Here is a brief excerpt from an article by Greg McKeown for LinkedIn Pulse. To read the complete article and check out others, please click here.

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We have a problem—and the odd thing is we not only know about it, we’re celebrating it. Just today, someone boasted to me that she was so busy she’s averaged four hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. She wasn’t complaining; she was proud of the fact. She is not alone.

Why are typically rational people so irrational in their behavior? The answer, I believe, is that we’re in the midst of a bubble; one so vast that to be alive today in the developed world is to be affected, or infected, by it. It’s the bubble of bubbles: it not only mirrors the previous bubbles (whether of the Tulip, Silicon Valley or Real Estate variety), it undergirds them all.

Here are the three words: “The Busyness Bubble.”

The nature of bubbles is that some asset is absurdly overvalued until — eventually — the bubble bursts, and we’re left scratching our heads wondering why we were so irrationally exuberant in the first place. The asset we’re overvaluing now is the notion of doing it all, having it all, achieving it all; what Jim Collins calls “the undisciplined pursuit of more.”

This bubble is being enabled by an unholy alliance between three powerful trends: smart phones, social media, and extreme consumerism. The result is not just information overload, but opinion overload. We are more aware than at any time in history of what everyone else is doing and, therefore, what we “should” be doing. In the process, we have been sold a bill of goods: that success means being supermen and superwomen who can get it all done. Of course, we back-door-brag about being busy: it’s code for being successful and important.

Not only are we addicted to the drug of busyness, we are pushers too. In the race to get our children into “a good college” we have added absurd amounts of homework, sports, clubs, dance performances and ad infinitum extracurricular activities. And with them, busyness, sleep deprivation and stress.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Greg McKeown is the author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. He writes, teaches, and speaks around the world on the importance of living and leading as an Essentialist. He has spoken at companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, and Twitter and is among the most popular bloggers for the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn’s Influencers. He is the co-creator of the popular course, Designing Life, Essentially at Stanford University, and serves as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.