Hey, it's Annemarie with
Speak Confident English. This is as always exactly where you
want to be every week to get the confidence you want for your
life and work in English. In today's Confident English lesson,
we're going to do something I love to do, which is helping you advance your
vocabulary skills through powerful adjectives, interesting collocations and idioms
that English speakers use to better express themselves. I want you to express yourself the way
you want in English and to do it with confidence. One of the best ways to
do that is to expand your vocabulary. And today our focus is on
alternatives to saying I'm busy. I want to share this lesson with you
on the topic of feeling busy right now, because we're getting
to the end of the year. That of course means finishing all
of our goals and projects that we had for this year. It also
means the holiday season, which is definitely fun and exciting, but it can be overwhelmingly
busy as well. Of course, after the new year, at least
here in the United States, we get into tax season
and setting new goals. And that is a whole other
kind of feeling busy. In today's Confident English lesson, you're going to learn 14 alternative
ways to talk about feeling busy in English. Some of the vocabulary you learn today
is perfect for those one time events or unexpected events that
happen on a single day, that result in feeling very busy at
that time, and maybe ending the day, feeling a bit tired or
exhausted. And in other cases, you're also going to learn language
that you can use for talking about being busy over an extended period
of time and how that feels with these powerful adjectives,
collocations, idioms, and phrasal verbs. I'll also provide example sentences, so you can see exactly how to
use this language correctly, and you'll have the opportunity
to practice as well. We're going to start this lesson today
with powerful adjectives and collocations you can use in place of saying I'm busy. And the first example on
our list is to be slammed. We often use this with the words at work, to be slammed at work or to
be slammed at the office. When you're slammed it means that you
are extremely busy and overwhelmed often unexpectedly. For example, if you work at a restaurant
or a grocery store, you know, there are some days when unexpectedly, everyone decides to go out to eat, or everyone decides to
go to the grocery store. This is also true when there may be
a weather storm or snow storm coming. And again, everyone goes to
the grocery store in advance. When those things happen, you can
say we were slammed at work tonight, or we were slammed at work today. Similar to being slammed at
work is to be swamped at work. And again, this simply means to be
extremely busy and even overwhelmed. These two words are great
synonyms. And as a result, you have more flexibility or more options. When you're choosing to talk
about how busy you are at work, just as you would say, we
were slammed at work today. You could also say we were
swamped at work today, or maybe you have a large number
of projects that you're working on, and all of them have deadlines
that are approaching very soon. So you might say I'm really
swamped at work right now, a third fun option that also means an
overwhelming amount of work is to be snowed under. Of course,
with this expression, you can imagine being
under a mountain of snow. And that definitely
would feel overwhelming. I have several students
who are tax accountants, and I know from the months of January
to April in the United States, my students are snowed
under with paperwork. Before we move on to
several idioms we can use, let's talk about one more collocation.
And this one is slightly different. It may be when you aren't busy enough, or you have so much time that
you're trying to be busy. You're trying to find something
to keep yourself occupied. In those situations, we use the collocation to
keep someone busy or to keep oneself busy. For example, you might say to a colleague, if
you've got extra time, let me know. I definitely have some
tasks to keep you busy. And now let's move on to a variety
of idioms that we have to express how busy we are and how we feel. One of my favorites on the list today
is burning the candle at both ends. This idiom is used when we want to
highlight that we are excessively busy or working extremely hard, and the result might be
that we're overwhelmed, feeling stressed or we've
lost our peace of mind. We also tend to use this idiom when
we have an immediate deadline coming, for example, I'll be burning the candle at both ends
this weekend to get the project done on time. Or our team is burning the candle at both
ends in order to meet our deadline on Friday. When we use that idiom, it sends a clear picture of an
individual or a team of people working extremely hard for a
longer than normal period of time. While that first idiom is
typically focused, when we
have an immediate deadline, another idiom that we use to talk
about having a lot of work over a lengthy period of time is
to have a full plate or to have a lot on your plate, a third option to have your hands full. When we use one of those idioms, it indicates that you have so many
different responsibilities right now. And as a result, you absolutely cannot take
any more responsibility. For example, if someone asks
you to volunteer for an event, but you know, you absolutely do not
have the time to do so. You might say, I would love to volunteer, but I can't.
I've got too much on my plate right now, or I have my hands full at work. If a friend asks you to go out for
coffee after work again, you could say, I would love to, but I've got a full plate this week and
I can't get away similar to having your hands full is to be up
to one's eyeballs or neck in something, for example, to be
up to your eyeballs in paperwork. As I mentioned earlier, I have many students who are
accountants and during tax season, my students are definitely up
to their eyeballs and paperwork. What about you? Is there anything
that you have on your plate right now? And do you feel like you are up to your
neck or your up to your eyeballs in that thing? What is it? You can share your example
with me in the comments below. When you have your plateful or you're
up to your neck in something you definitely might be at maximum capacity. In other words, you just
cannot take on anything else. Just like the examples we used
with to have your hands full, or to have a full plate. If someone asks you to do something and
you know that you absolutely do not have the time or the energy to do it, you could say I'm at my maximum
capacity right now. I just can't. Another idiom and favorite on
today's list that also means to reach your maximum ability
or energy level is to be at full bandwidth. Typically,
when we use that idiom, we're talking about someone's
emotional or mental energy or ability to do something. If you've
reached your full bandwidth, you have no more emotional
energy or mental energy to give to something else. If we've reached maximum capacity
or we've reached full bandwidth, it might be because you've
bitten off more than you can chew. The idiom here is to bite
off more than you can chew. And that means to take on more
work or responsibility than you're capable of doing. And this often happens when
we say yes to too many things. Have you ever been in that situation at
work where multiple people ask you to take on a new responsibility
and you say yes to all of them in those situations, you may have
bitten off more than you can chew. And as a result, you reach your maximum
capacity or full bandwidth. A great example sentence
with this idiom is last week. I agreed to take on extra
responsibilities at work, but I think I may have bitten off
more than I can chew. All right, we've got one more idiom to learn today
for an alternative way to talk about how busy you are. And we've
got a phrasal verb as well. Our last idiom is to have
a lot of irons in the fire. We use this idiom when we have
multiple projects or multiple unrelated tasks. And here's an
example of how I would use this idiom. We have three major projects
with deadlines coming soon. So I have a lot of irons in
the fire at work right now. And I'm having a difficult time
focusing or concentrating on just one thing. Before I move on to our
final alternative to saying, I'm busy. I want to pause
here just for a moment. Many of the idioms I highlighted
indicate that someone may have said yes to too many things. I know that saying no to someone when
they request something from you is really challenging. So if you
struggle with saying no, especially in English, I have a
lesson that might be helpful to you. I have a past lesson on how to politely
say no in English so that you can avoid saying yes to too many things. And now let's get to our final
example on the list of phrasal verb to be tied up with this. We often use the words at the
moment at the office or at work. So these are great
collocations to learn, to be tied up at the moment,
to be tied up at work, to be tied up at the
office. When we're tied up, we are too busy at that particular
moment. And as a result, we're unable to do
something else. For example, if something unexpected happens at work, you might call your spouse or
partner and say, I'm so sorry. I'm going to be late coming home.
I'm tied up at work. Or again, if a friend asks you to meet for drinks
or coffee, you might say I'd love to, but I'm tied up at work right now. And now you have a variety of
ways to express how busy you are in your daily life and
how it feels in this lesson. You've learned powerful
adjectives, collocations, idioms, and phrasal verbs that you can use. So now I want you to practice
choose two or three of your favorites from today's list and
share those with example sentences of your own in the comments below.
When I teach my vocabulary lessons, have you noticed that I always
ask to select a small number and then use them in your own
example sentence with me, the reason I do that is I want
you to not only learn this new vocabulary, I want you to remember it. I want you to be able to use it when
you're having conversations in English and to use it effortlessly and
naturally. So with that, go ahead and choose your favorite idiom, collocation or adjective from
today's lesson and use it in your own sentences. As always, you can share
with me in the comments below. And if you found this lesson useful
to you, I would love to know. You can tell me by giving this a thumbs
up on YouTube and subscribing to the Speak Confident English channel. So you never miss one of my
Confident English lessons. You can leave a comment
with your examples below, and you can share this lesson with
others on Facebook or by email with that. Thank you so much for joining
me, have a fantastic week. And I look forward to seeing you next
time for your Confident English lesson.
