I used to be busy. Or at least I used to tell people I was busy when they asked how I was.
“Hey Anne - how are you?”
“Oh good, good, just crazy busy!”
I was genuinely working hard and had lots going on, but ‘busy’ became a little badge I wore that signaled to others (but mostly to myself) that I was important and striving and productive. It was my ego mixed with some cultural conditioning that overwhelm is somehow the highest state of contribution.
It’s rubbish, and I have dropped it from my vocabulary almost entirely.
First of all, it occurred to me at some point that ‘busy’ more than likely actually means ‘scattered’ rather than me meaningfully making a difference in the world. Perhaps it just means I’m not prioritizing properly.
One day I was working at home (this was during a time I was often commuting to Boston from North Carolina for a week at a time), and after about four hours one morning sitting solidly at my desk in phone meetings, or just scurrying around my email inbox flinging out messages, I decided to take the dog for a lunchtime walk.
It was a glorious fall day and the sky was unbelievably blue. As we walked, and I was marveling at how perfect it was, I began casually calculating how many perfect and glorious days we tend to get in a year. Not that many really.
And then I considered how many of those days I’m in meetings or traveling, or just too busy to take a walk. Most of them.
And then I calculated how many more ‘active years’ I might have in my life to enjoy a walk on the few days each year when I’m ‘available’. Holy cow, I’m almost out of perfect days!! (One obvious moral of the story is never to do casual math while on a walk).
Carrying around a busy badge instead of prioritizing a simple lunchtime walk with my happy little dog on a beautiful day was, I realized, nuts. And made me feel stupid, rather than important. Enough of that. I now (mostly) have fewer items on the ‘to do’ list, even if means sometimes not getting back to people when they’d prefer, or saying no to some potentially fun projects.
And on perfect and glorious days, I usually (rather than seldom) take at least a lunchtime break to feel the sunshine and breathe the air. But often, more than that too.
Another reason to drop the busy is that though it makes us feel productive, it is actually the opposite. Doing lots of things means that we’re likely doing none of the them well, and aren’t enjoying any of them. Productivity isn’t doing more things and filling up time with work. It’s focus. It’s delivering real contributions. Genuine productivity is actually less likely when we’re ‘busy’.
The problem is, especially in the no-vacation-always-available-hours-for-dollars work culture of the US, we feel guilty when we’re ‘merely’ productive as opposed to busy. And yet, according to people like Cal Newport in his book ‘Deep Work’ when we get into ‘flow’ - meaning we are being super productive (as in focused, not scattered), we’re actually happier. Yet the ‘busy’ we mostly refer to (the running around trying to do everything kind of busy) makes us unhappy. It becomes all work but little tangible contribution.
As the pandemic has shown us, we have a lot of wiggle room in how we define work and how that part of our lives can be arranged. The ‘standard’ practices and schedules don’t have to be. And my sense is that we are on a brink not just of figuring out a better remote work/in-person work balance or more flexible schedules, but in redefining what work really is in the first place.
There are many ways in which we will have to get more deliberate and rethink our systems in the next chapter, assuming we want it to be happier, healthier, wealthier, and also be cleaner and safer. Work is a big one.
But at least let’s take off the busy badge, be more productive when we’re working, and then leave the work behind entirely when we need or want to focus on something else.
“Hey Anne - how are you?”
“Great! Really enjoying life and work these days!”
Nailed!