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Busyness is something we often tout like a badge of honor, but is it? We pride ourselves on being productive members of society, but what does that actually mean? And have we taken it too far?
Over the past year or so, I’ve recognized that busyness is a poor proxy for success, and, in fact, often limits my ability to do the things I want to do.
In my attempt to work on my own busyness, I’m going to work on writing shorter blog posts, starting with this one. I’m so meta.
“Busy Is the New Stupid”
I recently stumbled upon this quote from Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, and it could not have been more timely as I was musing about this subject.
Buffett was lamenting this insidious trend that has developed over the past few decades: to bury oneself in busyness.
What does that mean?
Busyness is simply filling up all of your time with activities and tasks, regardless of their importance.
So if your calendar (please be calendar and not your to-do list!) is full of things you have to do then you are “busy.”
Notice how I didn’t say that busyness was about getting stuff done? That’s because busyness is actually a roadblock to your success. More on that next week.
Like most things, busyness arose from good intentions as the lovechild of productivity and hustle. Unfortunately, their toxic relationship proved an unfit environment for raising—
Oh, I was just explaining—
We got the point. Get a move on.
Fine.
The Curse of Busyness
Busyness is rampant in cultures like ours and Japan’s where worth and value are measured by one’s contribution and output.
The problem is that there is always more that could be done. Project scopes can always be expanded, tasks can always be added, details can always be more perfected. It can go on and on!
Your efforts can seem Sisyphean in never feeling like you can just quite get there.
Many of my clients in Charting Conquered struggle with this in one form or another. They don’t build any time in their day to get through the slog of work they have that is not seeing patients.
In fact, they do the opposite and keep trying to squeeze every last patient in. There’s always more patients to be seen. And every patient seen generates more work that they now have even less time to do. Thus, they stay overly busy.
We will literally work ourselves into the grave. Ever hear anyone say, “I can sleep when I’m dead?”
This became such a problem in Japan starting in the 1970s where corporate breadwinners were dying prematurely from cardiovascular disease or by suicide that it earned its own name: karoshi.
It means death by overworking. It’s a thing.
And if the Japanese example was supposed to be our proverbial canary in the coal mine, we didn’t pay attention. I would also question a non-ornithologist’s ability to recognize different species of birds including canaries, but maybe that’s just me.
Did I Mention that I’m Stupid?
Unfortunately, for many of us, overworking is all we know. The line between hard work, to which I’d venture most of us would attribute at least some degree of our success*, and overwork is blurry.
*As well as intelligence, luck, our village, and privilege (in various forms and to varying degrees)
And cultural norms don’t help pull that line into sharper focus; instead, they obfuscate it further.
Just look at all the social media posts and articles written about how to hack your productivity and cram even more stuff into your morning routine like <insert mega billionaire here>.
Ahh enjoying a yacht, something Russian mega billionaire oligarchs won’t be doing for a while….
You might say as a culture we’re sort of obsessed with productivity, and our attempts at such manifest as busyness.
Prior to learning about mindset work and coaching, I always subconsciously attributed my success to busyness—that is, I thought getting tasks done was the secret to achieving goals. According to Buffett, I was being stupid.
I now know better, but it’s damn hard to shake, probably because it’s all I’ve known for decades. Busyness had helped me succeed up until that point, even if it had had other deleterious effects, which we’ll go into next week.
A Badge of Honor?
I historically viewed busyness as a badge of honor. Having a long to-do list meant I must be doing the correct work. Part of South Asian immigrant culture (yes, I’m a first gen-er) and even U.S. individualism is to put your head down and do the work. Being busy means you’re doing both, so it must be good!
Using my retrospectoscope, it’s easy to see the thought error I was making—that busyness was the necessary step to success.
I’m sure at some level at various times in my life, busyness meant that I must be important and sought after if I had a lot to do and was less available for other requests of my time. Right?
Busyness can serve as a vanity metric in the form of what I just detailed above or even “look at how much time I’m putting into X.”
A New Perspective
I no longer view busyness as the means to my success. Having an endless list of tasks to do is a circumstance in my intentional thought (CTFAR) models.
As a reminder, the CTFAR model is Circumstances generate Thoughts that cause Feelings which drive Actions that lead to our Results.
Realizing my success comes from my thinking means I’m not dependent on a to-do list to accomplish goals.
Moreover, busyness is a direct assault on our greatest resources: our time and attention.
As such, I’ll make the case next week that the true cost of busyness is our ability to be present.
Are you stupid busy? How is busyness impacting your life? Let me know in the comments section below.
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