If you ask anyone how they are these days, the response is predictable: BUSY. CRAZY BUSY.
It’s become the default answer to “How are you?”, replacing what used to be simple replies like “Good” or “Not too bad.” But with productivity falling and burnout rising, this can’t be a good thing. In fact, it may be tied to rising levels of loneliness and dissatisfaction.
So when, and more importantly, why — did “busy” become the standard response?
Run a quick google search, and you see this question got a lot of focus from 2015 to 2017. The consensus then was that Busyness had increasingly become a status symbol, a signifier of personal importance and value. Whereas only several generations prior, bragging about holidays and leisure time was a signifier of high status. Now, it’s back-to-back meetings and 60-hour weeks.
Think about it. If someone asks you, “How are you?”, imagine you respond with “good”, “happy”, “content” and “relaxed”. How does that make you feel? Anxious? Worried about whether the other person will think you are lazy? This is a good indicator of whether or not you associate busyness with importance.
Here’s what someone on Reddit had to say:
“I work 60 hours a week, I have THREE jobs, and I don’t have time for things like a healthy work-life balance. How dare you prioritise your health and safety? If you’re not working to death, what are you even doing with your time?”
Another comment added:
“I think some people desperately want to feel like they’re important. I find it liberating to accept that I’m unimportant to all but a few close friends and family — the world won’t miss me when I’m gone.”
Why it’s not a good thing
The problem with this, as I discussed in a previous blog is that Busy ≠ Productive.
If you are busy working on the wrong things, there’s a lot of activity (and more importantly, stress) for low value output. However, if you are focussed on working on a small number of truly important things, the same level of activity yields very high value outcomes.
Imagine two scenarios:
- You are a hamster in a wheel – moving a lot but going nowhere.
- You are a marathon runner – running towards the finish line, a very tangible outcome.
Your perception of effort in each scenario will be vastly different. In scenario 1 you are running in an urgent and high cortisol state; in scenario 2 you are working in an important and high dopamine state. One results in chronic stress and burnout, and the other in experience flow and a sense of purpose.
So if being busy isn’t the goal — what is?
In the next post, I’ll show you the tool that helped me escape the cycle and start working with intention.
