Raise your hand, and be honest, if you've used the phrase "crazy busy" to describe your day, your week, your month. I'm an emergency-room doctor, and "crazy busy" is a phrase you will never hear me use.
And after today, I hope you'll stop using it, too. Here's why you cannot afford to use "crazy" to describe your busy.
Because when we are in what I refer to as Crazy Busy Mode, we are simply less capable of handling the busy. Here's what happens.
Your stress hormones rise and stay there, your executive function in the prefrontal cortex declines. That means your memory, your judgment, your impulse control deteriorate, and the brain areas for anger and anxiety are activated.
Do you feel that? Here's the thing.
You can be as busy as an emergency department without feeling like you're crazy busy. How?
By using the same tactics that we use. Our brains all process stress in similar fundamental ways.
But how we react to it has been shown by research to be modifiable, whether it's emergencies or just daily, day-in, day-out stress. Now contrast Crazy Busy Mode with how I think of us in the ER—Ready Mode.
Ready Mode means whatever comes in through those doors, whether it's a multiple-car pileup, or a patient having chest pain while stuck in an elevator, or another patient with an item stuck where it shouldn't be. When you're know you're dying to ask.
Even on those days when you would swear you were being punked, we're not afraid of it. Because we know that whatever comes in through those ER double doors, that we can handle it.
