Learn the English Phrases TO KEEP BUSY and BUSY WORK

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn

the English phrase to keep busy.

This is a phrase that we mostly use

when talking about people who are retired.

My mom is retired.

She worked for a long time,

and around age 65, she decided to retire,

but she likes to keep busy.

In English, when you say that someone wants to keep busy,

it usually means they don't have a job,

but they still like to do things.

My mom, in order to keep busy,

volunteers at what's called a thrift store.

A thrift store is where people donate clothes,

and then the people who work there put prices on them

and sell them and the money's used for a good cause.

So in order to keep busy,

my mom likes to work at the thrift store.

We could also say she likes to keep herself busy.

That's another way of saying it.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase busy work.

Busy work is any kind of work that you do

that isn't really productive.

It's work that you do for the sake of doing the work.

Here's the best example I can think of.

Sometimes, when I give my students lessons,

I try to make it very, very effective.

I want them to learn a lot.

I don't want to just give them a bunch of busy work.

If I was to give them busy work,

that would mean I would make them

practice things they already know.

I would make them do things

that weren't teaching them anything new.

I would be giving them busy work.

It would just look good.

If the principal came in the classroom,

it would look like my students were working,

but they would just be doing busy work.

If I was making them review things

that they learned last year,

or if I was making them do something over and over again,

it would just be busy work.

So to review, to keep busy, or to keep oneself busy,

means to do things similar to work,

to stay active, to do activities,

especially when you are retired

or when you don't have a job,

maybe you just don't need to work.

Maybe you have so much money, you don't need to work,

but in order to keep busy, you find little things to do.

And busy work is any kind of work

that just isn't productive.

It's work that you do for the sake of work.

I hope that makes sense.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Roman and the comment is this.

"Hi, Bob, many people shy away from public speaking.

"So do I, thanks for the lesson."

And my response was,

"The funny thing is that once you've done it for a while,

"it becomes a lot less stressful.

"I think a lot of things in life are that way."

So the funny thing is when I replied to Roman,

my first reply, I actually said,

"Once you've done it for a while,

"it becomes a lot more stressful."

I typed the wrong word, so I corrected it,

but I thought Roman would probably have a bit of a laugh

or maybe be a little confused by that initial response.

But yes, there are many things in life that are just easier

once you do it for a while.

It doesn't mean it's easy to do that thing.

It doesn't mean that there's no stress involved.

Usually, there's lots of stress,

but I have found that if I can push myself,

if I can get to a point where I convince myself

to do something stressful, instead of shying away from it,

great use of the phrase, by the way, Roman,

sometimes, you just do it for a while

and you become good at it.

A great example would be driving, right?

When I first started driving, I was a little bit nervous.

I didn't like going on highways.

I didn't like driving on busy roads or streets.

It made me very nervous,

but now, I don't mind driving at all.

I'm still a little bit nervous to drive

on a really busy highway,

especially if I'm feeling a little bit tired or fatigued,

but certainly, the more you do something,

the easier it gets, doesn't it?

So, anyways, I just realized

I totally forgot to walk around.

Sorry about that.

I was so engrossed in my teaching, I forgot to walk around,

but I'll do that next time.

See it a couple of days

with another short English lesson, bye.