Faster and Busier 更快更忙

Being quick may not be relevant to every situation, and we do not need to be faster in all our endeavour. However, many people want to be faster as they feel that they are getting busier in a fast-changing society.

If we are able to pace our life well, we are likely able to be freed from being busy. Indeed, busyness is related to the demand to be faster. If we are not busy, we do not need to rush and try to complete our task as fast as possible. Therefore, it is vital to avoid busyness.

We become busy because we feel that we are required to attend to everybody and everything. The demand of social functions is there, but the choice is ours. There are things apparently necessary, but they are not critical to our life. For example, we don’t need to entertain all our friends’ invitations such as the wedding occasions. My wife and me were invited to a wedding ceremony in the morning, then the banquet of the same couple in the evening. We decided to be at the morning ceremony and asked to be excused from the evening banquet. Consequently, we have saved ourselves from an evening function. By minimising our time for social functions, we save time and avoid to be busy.

Further more, we can choose to live a simpler life-style rather than being too sophisticated, then we can have more time. In other words, some people choose to have variety of attires for different occasions. This actually causes them to try to make more money and spend time to figure out appropriate attire for every occasion. When we need more money, we may be required to take up more than one job, which means extra time spent on works. When we simplify our choice of attires to what are really necessary, we do save time from figuring out how to be presentable unnecessarily. Therefore, a simpler life-style is a way to have more time and to stay free from busyness.

Getting onto social media for communication has also made life busier if we think we need to read all messages and reply everybody. Indeed, many forwarded messages are not relevant and even the senders may not bother about our reply. Therefore, we can just ignore them. By being wise in using social media, we save time and prevent ourselves from busyness.

Finally, we don’t need to be busy if we know our priorities and discipline ourselves in utilising our time for what is really important rather than what seems to be urgent. Take for an example, watching the last episode of a TV series is urgent but usually unimportant. Therefore, we can save time by responding to what is important rather than being tyrannised by what seems to be urgent.

As a whole, if we are able to manage our time according to our priorities and discipline, we can avoid to be busy. If we are not busy, we don’t need to rush and avoid the demand to be faster in every circumstance. The people of the world seem to be busier and want to be faster. Nevertheless, we have a choice to be different and to live steadily.

“要快”可能並不适用于每种情况，其实我们不需要更快地完成所有工作。然而，许多人还是希望能更快，因为他们觉得自己在快速变化的社会中已经变得更加忙碌。

如果我们能够很好地调整我们的生活，我们就可能能够摆脱忙碌。的确，忙碌会与所谓要更快有关；如果我们不忙，我们就未必需要急促完成任务。因此，避免忙碌便非常重要。

我们变得忙碌，因为我们觉得需要回应每个人和各种需求，社交的需求的确存在，但选择是还是在于我们。有些事情看起来是必要的，但它们对我们的生活其实并不重要。例如，我们不需要接受所有朋友的邀请，例如婚礼场合。我和妻子被邀请参加早上的婚礼及晚上同一对新婚夫妇的宴会；我们决定只参加早上的婚礼，并推辭出席晚宴。因此，我们便能够保留了晚上的时间。通过尽量缩短社交时间，我们可以节省时间，也避免了忙碌。

此外，我们可以选择较简单的生活方式而不要生活过于复杂，那么我们就可以有更多的时间。换句话说，有些人选择在不同的场合穿着所谓合适的服装。这实际上会导致他们要试图赚更多的钱以買更多衣服，並花时间为每个场合选择合适的服装。当我们需要更多钱时，我们可能需要承担不止一份工作，这也意味着在工作上花上更多的时间。当我们将穿着简化为只按照真正的需要，我们便可以节省时间，不必为所谓体面的装扮花上太多时间。因此，更简单的生活方式是达到拥有更多时间和远离忙碌的方式。

如果我们认为需要阅读社交媒体所有的消息并回复發出伩息的所有人，那么社交媒体的交流也会令我们的生活变得更加繁忙。实际上，许多转发的消息都不很重要，甚至发送者也不会期望我们回复；因此，我们是可以忽略其中的消息。通过明智地使用社交媒体，我们可以节省时间并避免自己忙碌。

最后，如果我们知道自己的优先秩序，并且懂得善用时间来处理真正重要而非看似紧急的事情，我们就不必忙碌。举一个例子，观看电视连续剧的最后一集是紧急的事但通常却不重要。所以，我们不要被看似紧急的事情所困扰，而專注回应重要的事情来节省时间。

总的来说，如果我们能够根据自己的优先秩序和纪律来管理时间，我们就可以避免忙碌。如果我们不忙，我们就不需要在任何情况下都要求更快。今天的人似乎比以前更忙，並想要更快达到生活需求。而事实上，我们是可以选择与众不同，并稳定地生活。

Living in a contemporary society we are demanded to be presentable and able to utilise the social media etc. But there is wisdom to live without the need to be busy and pressurised to become faster.
生活在现代的社会令我们要观注衣着及使用社交媒体等，但是必须有智慧地生活並免除忙碌及速度的压力。