Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem

"Man, I'm so busy right now." I can't tell you how many times I've started a conversation or an email like this. I really hate doing it, but there it is. It's even worse when a friend or family member opens up a conversation saying, "I know you're busy, but..."When it comes to busyness, compared to Kevin DeYoung, I'm a lightweight. He preaches multiple times on Sundays, writes books, blogs, tweets, has all the responsibilities that come with being the senior pastor of his church... oh yeah, and he's married with five (soon six) kids!So, realizing he's got way too much on his plate and has no concept of "margin," he made the logical decision and wrote another book: Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem.Crazy Busy isn't written from the position of having figured out the secret of overcoming busyness. "I'm writing this book not because I know more than others but because I want to know more than I do," he explains. "I want to know why life feels the way it does, why our world is the way it is, why I am the way I am. And I want to change" (12).In doing so, DeYoung writes inviting to join him on the journey. This is a nice approach, one I really appreciated throughout much of the book. More often than not, I found myself identifying with his diagnoses of the causes of busyness, which ranged from the overtly sinful (pride in its various forms) to some genuinely good reasons that get a bit off course (parenting immediately comes to mind).One of my particularly nasty habits is being a bit too attached to my devices. When I got my first iPhone, I played incessantly on it for about two weeks. My wife wanted to throw it into the street (and probably would have if it didn't belong to my employer). The problem for me, for the longest time, was learning to have boundaries with it. An immediate one we put in place was no cellphones in the bedroom. Another was no phones at the dinner table (something she's rebuked me for in the past and rightly so). But the worst has been how it fed my inability to rest properly.I've always been terrible at "Sabbath-ing." I don't vacation well; I'm always doing something (seriously, I think I've got three jobs now). One of the things I've had to learn is how to actually take steps to plan to rest. I've started planning time off well in advance. I deactivate the Mail app whenever I'm on vacation. So I really resonate with what DeYoung writes about how hard this really is to do:"We all know we need rest from work, but we don't realize we have to work hard just to rest. We have to plan for breaks. We have to schedule time to be unscheduled. That's the way life is for most of us. Scattered, frantic, boundary-less busyness comes naturally. The rhythms of work and rest require planning." (98)Probably the standout chapter of the book is the second-to-last, where DeYoung reminds us that while there are many sinful kinds of busyness, sometimes we're busy because God has made us to be busy. He writes:"The busyness that's bad is not the busyness of work, but the busyness that works hard at the wrong things. It's being busy trying to please people, busy trying to control others, busy trying to do things we haven't been called to do. So please don't hear from me that work is bad or that bearing burdens is bad. That's part of life. That's part of being a Christian." (102)As Christians we are meant to work hard for God's glory. We're to bear one another's burdens. We're to spur one another on to love and good deeds. We're to witness to our community, and do all we set out to do with excellence. That is hard work. And it will keep you very, very busy. But it's the good kind of busy--the kind where we spend our energy on one another, rather than on ourselves. This is a kind of busy that we all (myself especially) could embrace with a little more zeal.And honestly, I kind of wish this is where DeYoung had ended Crazy Busy. There's much that I appreciated throughout the whole thing, but I found myself left a bit wanting as I finished reading.It's not like the "one thing you must do" he writes of in the final chapter is bad--"We must make learning from [Jesus] and taking time to be with him a priority", he writes (113). This is right and true and absolutely necessary in our continued growth as disciples of Jesus and a fine note to end on. But I walked away from the book... unsatisfied.Maybe it's a flaw in the "journeying together" style of the book. Maybe I hoped that DeYoung would be a little further ahead of me on this journey. Maybe I simply had unfair expectations of the book itself. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just didn't grab me the way I'd hoped.Reading a book by Kevin DeYoung is never a waste of time, and Crazy Busy is no different. His writing is as sharp and naturally zingy as ever. He does a very good job diagnosing the issue of busyness in our lives, and even if it's not one of his best works, there's still a great deal of food for thought.

Unless your life resembles that of our fabulously lazy cat Buttercup, whose entire existence consists of one long nap punctuated by the occasional rodent hunt, you're probably pretty busy with more important things to do. Maybe even "crazy busy" - you have more "must-do" items than time, you're often stressed, and sometimes you feel that you're on the point of drowning in a tsunami of responsibilities, demands, and deadlines.Almost everybody I know is busy. It's part of modern life - we live hurried and harried lives in a frantic age. And we need help to understand our incessant busyness from a biblical perspective. And this is what Kevin Deyoung offers in his book Crazy Busy - A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem.What Deyoung give us is not a program for tackling our overburdened-schedules or a technique for better time management. Rather, the book is a meditation on the problem of busyness in the light of biblical teaching. He says he wrote the book mainly for himself, to help him think through his own chronic struggle with an overly-busy life. But reading Crazy Busy will most certainly help you see more clearly the true nature of your own problem with busyness.Deyoung argues that a hectic lifestyle poses spiritual dangers - busyness can ruin our joy, rob our hearts, and cover up the "rot" in our souls. Certainly he is right about all of this - our over-committed and imbalanced lives are indicative of a greater spiritual dynamic at work in our hearts. Busyness can draw us away from Christ, even if so much of our activity is ostensibly in the service of Christ.Deyoung also exposes all the wrong reasons why we are busy (with an impressive display of alliteration!): people-pleasing, pats on the back, performance evaluation, possessions, proving myself, pity, poor planning, power, perfectionism, position, prestige, and posting. Busyness not only threatens our spiritual health, but it is often a consequence of our own sin. Let Crazy Busy assist you in some soul-searching: could your busyness (at least part of it) be a result of some sin or pride in your heart?I especially enjoyed Deyoung's chapter on parenting: "A Cruel Kindergarchy: You Need to Stop Freaking Out about Your Kids." Yes, God gives us Christian parents a tremendous responsibility properly to raise and train our children. But sometimes we think as though their eternal destinies are at stake with every daily decision we make concerning them and their upbringing. Deyoung injects a good dose of common sense (and humor) into the discussion of Christian parenting.I'm also grateful that Deyoung touched on the issue of the Sabbath, showing how God has ordained for us times of rest that we ignore at our own peril. Here I thought he could have gone even further. Would not ordering our weekdays so that we make ourselves rest on Sunday be a great help in taming busyness and reducing the stress that accompanies a life of non-stop activity?Crazy Busy also contains good insight and sage advice concerning the ever-increasing digital distractions that can result in so much trivial and wasted activity.Deyoung writes in an engaging, conversational tone. And he's got a nice sense of humor. Crazy Busy is easy to read but not superficial - there's solid theology buttressing all he says about our problem of busyness.Again, it's not a how-to manual for getting your life under control. But if you take seriously Deyoung's insights into the true nature of busyness, I think you'll come up with plenty of ideas of how to apply these to your own life. As Deyoung points out, if we are seeking to be faithful to God, we will be busy in this world. However, with the sort of help Deyoung offers, and by the grace of God, our busyness might become more like that of Jesus himself: intensely active, but always according to the priorities his Father had given him.

Very timely and timeless book. Great, quick read, no matter how busy you are. Many of us could benefit from reading more than once.

In many ways, I see this as the companion piece to John Mark Comer’s ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’.Where Comer presents busyness, fundamentally, with a problem that is ‘out there’ (the world is busy so we need to learn to shut out the world), DeYoung presents busyness as a problem within us (our hearts are full of pride and seek after the approval of others), meaning to deal with busyness, we need to deal with our hearts.Both are true. And I heartily recommend both books, though they are really very different. In this one, De Young conversationally, insightfully, gets to the heart of the problem with our hearts and provides practical, thought out, realistic solutions to the problem.

A really practical yet theologically deep book about busyness. Very readable, very enjoyable and very profound :)From a Christian man struggling with busyness

Relevant, short, to the point, concise and helpful with practical advise that is easily implemented.

This short but practical book strikes at the heart of busy peoples lives and opens up to us the reason we struggle with business. His simple gospel focussed answers strike home to me and will challenge me on my view of my busy life.Highly reccomended!

This is an excellent, practical and timely book - all from an author who doesn't have his head in the clouds. Highly recommended.