Crazy Busy: A Concise Guide to Overcoming the Challenges of Modern Life

D.: An easy to read book on busyness with some good insights about the heart of the problem: pride. Not revolutionary or totally new, therefore 4 stars.

Netherlands on Sep 28, 2023

Cetti: Spedizione puntualissima e tutto in ordine

Italy on Aug 24, 2023

Matthew M.: 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.

United Kingdom on Aug 19, 2021

Christopher Edwards: As a self-confessed 'driven' person with a demanding job, a speaking and writing schedule, and five young children, Kevin DeYoung seems well qualified to write a book on being 'Crazy Busy'. But what makes this book special is the way he brings biblical principles to bear on the daily realities of life. That makes it so much more than just another book on time management or goal setting.

DeYoung starts by giving three reasons why being crazy busy is not good: it can ruin our joy, it can rob our hearts, and it can cover up the rot in our souls.

Then he gives us seven diagnoses to consider, each with its own short chapter. For example, he helps us think about pride, and how our busyness can be driven more by a desire to LOOK good than a desire to DO good. He helps us think about the technological revolution, and about the blessings and pitfalls of constant connectivity and social media. He helps us think about the value of a rhythm of work and rest. However, he also says that work is a good thing. And helping needy people is both time-consuming and unpredicatable. Jesus was a very busy man - but he was busy doing the right things for the right reasons.

The final...

United Kingdom on Jan 21, 2014

Greg Pickle: At this point the reviews from the book probably total more text than the book itself, so I'll spare the summary and hit what hopefully will be some helpful high points and criticisms:

The high points:

1) The book seeks to find what the Bible says about busyness. For the most part, the author succeeds in not straying too far from this, which I credit to his relentless theology of Sola Scriptura. In our world of ubiquitous to-do apps, products, and books, this is refreshing.

2) The book also seeks to find motivations for busyness and how to combat it biblically. He does a fine job of pointing out reasons why we are actually overwhelmed: fear of man, pride, etc. It is helpful to see it in these terms.

3) The book is really readable. We would expect nothing less from the author. This is one of the reasons I bought the book. (The others were its $1.99 sale price, its short length, and its commendation from Carl Trueman. But I digress.)

Some criticisms:

1) I think the author gives a bit too much credit to people's claims that they are truly busy. Most and college students, for example, feel overwhelmed by 15 class hours, 15 study hours, and...

United States on Dec 11, 2013

D Glover: Right off, I highly recommend this book to Christians who are struggling with feeling too busy all the time, whether in some form of vocational ministry or not. You will not find three helpful hints or twelve easy steps or forty days to change here. But you will find a biblically based book that is one part genuine commiseration and nine parts wise, practical, God-centered and Bible-based help for people whose lives feel perpetually crazy busy. (If you are too busy to read the rest of this review, which is pretty long and detailed for such a short book – just 118 pages – go ahead and read the book...anyone can take away much that that they will find truly helpful. If you want more convincing, keep reading.)

Kevin DeYoung assures the reader early on in Crazy Busy that, although he is crazy busy, he doesn’t consider it a badge of honour or something to brag about. He then goes on to describe the various things that keep him busy and that have kept him busy in past seasons of life. (My favourite part of his litany of busy is his description of how in seminary, among many other things, he “sang in three different choirs at the same time.” I tried to picture singing in...

Canada on Nov 25, 2013

Scott Johnson: 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...

United States on Oct 18, 2013