9 ms·

On Being Busy

133 points by aadillpickle 4y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I keep myself "busy" (It's 7:30 AM on Sunday. I've already walked 3 miles, found and fixed a bug in the project I'm working on, and made a TestFlight release, then taken a shower). But I also manage to make time for people. I'm highly available. I participate in a mutual support organization, where we "mentor" others, and that often takes a good bit of time. These folks know that they can call me at almost any time (when I'm awake), and I'll give them as much time as they need from me. People are important.
thenerdhead 4y ago
Over the years, I have felt that those who are often the most "busy" tend to get the least done. There are outliers of those exceptional people who are constantly busy and get a ton done, but I'd wager a good 80% of people who are "busy" by this definition are not aware that they are getting little to nothing done nor are they in control of their lives. I believe "not being busy" is a superpower. Serendipity gives you unique and fortunate opportunities that you'd never get from constantly being busy. There's a beautiful power of wandering. Most of what we think we have to do, we don’t have to do at all. It’s a choice, and often it’s a poor one.
raffraffraff 4y ago
Reading this person's attitude to time is extremely odd, particularly because I've just started reading "Four Thousand Weeks" by Oliver Burkeman.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
It's an American thing. Europeans don't do all that.
- deepsun 4y ago
  I noticed that too. Probably that's why Americans are better at business and entrepreneurship.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Whether or not that’s accurate, you won’t find anything but very fleeting fulfillment, joy, and happiness in business and entrepreneurship.
  - sharadov 4y ago
    And also with a claim to fame a 42% obesity rate.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - nequo 4y ago
      GP is saying that busyness causes better business outcomes. Are you saying that busyness also causes obesity?
      - sharadov 4y ago
        You answered your own question.
      - bruce511 4y ago
        I'd argue - yes. Too busy to properly prepare food, leads to convenient food, which is seldom a good choice from a weight point of view. Too busy to take time to walk somewhere, drive-through everything sparing you even the smallest amount of physical effort - not ideal... Too busy to go to the gym during the normal day (hence admiration for the early riser who's at the gym at 4am,so they can do a workout before hitting the office at 6). Too busy to have mental downtime, peace, reflection, solitude. Leads to mental-health issues, which has a high correlation with inactivity and hence obesity. So yes, I'd suggest that "being busy" is a mindset that prioritises "productivity" and not things like wellness, or good eating. So tangentially, yes, I'd argue busyness leads to obesity via some indirection.
      - scajanus 4y ago
        I think the mechanisms of this are known, through the effects of stress and cortisol and poor sleep to metabolism, and people's preference to sugar when they haven't gotten enough sleep etc. Not to mention taking the time to cook & eat your own meals without doing something else at the same time, which usually results in healthier choices and more satiety (if you eat slower/less calorie-dense foods).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hamiltonians 4y ago
  But the potential payoff is much greater in the US. 6 figure jobs are rarer in the UK, less discreationary income.
- xcambar 4y ago
  Oh they do. They most certainly do.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
almost_usual 4y ago
Anxiety driven development vs getting work done.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nine_zeros 4y ago
Can concur. I went to a top 10 school. The class schedule and the course load was so heavy that I had to "learn" how to squeeze time for deliverables. If that meant cooking scrambled eggs for dinner to save time and coding up from 10 pm to 4 am, so be it. While I made some great relationships with people on the same boat, I never realized how socially inadequate I turned out to be in the real world. My entire life was designed to be optimized for work, and not to live. I took this mentality to work and guess what, no one cared. It wasn't appreciated, it didn't get me promotions. Working hard like that only led to deteriorating health. I'm glad I built that work ethic and that I know how to get shit done by squeezing my time. But I ain't squeezing any time to make some manager look good any more.
- matwood 4y ago
  I'm similar to you, but not as extreme. There is also value to recognizing who you are (someone who is ok with work), and then optimizing your jobs around that fact. This means starting or finding companies (usually small) that could appreciate the work. Some will say just learn to enjoy other things - that's also great if you can. But, if you have a hard time turning off, just try and make sure you are rewarded for the effort.
- ketzo 4y ago
  Yeah, I think if there's a positive lesson to take away, it's that busyness is very much a tool. Sure, sometimes you really gotta be in the mindset of "I'm gonna dedicate every hour I have to getting shit done, and everything else will fit around that." But it's not sustainable for most people, and it fucking sucks. So don't do it for no reason.
sharadov 4y ago
But are you productive is the question? Or are you just being "make believe busy", filling up your time because a hustle culture pimp on the productivity podcast told you that's the only way to get ahead. You need "idle time" to let your mind rest and rejuvenate, you don't want to look and feel 60 when you are 40.
aabbcc1241 4y ago
The key factor is to have a clear personal goal, so all the business can be justified
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
drewcoo 4y ago
You know how they tell people with social anxieties not to worry so much because nobody's paying attention? They're all too wrapped up in their own drama? I think this shows that people can be both wrapped up in their own drama and scrutinize everyone else's behavior. Eek!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nicbou 4y ago
  It goes hand in hand. You think that other people reflect your gaze.
hardwaregeek 4y ago
Maybe unduly harsh but I think medical school exemplifies the "busyness directive" more than anything. Sure people go to medical school for altruistic reasons but usually there's more to it than that. Medical school is work. It's hard work. You're spending almost all of your time studying or working. But it suppresses the need to think about your life and what path you want to take for quite a few years. You go from medical school to internship to residency. You don't have to decide anything beyond specialty and even that's partially determined by grades. It also gives you more clout and a stable, high paying profession at the end. I don't think it's a surprise that many of the people I know from my prestigious high school and semi-prestigious college are going to medical school.
- refactor_master 4y ago
  I know someone like that, who just graduated from medical school. It seemed to be all about the hours you sink into it. Whether it’s clever work or not doesn’t matter. It’s hard and hard equals productive. Many other fields are also hard to succeed in, but it seems like just putting in the hours is the worst possible way to go about it at a certain point, because thinking about what you’re trying to accomplish is a much more useful exercise.
noud 4y ago
This paper hits the nail on its head. My personal 2ct on being busy and how I fixed mine. I believe that being busy is often a case of not having priorities set right. Usually I have a list of 4 or 5 work related items per week that are high priority. Everything else can wait. Next, my private life (kids, partner, working out, eating well) has higher priority than work. If my private life is not in order, I first fix that before doing anything for work. Most who say "I'm (too) busy" have too many things to do in too few time, and would be better off (re-)prioritizing what is actually important and what could wait.
seanhunter 4y ago
As Marcus Aurelius put it[1] we should always ask ourselves before we do things whether they are necessary, because the vast majority of things which people do are not. If you do only the necessary things you will have more time and greater ease because not only will you be doing less, but you will be doing the really important things better. By any standards of then or today he had plenty to do being as he was a Roman Emperor during the time of a massive pandemic[2]. [1] Book 4, XX [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Plague
- seanhunter 4y ago
  That comes across as really preachy so I want to just point out that I came across this quote because it's something I really need to learn to do myself as a way of finding a path back from being pretty burned out.
  - sdwr 4y ago
    Hard to know what's worth doing sometimes! I burned out myself a while back, took time off, and I can feel myself ramping back up. I'm hoping that I learned something from the last go around, but only time will tell. Meditations is inspiring. Maybe it's preachy or overwrought, but I see it as someone who used his incredible vantage point to cultivate wisdom and goodness. There's a lot of compassionate, even-handed observation in it.
eric4smith 4y ago
Busy really means "I have no time for you." Period. Don't try to read more into what I just wrote. Just think about it for a second. If you put someone or something on top of your priority list, then you are not busy for that thing or person. But you're busy for everything else. I guarantee that if someone came to you with the deal you wanted, you will not be busy for that person. Immediately.
- kqr 4y ago
  One of my pet peeves is when people say they don't "have time for" something. Time is not something you have; very rarely does a huge box full of time dump out of the air onto your back yard, ready to unpack. Time is something you take for the things that matter to you. I try to lead by good example and say instead that "currently, I can't see myself taking the time to do" something. It's a small change but it feels a lot more honest.
  - Etheryte 4y ago
    If anything, this is simply more verbose without being any more accurate, and I doubt anyone besides yourself notices or thinks there's a difference.
    - kqr 4y ago
      It's possible the only person this makes a difference to is myself. I often use my language as a cue to remind myself of thought traps I easily fall into. One of those traps is the idea that I'm not fully in control over how I spend my time. By choosing to phrase things in ways that emphasise agency lies with me I remind myself that I actually choose what to spend time on. (Another one of these is that I try to never use the word "empower" but explaining that one is a bit more complicated.)
    - laserlight 4y ago
      I notice the difference. When people say that they don't have time for something, they consider that statement to be as factual as laws of physics. In reality though, time is something that one allocates according to their priorities. One cannot not have time for something. They can only choose to not allocate time for it.
yomritoyj 4y ago
We live in extraordinary times, standing on the shoulders of the scientific revolution, with gigahertz-gigabyte machines as commonplace and hundreds of years of mathematics ready to be built upon. It is criminal not to be busy. I agree that most of us can do at most a few hours of intellectually demanding work every day. But to win those few hours of freedom, to gather the preconditions of doing work, to maintain the social organizations necessary for collaboration, and to make the results presentable, can easily eat up a whole day year after year.
bobblywobbles 4y ago
> Being busy also helps avoid the question “What am I here for/what do I want?” So true, this resonated deeply with me. Being busy is also a safe/acceptable/normal response that can hide or shield us from fear. Am I too nervous or self conscious or fear rejection? I have no need to fear any of that if I'm never around anyone else, and it's perfectly acceptable to be "busy" and reject social gatherings because being productive == good. I noticed this underlying fear in someone else and I tried my best to help them and to accept the person they were, but they remained closed off. Someone will only make the change when they are ready to do so and you can't force it even if it's of good intentions.
nicbou 4y ago
I try to be anti-busy. My schedule is mostly clear and very little of my work is time-sensitive. I let the most important task float to the surface. I like to keep my energy for frequent and unpredictable bursts of inspiration. I know that some people love to be put to work, and wouldn't have it any other way, but that's not my case. I did poorly in university, because my coursework didn't let me pursue anything that actually tickled my curiosity. I learned to love physics much later, when I could approach it at my own pace. This loose schedule approach has worked much better for me. I get much more done in unscheduled bursts of focused work. I always have time for people and play, and I tackle tasks with a clear and focused mind.
- ASlave2Gravity 4y ago
  Mirrors my experience completely. The great thing for me at university was that no one forced me to go to the lectures. I was on a computer science course, but was more happy making games in my bedroom or writing fiction, and just skipping everthing course related. For me, life's best served when there's no one badgering you for your attention or your time. If a friend randomly walks up to my flat and rings the buzzer, there's a good chance I'll use it as an excuse to stop work and go hang. Even if it takes us like 5 extra years to get that deep knowledge of physics, who really cares? You get there in the end if you have the time and space to actually learn it. The modern world is so focused on optimising for time, it can really hinder some people.
imwillofficial 4y ago
“We make ourselves busy because other cool people around us are busy which they are because the cool people around them are busy and so on.” Wait wtf? I’m busy because I have shit to do.
- awelxtr 4y ago
  Many people are busy for the sake of being busy. Because not being busy in some environments is frowned upon. "It's not the same being busy and being productive" Some people are trying to show productivity by being busy and that sometimes shows.
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    In this she specifically starts the article by talking about high performers.

133 points by aadillpickle 4y ago

I keep myself "busy" (It's 7:30 AM on Sunday. I've already walked 3 miles, found and fixed a bug in the project I'm working on, and made a TestFlight release, then taken a shower). But I also manage to make time for people. I'm highly available. I participate in a mutual support organization, where we "mentor" others, and that often takes a good bit of time. These folks know that they can call me at almost any time (when I'm awake), and I'll give them as much time as they need from me. People are important.

thenerdhead 4y ago

Over the years, I have felt that those who are often the most "busy" tend to get the least done. There are outliers of those exceptional people who are constantly busy and get a ton done, but I'd wager a good 80% of people who are "busy" by this definition are not aware that they are getting little to nothing done nor are they in control of their lives. I believe "not being busy" is a superpower. Serendipity gives you unique and fortunate opportunities that you'd never get from constantly being busy. There's a beautiful power of wandering. Most of what we think we have to do, we don’t have to do at all. It’s a choice, and often it’s a poor one.

raffraffraff 4y ago

Reading this person's attitude to time is extremely odd, particularly because I've just started reading "Four Thousand Weeks" by Oliver Burkeman.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

It's an American thing. Europeans don't do all that.

deepsun 4y ago
I noticed that too. Probably that's why Americans are better at business and entrepreneurship.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Whether or not that’s accurate, you won’t find anything but very fleeting fulfillment, joy, and happiness in business and entrepreneurship.
- sharadov 4y ago
  And also with a claim to fame a 42% obesity rate.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nequo 4y ago
    GP is saying that busyness causes better business outcomes. Are you saying that busyness also causes obesity?
    - sharadov 4y ago
      You answered your own question.
    - bruce511 4y ago
      I'd argue - yes. Too busy to properly prepare food, leads to convenient food, which is seldom a good choice from a weight point of view. Too busy to take time to walk somewhere, drive-through everything sparing you even the smallest amount of physical effort - not ideal... Too busy to go to the gym during the normal day (hence admiration for the early riser who's at the gym at 4am,so they can do a workout before hitting the office at 6). Too busy to have mental downtime, peace, reflection, solitude. Leads to mental-health issues, which has a high correlation with inactivity and hence obesity. So yes, I'd suggest that "being busy" is a mindset that prioritises "productivity" and not things like wellness, or good eating. So tangentially, yes, I'd argue busyness leads to obesity via some indirection.
    - scajanus 4y ago
      I think the mechanisms of this are known, through the effects of stress and cortisol and poor sleep to metabolism, and people's preference to sugar when they haven't gotten enough sleep etc. Not to mention taking the time to cook & eat your own meals without doing something else at the same time, which usually results in healthier choices and more satiety (if you eat slower/less calorie-dense foods).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hamiltonians 4y ago
But the potential payoff is much greater in the US. 6 figure jobs are rarer in the UK, less discreationary income.
xcambar 4y ago
Oh they do. They most certainly do.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

almost_usual 4y ago

Anxiety driven development vs getting work done.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nine_zeros 4y ago

Can concur. I went to a top 10 school. The class schedule and the course load was so heavy that I had to "learn" how to squeeze time for deliverables. If that meant cooking scrambled eggs for dinner to save time and coding up from 10 pm to 4 am, so be it. While I made some great relationships with people on the same boat, I never realized how socially inadequate I turned out to be in the real world. My entire life was designed to be optimized for work, and not to live. I took this mentality to work and guess what, no one cared. It wasn't appreciated, it didn't get me promotions. Working hard like that only led to deteriorating health. I'm glad I built that work ethic and that I know how to get shit done by squeezing my time. But I ain't squeezing any time to make some manager look good any more.

matwood 4y ago
I'm similar to you, but not as extreme. There is also value to recognizing who you are (someone who is ok with work), and then optimizing your jobs around that fact. This means starting or finding companies (usually small) that could appreciate the work. Some will say just learn to enjoy other things - that's also great if you can. But, if you have a hard time turning off, just try and make sure you are rewarded for the effort.
ketzo 4y ago
Yeah, I think if there's a positive lesson to take away, it's that busyness is very much a tool. Sure, sometimes you really gotta be in the mindset of "I'm gonna dedicate every hour I have to getting shit done, and everything else will fit around that." But it's not sustainable for most people, and it fucking sucks. So don't do it for no reason.

sharadov 4y ago

But are you productive is the question? Or are you just being "make believe busy", filling up your time because a hustle culture pimp on the productivity podcast told you that's the only way to get ahead. You need "idle time" to let your mind rest and rejuvenate, you don't want to look and feel 60 when you are 40.

aabbcc1241 4y ago

The key factor is to have a clear personal goal, so all the business can be justified

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

drewcoo 4y ago

You know how they tell people with social anxieties not to worry so much because nobody's paying attention? They're all too wrapped up in their own drama? I think this shows that people can be both wrapped up in their own drama and scrutinize everyone else's behavior. Eek!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nicbou 4y ago
It goes hand in hand. You think that other people reflect your gaze.

hardwaregeek 4y ago

Maybe unduly harsh but I think medical school exemplifies the "busyness directive" more than anything. Sure people go to medical school for altruistic reasons but usually there's more to it than that. Medical school is work. It's hard work. You're spending almost all of your time studying or working. But it suppresses the need to think about your life and what path you want to take for quite a few years. You go from medical school to internship to residency. You don't have to decide anything beyond specialty and even that's partially determined by grades. It also gives you more clout and a stable, high paying profession at the end. I don't think it's a surprise that many of the people I know from my prestigious high school and semi-prestigious college are going to medical school.

refactor_master 4y ago
I know someone like that, who just graduated from medical school. It seemed to be all about the hours you sink into it. Whether it’s clever work or not doesn’t matter. It’s hard and hard equals productive. Many other fields are also hard to succeed in, but it seems like just putting in the hours is the worst possible way to go about it at a certain point, because thinking about what you’re trying to accomplish is a much more useful exercise.

noud 4y ago

This paper hits the nail on its head. My personal 2ct on being busy and how I fixed mine. I believe that being busy is often a case of not having priorities set right. Usually I have a list of 4 or 5 work related items per week that are high priority. Everything else can wait. Next, my private life (kids, partner, working out, eating well) has higher priority than work. If my private life is not in order, I first fix that before doing anything for work. Most who say "I'm (too) busy" have too many things to do in too few time, and would be better off (re-)prioritizing what is actually important and what could wait.

seanhunter 4y ago

As Marcus Aurelius put it[1] we should always ask ourselves before we do things whether they are necessary, because the vast majority of things which people do are not. If you do only the necessary things you will have more time and greater ease because not only will you be doing less, but you will be doing the really important things better. By any standards of then or today he had plenty to do being as he was a Roman Emperor during the time of a massive pandemic[2]. [1] Book 4, XX [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Plague

seanhunter 4y ago
That comes across as really preachy so I want to just point out that I came across this quote because it's something I really need to learn to do myself as a way of finding a path back from being pretty burned out.
- sdwr 4y ago
  Hard to know what's worth doing sometimes! I burned out myself a while back, took time off, and I can feel myself ramping back up. I'm hoping that I learned something from the last go around, but only time will tell. Meditations is inspiring. Maybe it's preachy or overwrought, but I see it as someone who used his incredible vantage point to cultivate wisdom and goodness. There's a lot of compassionate, even-handed observation in it.

eric4smith 4y ago

Busy really means "I have no time for you." Period. Don't try to read more into what I just wrote. Just think about it for a second. If you put someone or something on top of your priority list, then you are not busy for that thing or person. But you're busy for everything else. I guarantee that if someone came to you with the deal you wanted, you will not be busy for that person. Immediately.

kqr 4y ago
One of my pet peeves is when people say they don't "have time for" something. Time is not something you have; very rarely does a huge box full of time dump out of the air onto your back yard, ready to unpack. Time is something you take for the things that matter to you. I try to lead by good example and say instead that "currently, I can't see myself taking the time to do" something. It's a small change but it feels a lot more honest.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  If anything, this is simply more verbose without being any more accurate, and I doubt anyone besides yourself notices or thinks there's a difference.
  - kqr 4y ago
    It's possible the only person this makes a difference to is myself. I often use my language as a cue to remind myself of thought traps I easily fall into. One of those traps is the idea that I'm not fully in control over how I spend my time. By choosing to phrase things in ways that emphasise agency lies with me I remind myself that I actually choose what to spend time on. (Another one of these is that I try to never use the word "empower" but explaining that one is a bit more complicated.)
  - laserlight 4y ago
    I notice the difference. When people say that they don't have time for something, they consider that statement to be as factual as laws of physics. In reality though, time is something that one allocates according to their priorities. One cannot not have time for something. They can only choose to not allocate time for it.

yomritoyj 4y ago

We live in extraordinary times, standing on the shoulders of the scientific revolution, with gigahertz-gigabyte machines as commonplace and hundreds of years of mathematics ready to be built upon. It is criminal not to be busy. I agree that most of us can do at most a few hours of intellectually demanding work every day. But to win those few hours of freedom, to gather the preconditions of doing work, to maintain the social organizations necessary for collaboration, and to make the results presentable, can easily eat up a whole day year after year.

bobblywobbles 4y ago

> Being busy also helps avoid the question “What am I here for/what do I want?” So true, this resonated deeply with me. Being busy is also a safe/acceptable/normal response that can hide or shield us from fear. Am I too nervous or self conscious or fear rejection? I have no need to fear any of that if I'm never around anyone else, and it's perfectly acceptable to be "busy" and reject social gatherings because being productive == good. I noticed this underlying fear in someone else and I tried my best to help them and to accept the person they were, but they remained closed off. Someone will only make the change when they are ready to do so and you can't force it even if it's of good intentions.

nicbou 4y ago

I try to be anti-busy. My schedule is mostly clear and very little of my work is time-sensitive. I let the most important task float to the surface. I like to keep my energy for frequent and unpredictable bursts of inspiration. I know that some people love to be put to work, and wouldn't have it any other way, but that's not my case. I did poorly in university, because my coursework didn't let me pursue anything that actually tickled my curiosity. I learned to love physics much later, when I could approach it at my own pace. This loose schedule approach has worked much better for me. I get much more done in unscheduled bursts of focused work. I always have time for people and play, and I tackle tasks with a clear and focused mind.

ASlave2Gravity 4y ago
Mirrors my experience completely. The great thing for me at university was that no one forced me to go to the lectures. I was on a computer science course, but was more happy making games in my bedroom or writing fiction, and just skipping everthing course related. For me, life's best served when there's no one badgering you for your attention or your time. If a friend randomly walks up to my flat and rings the buzzer, there's a good chance I'll use it as an excuse to stop work and go hang. Even if it takes us like 5 extra years to get that deep knowledge of physics, who really cares? You get there in the end if you have the time and space to actually learn it. The modern world is so focused on optimising for time, it can really hinder some people.

imwillofficial 4y ago

“We make ourselves busy because other cool people around us are busy which they are because the cool people around them are busy and so on.” Wait wtf? I’m busy because I have shit to do.

awelxtr 4y ago
Many people are busy for the sake of being busy. Because not being busy in some environments is frowned upon. "It's not the same being busy and being productive" Some people are trying to show productivity by being busy and that sometimes shows.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  In this she specifically starts the article by talking about high performers.