I love living in London.

One of the advantages of living in London is that something is always happening.

Life here is fast-paced and full of activity.

But I find that the constant busyness leads to a temptation to try and create busyness when things are slowing down a bit. Of course, I put it down to me liking activity, but it's probably fair to admit that sometimes I fill my time because I'm scared of the boredom that might come with slowing down.

I read a blog post the other day that captured this so well. It's only short, so I'd encourage you to read the whole thing, but here's a quote to whet your appetite:

Our culture now equates busyness with importance, hard work with ability. We like representing ourselves as capable, so our egos swell approvingly with each overtime hour logged. Our work has thus become our identity—when meeting new people, I’m likely to be asked ‘what I do’ before I’m asked my name. Even 2,000 years before Headspace offered free 10-day trials and lifestyle magazines wrote about mindfulness, Roman Stoic Seneca noted this human tendency with enough scathing accuracy to elicit a collective 21st-century cringe: ‘It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously... New preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. They do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it.’

So read the entire post on the Salt London blog, and why not put this into practice by ceasing your busyness this August, by enjoying our Holy Smokes Barbecues every Sunday.