CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD [Hardcover]

Edward M. Hallowell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2006

Are you too busy? Are you always running behind? Is your calendar loaded with more than you can possibly accomplish? Is it driving you crazy? You’re not alone. CrazyBusy–the modern phenomenon of brain overload–is a national epidemic. Without intending it or understanding how it happened, we’ve plunged ourselves into a mad rush of activity, expecting our brains to keep track of more than they comfortably or effectively can. In fact, as Attention Deficit Disorder expert and bestselling author Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., argues in this groundbreaking new book, this brain overload has reached the point where our entire society is suffering from culturally induced ADD.

CrazyBusy is not just a by-product of high-speed, globalized modern life–it has become its defining feature. BlackBerries, cell phones, and e-mail 24/7. Longer work days, escalating demands, and higher expectations at home. It all adds up to a state of constant frenzy that is sapping us of creativity, humanity, mental well-being, and the ability to focus on what truly matters.

But as Dr. Hallowell argues, being crazybusy can also be an opportunity. Just as ADD can, if properly managed, become a source of ingenuity and inspiration, so the impulse to be busy can be turned to our advantage once we get in touch with our needs and take charge of how we really want to spend our time. Through quick exercises (perfect for busy people), focused advice on everything from lifestyle to time management, and examples chosen from his extensive clinical experience, Hallowell goes step-by-step through the process of unsnarling frantic lives. With CrazyBusy, we can teach ourselves to move from the F-state–frenzied, flailing, fearful, forgetful, furious–to the C-state–cool, calm, clear, consistent, curious, courteous.

Dr. Hallowell has helped more than a million readers free themselves of the distractions and compulsions of ADD. Now in CrazyBusy, he offers the same sound, sane, and accessible guidance for anyone suffering from the harried pace of modern life. If you find yourself pulled into a million different directions, here at last is the opportunity to stop being busy, start being happy, and still get things done.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hallowell (Driven to Distraction; Delivered from Distraction) turns what he has learned treating Attention Deficit Disorder into advice on how to cope with rampant busyness, "the problem and the opportunity" of modern life. He explains how to turn "the rush, the gush, the worry, and the blather (which also includes clutter)" into allies, so that one can have the things one wants with the speed, volume and emotional energy of the crazy-busy lifestyle. The roadmap Hallowell offers is helpful; that is, if one can manage to pick this book out of the never-ending stream of stimuli and find the time to read it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., was an instructor at Harvard Medical School for twenty years and is now director of the Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He is the co-author of Delivered from Distraction and the author of The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness and Worry, among other titles. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children. He welcomes hearing from readers and can be reached through his website, www.DrHallowell.com.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st Edition/1st Printing edition (March 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345482433
• ISBN-13: 978-0345482433
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #403,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a child and adult psychiatrist with a private practice in Sudbury Mass with my group of clinicians collectively called The Hallowell Center. I also am a writer and a lecturer. I am married to Sue Hallowell, a social worker and a therapist. We have been married for 17 years and have 3 children, Lucy, now 16, Jack, 13, and Tucker, 10 (as of April, 2006).
The major theme that runs through all my work is the magical power of the human connection, and the power of positive connections of all kinds. I also specialize in learning differences and have written books about how to deal best with attention deficit disorder, a condition that I regard as a potential gift, if it handled correctly.
I welcome hearing from readers. Just send me an email to [e-mail] or visit my website at drhallowell.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Invaluable Book of Useful and Usable Coping Strategies, and an Invitation to Personal Growth, March 31, 2006

By 

Dr. Richard G. Petty (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD (Hardcover)

We live in an addicted, overloaded society in which hypomanic behavior has become valued and rewarded. Is this something new, or a culmination of forces that have been acting upon us for centuries?

We have all been multitasking since before our ancestors came down from the trees, but our attention is now constantly being distracted by a host of new inputs: email, text messaging, instant messaging and a hundred other things. Just think of those news broadcasts that since 2001 have regularly had more than one item at a time on the screen. Many of us have learned to give only partial attention to the task before us. The downside of this is that the myth that we can all be competent multitaskers ("Look mom, I can do ten things at once!") is an illusion. If you are only working on a project with 10% of your attention, not only is it going to take much longer to get it done, but errors are far more likely to occur.

Edward Hallowell is well qualified to write this important book. He is a psychiatrist who tells us that he has also been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, and he has spent years working on practical solutions for his patients. He then realized that many of the strategies that he designed for sufferers of the disorder could also help people being overloaded by too many demands on their time and energy.

This is a well written book by someone with a personal interest in finding strategies that work, and who has test-driven and refined them in his practice for years. What I particularly like about his approach is that although he offers a number of suggestions for quick fixes, he also goes to the next step, and discusses how being busy, overloaded and forced into ineffective multitasking can present us with an opportunity. It is disappointing how few of those who give advice in books, magazines, on the Internet and on television, ever go beyond the psychological band-aid to developing long-term solutions. Dr. Hallowell spends a substantial amount of time on how to turn the challenge of being "CrazyBusy" into a source of creativity, ingenuity and inspiration. He goes through a series of simple steps that can help the busiest person unpack the causes and consequences of being caught up in a maelstrom of frustrating activity.

Some self-help books are frightfully impractical: a 300-page book on depression for someone suffering from the illness, who likely cannot read at all; a dense 250-page treatise on how to avoid being overly busy, aimed at people who don't have time to sit down to eat, and so on. This book does the difficult balancing act of providing plenty of "meat," while also getting down to practicalities that can indeed be incorporated into the day of a person whose life may have become unmanageable.

Dr. Hallowell has done us all an important service.

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important Reading for Anyone in the Workforce, April 13, 2006

By 

Virginia Allain "(retired librarian)" (Poinciana, FL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD (Hardcover)

I've been down the CrazyBusy path, so I recognized myself in some of Hallowell's examples. Pushing myself harder, multi-tasking, addicted to incoming emails, overloaded with information, and feeling like it might all come crashing down around me at some point.
This book gives "ideas about monitoring your mood at work, being systematic about how you invest your time and pushing your brain's reset button." The subtitle (Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap!) certainly described my feelings and those of many workers today. The strategies in this book may save your life.
The author's previous work with attention deficit disorder gives him insight into coping with the information overload and the pulled-in-all-directions feeling that goes with it.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars If you are a mother of young kids, don't waste your time on this book, March 12, 2011

By 

Anastasia - See all my reviews

This review is from: CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life (Paperback)

Early on in this book it is clear that this book is written from the male perspective. The advice about prioritizing what is important, cutting out tasks and people that drain you, etc will not help you if like me, you are a working mother of small kids. We don't have the option of dropping the energy and time sucking tasks such as laundy, constant meal prep, driving kids around, rescheduling work meetings when our kids are sick, etc.. Unless all the housekeeping is what floats your boat...you will HAVE to spend a lot of time doing chores you can't stand over and over....maybe a book on how to embrace this crazy life and find peace and fullfillment doing all this mundane work would be more helpful.

The author's chapter on why women have it harder than men is exactly one and one quarter pages long and he gives his wife a lot of credit for managing his three kids, the house and himself. However he admits he has no idea how she does it all! Frankly, I doubt he would be willing to take on what she does. After all, it would probably cut into his book-writing time. What about the book SHE might want to write?

The section on scheduling sex was just funny...he says that by knowing you will have sex on A given day, we have all week to anticipate it. Okay, maybe if you are a man....but a lot of working moms I know see it as yet another chore. How do we change our lifestyles enough to actually enjoy things again instead of just finding time to squeeze them in? The only answer I can think of is to hire household help...and that is not an option for most of us.. I will go back and re- read Tolle's A New Earth so I can just learn to accept this stuff more easily.

Moms, skip this book and get in your car...baseball practice is in 15 minutes.