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The "Work" Trap
- blehn 14y agonot suggesting the OP lifted the idea or title, but this Times article from June is a good read on the same subject. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-tra...
- enmaku 14y agoNot sure if it was lifted either - it's a 3 word title for a very short blog post, entirely possible that it's coincidence.
- endtwist 14y agoAuthor here; I didn't (intentionally) lift the title—had no idea there was an article of a similar name already.
- netcan 14y agoIncidentally, I find it very interesting how differently you , the NYT article & dsirijus (top commenter paraphrasing but also interpreting you) are describing what is going on when people are "busy". NYT: Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand.. You: I call it The “Work” Trap. What is it? It’s both a procrastination technique and a way of staying in your comfort zone while feeling or seeming productive. dsirijus: procrasinating makes you fail to deliver, guilt stops you from doing anything else (hence, "busy"), and not doing anything else makes you unproductive. Rinse and repeat..
- dsirijus 14y agoYes, I'd very much like to hear more from author on this.
- 001sky 14y agoGreat comment. This is an insightful summary & juxtaposition. Would also add: mental frame. Some people may decline to play checkers (too busy) even though pieces on their chess board are not in motion (not apparently busy). This is distinct to social signalling (NYT) and its not procrastination. Its meta productive (rational) if playing checkeers will decrease my focus and odds of winning at chess.
- jhull 14y agoGreat post. Felt similar sentiments and serendipitously was given a chance to travel to Africa and beyond for the good part of a year. So took it! http://engineerwithoutacause.com/without-a-cause.html http://engineerwithoutacause.com/without-a-cause.html
- scdoshi 14y agoSince I read the nytimes article however, I find myself stopping and thinking, 'Am I really that busy?', before telling someone I'm busy. More times than not, I find that I'm not that busy.
- K2h 14y agoIt seems he is saying to take some time to work on your career instead of just focussing on your job all the time. Good advice.
- yesbabyyes 14y agoYeah, or even that 'life' thing.
- guscost 14y agoPersonally, I'd recommend working on whatever you're interested in and best at. Just hope for the best.
- mikesmullin2 14y agoits called Workaholism. the workaholic sabotages to make work because his ultimate fear is not having enough work. google "Chained to the Desk" book on amazon and read it on kindle. also google my post "Hero - Martyr Cycle" or "Kent Beck: Ease At Work (Part 1 of 7)". also read "4 Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris to learn how to really get shit done and go play. also "Rework" and "Getting Real" by 37Signals.
- jmspring 14y agoIt is called - get out and enjoy life now and then. As someone who is often "busy due to work", it is easy to ignore the fact that you have reached the point of diminishing returns in a given day. Going out, letting your mind wander on to other subjects and just having fun add to life more than just the "hey, I am being social". Life is certainly more than work, even when we love what we do.
- afhof 14y agoOn the other side of things, how do you convince someone who is in this trap to get off their butt and go (with you or not) do something worthwhile?
- hkmurakami 14y ago"Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action." -- Tim Ferris (this blogpost reminded me of this quote)
- kamaal 14y agoNot the kind of laziness we know of. I think its not laziness but rather more of mismanagement.
- spodek 14y agoStatements about time to do things are statements about priorities. You have time to do lots of things, only you have to give up other things. Someone who says they don't have time for something important doesn't understand their priorities. People who know their priorities work on them in order and get them done because you aren't distracted by less important things. People who don't know their priorities get distracted by less important things and don't finish important things. If you want to avoid busy-work, know your priorities.
- flyinRyan 14y agoThat's easy to say. My job (required to maintain current standard of living) takes up a minimum of 12 hours, 5 days of the week. I need a minimum of 8 hours sleep to be productive at my job. That leaves a maximum of 4 hours per day during the week to give attention to my wife, my two kids, eat, shower, "honey do's", etc. I'd also like to do something that gets me out of this situation, but I can't pick anything up without dropping something else. Should I neglect the wife some so I can work on a startup? She probably won't still be around by the time I'm ready to release and the release may fail in the end anyway. Some of us truly don't have enough time and are actively working to fix it as we can. We're not all morons who don't know how to prioritize.
- Aykroyd 14y agoIt sounds like you do know how to prioritize. It doesn't make sense to talk about priorities and ignore family and life responsibilities; they obviously come out of the same pool of time as work/career priorities.
- j_s 14y agoOne option would be a new job. Edit: (either I missed this or it was a ninja edit; no big deal) re: 'standard of living': that's a choice of less risk for what you've got vs. the 'HN way' of shooting for the moon. If you truly want out, choose something else. Yes, easy to say...
- dsirijus 14y agoI notice that many of the commentaries misunderstood both the title and content. It's about "work", not work. He's not speaking to extremely occupied people. Quite converse. The trap here is that procrasinating makes you fail to deliver, guilt stops you from doing anything else (hence, "busy"), and not doing anything else makes you unproductive. Rinse and repeat until you get to the state where no one even bothers anymore to call you to take you out. That being said, I have a breaking bug in my live web app. I'm going to go out now and take a sloooow macchiato with complimentary homemade croissant. And then I will come back and fix the bug. If anyone calls meanwhile, I'll say I'm not busy.
- nater 14y agoPerhaps another way to think about this is the distinction between the act of working and the objective one's trying to accomplish. I think it can be very easy for some people (myself, ahem) to conflate these two, and ultimately to come to view the act of working as the essential good. Seems like this has been coming up a lot recently ('The Busy Trap', etc.).
- monicaemiller 14y agoYou say "work," I say learn. Artistole's social animal still needs time and space to learn, change, improve. I think "job" is more appropriate. To the comments below, quoting Tim Ferris when he doesn't work 4 hours a week is like quoting Romney about paying taxes.
- kamaal 14y agoI understand where the author is coming from and where he wants to take us to. But these things are not as black and white as people show them to be. When you chose something over the other, you are just making a trade off. You need to be happy with that trade off or you should not make it. If you feel you will be happy taking hours off and doing something else, then you should be happy for that and not worry about lost money you could have otherwise make if you had worked instead. Now this is OK for a day or two. If you do this for years, you will lose substantial money compared to your peers. Enough to make that distinction apparent. It will show in everything. The house you live, the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the vacations you take, the food you eat, your hobbies, your lifestyle. There will hardly be anything in your life which won't be affected by this. You should be happy with all this. Don't go down to a state where you have to tell yourself and people around- 'Even I could have been like the person Y had I worked for X more extra hours, I would have everything he has'
- tsotha 14y agoThis isn't really about work, but rather procrastination. But you don't actually have to have work to be "to busy" to do whatever. I once rented a room in a house where the landlady was divorced and living off of alimony (this was a few years ago). She didn't have any hard demands on her time (like employment), but whenever she didn't want to do something she would tell other people she didn't have time. Funny thing was I think she actually believed it.
- jcfrei 14y agoI can very much relate to that way of working. I found that the best way to avoid falling into this trap, is to start your day with an activity that you enjoy doing, outside. sports are perfect, like going for a bicycle round in the morning. adding the relaxing effects of the released endorphines should give you a great start into the day.
- thesash 14y agoIt's the classic battle of urgent vs. important. It's easy to fall into a trap by always focusing on the most seemingly "urgent" task at hand while neglecting things that are actually more important. Responding to emails, fixing bugs, or hiring a new developer might seem urgent, but what longer-term goals end up suffering? Things like building company culture, fostering business relationships, or developing long term strategy are hardly urgent, but extremely important things that often get neglected when we fall victim to the day-to-day tyranny of urgency.