted to slip back into busy, Yvonnes Busy-Free Playbook chapter gives you fifty-two weeks of busy-free refreshers, on top of the mindfulness and practical solutions in early chapters. It is exactly the book that any busy woman needs! Yvonnes expertise as a lifestyle coach offers the perfect blueprint to a mindful and healthy life.

Lee Woodruff, New York Timesbestselling author of
Those We Love Most and Perfectly Imperfect

Takes a clear-eyed look at the busyness epidemic women battle daily and comes up with practical strategies to reset and reclaim a more satisfying life. A must-read for busy women everywhere!

Lalita Tademy,New York Timesbestselling author of
Cane River, Red River, and Citizens Creek

The fact that you think you dont have time to read this book is the reason you need to read this book. Yvonne Tallys practical tips and insights will help you reduce stress and change your habits. Its time to stop feeling overwhelmed and to reclaim your love life, work life, and most importantly your real life.

Sam Bennett, author of Get It Done!

Copyright 2018 by Yvonne Tally

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

First printing, April 2018

ISBN 978-1-60868-525-7

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-526-4

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my sweet daughter, Juliette.

In everything that love is, you are. xoxo

Contents

Im busy has become the new Im fine, a chant heard everywhere, from the sidelines of soccer games to the hallways of offices. There is a cultural expectation that women should always be busy, and if theyre not, well, they must not be all that important, or worse, they must be lazy.

Busyness is not just a behavior; it is an ethos that claims ownership of our time. Moving away from busy behavior takes more than just solutions; it requires each of us to discover the motivation underneath our behavior. Thats the only way we will stop the endless overscheduling and the side-eyeing of our fellow sisters when we see them not being busy enough. As soon as we understand whats driving our behavior, well be able to make changes and reclaim our leisure time rather than simply giving it away.

Busy is an odd status symbol. It is like fake designer clothing it looks really good from the outside, but on the inside the structure is uneven, details are missing, and only the wearer knows that what others see is an illusion. For many this ruse provides a sense of fitting in to an elite group. And dont we all want to fit in? Its human nature to want to belong and to feel our contributions are being valued. But what price are we paying to be a part of this busy group? And how did being busy go from being a pastime to a lifestyle?

The Overscheduled Woman (OSW) knows all too well what being busy feels like. For her the Im busy refrain is all too accurate. As she time-slices through her days, trying to keep up with all the demands, busy is setting the pace. What would help? A clone, an assistant, a vacation? Yes, as a matter of fact, all three are exactly what she needs to get busy off her schedule. But without the use of a helpful robot or a hands-free voice-activated virtual assistant, shes on her own, long to-do list in one hand and cell phone blowing up in the other. A screen-shot of her days reveals a variety pack of demands and requests: