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.
To me, for the new deal to override an old deal, the new deal has to be better than the old deal plus the cost of breaking my word. I take at least a bit of pride in my word, so it’s basically “first come, first served. Unless the new thing is incredibly and unexpectedly good”.
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.
>One of my pet peeves is when people say they don't "have time for" something. Time is not something you have;
The "have time" phrase is an idiom[1]: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., rain cats and dogs, see the light ).
For the criticism you wrote about "have", someone else can write the same criticism about "take" in "taking the time". And the same defense can be used for that too: "take the time" is another idiom that must be interpreted as a group and shouldn't be logically parsed as separate words.
When people talk about having time, they are not aware that it's an idiom for sparing time to do it. They talk about having time as in having money, like it's something that one can pull out of a drawer.
You have no choice but to spend all your 24 hours in the day. You can't just skip over 7--9 AM and then have two hours in your back pocket for when you are short on time.
So no, you never just have time you're not using anyway. You're always using all of your time. On what is a matter of priorities.
However, if you would spend 19--21 watching a TV series, or twiddling your thumbs, you can choose to take that time to do something else.
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.)
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.
What makes you think you know how other people consider those words? Attributing or inferring meaning where there is none is a common logical fallacy. In other words, you thinking there is a certain rationale to other people's actions doesn't mean their actual reasoning is anywhere close to it, nor that there even is any.
> What makes you think you know how other people consider those words?
When I say “they consider”, I don't propose that I know what's in people's minds. My experience is that people don't talk about their time as something they choose to allocate in a certain way. Rather, they talk about it as if it's fixed, like laws of physics.
Time in this regard is similar to money, or other things you have a limited amount of.
You can very well say “I can’t afford that” or “I don’t have money enough to buy that” even if you technically have money in the bank enough to pay for something right now. Maybe you want some money as a buffer for unplanned expenses, or you’ve already agreed to but something that’s not yet paid.
Same goes for time: Yes you can choose what to do at any given moment, but the decision may already be made. You may have promised to do something - meet someone for lunch, go to work. Or you know that you need that time to sleep in order to feel well.
Surely it’s possible to change those decisions, the same way it’s possible to spend money in a restaurant instead of paying the rent. It’s not weird to speak of the decisions as final and the time already “spent”, though.
But in the same way it's even somewhat rude if e.g. a billionaire says they don't have money to buy something (assuming it's fairly cheap). It makes a difference whether they say that they don't have money or that they don't want to spend it. And the whole point of the comment was to say that it is often NOT someone not being able to afford it time-wise.
I think eric4smith meant to say that on average busy is an idiom to bounce people off. Most of the time people could, but they choose not to. Very rarely I've seen people say I'm busy and have zero time to spare.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But sure, Americans are very work-driven, and some small percentage will float to the top.
But are they better at life generally? They have higher divorce rates than Europe,a higher suicide rate than (western) Europe, take fewer holidays, are less travelled, care less about the environment, and so on.
Sure, I get that business and entrepreneurship are focused around the accumulation of money, but I would suggest that is only half the equation. What really matters is how you _spend_ your money (and time), not how much of it you accumulate.
Put another way - do you think, speaking generally of course, covering the population as a whole, America is _happier_ for being so focused on money?
I wouldn't be so hasty. How the world is today doesn't mean it is the way the world will look like in 100 or 200 years.
The person that got the best grades in my bachelor's, she studied so hard to achieve this, but this only lasted for 2 years she ended up burning out. Her mental health completely deteriorated and she basically gave up, it took a whole year of recovery for her to come back and finish the degree.
Now, on a people scale, it might take a couple of years... on a societal level it might take decades. But personally I think a society that treats people that way might end up encountering problems in the future. And I would say, being good at business is most of the time, being able to sustain a healthy economy for a very long time. Every empire falls and it's not really a question of if, it's a question of when.
It could slide the other way as well. American working culture could get more sustainable over time as we learn to adjust and life becomes more convenient.
For example, what kind of impact on productivity do conveniences like instant coffee, drive thru restaurants, and microwavable meals have? I don't think it's unreasonable to think that we will develop more of these conveniences in the future, making extremely hard work even more sustainable over time.
That's not necessarily the case. It assumes that hard work is not "sustainable over time" because you have to attend to minutia (making an actual coffee, cooking, etc.).
But as others have said, all this takes energy. I've noticed that even though doing these "mindless, useless" tasks can be annoying, and a total drag to think about, after I went and done them I tend to feel much fresher when getting back to work.
Maybe the issue is that there's a limit to the length of time we can spend focusing on only one thing.
I'm not suggesting any particular solution, but I am suggesting that it could become easier over time with different quality of life improvements. I gave examples of products, but it could easily be changes in other aspects of work. Like getting rid of open offices, measuring employees on work accomplished rather than time spent at work, having more frequent breaks during the day, having more flexible work schedules, etc... Again not saying any one of these are the ticket, but that general improvements over time could keep making us more productive without bringing on burnout, or at least squeezing more work in before that happens.
I normally try to couple my downvotes, which are rare, with some kind of reflection that the other person might benefit from. I’m not sure what to offer here, but I’ll try.
It’s a weird exceptionalism which celebrates excessive work and all the impact that has on people, and vicariously relate to the rare successes as if they’re your own. Most people won’t ever be a billionaire, and even those who will won’t always be happy with their life. One of the few things almost every person has, as almost equal currency, is time. Almost all of us spend most of it doing work for some external purpose and get to enjoy little of it ourselves. I’m not sure how much joy people get from being successful at business or entrepreneurship, but as a value judgment I’d say that people who live their lives satisfied and healthy without such achievements are probably treating themselves better than if they were chasing an improbable windfall.
As for which culture is “better”, I don’t have to comment on which is happier and more satisfied. That much is knowable.
Parent made a comparison on two specific dimensions, neither of which were happiness and satisfaction. Also building a business is pretty achievable for most people. It’s not chasing a windfall.
> I wasn’t expecting a “well, actually, screw happiness and satisfaction” response but here we are.
Starting a successful business, offering an exceptional service or product to customers, seeing your employees fulfilled and happy -- those tend to tick a lot of boxes for people in terms of happiness, meaning, and sanctification.
Most successful people know it's that "offering an exceptional service or product" bit that makes you wealthy. Starting a business to be rich as an ends in itself rarely works out.
I find I'm happiest and most satisfied when I'm incredibly busy with something truly meaningful. Capitalism does a mediocre job of allocating rewards to those who contribute, and most people I know have make-work: advertising, legal, fin-tech, and just the whole slew of stuff which reallocates wealth.
The claim is that it allocates it more efficiently, which is perhaps true, but it's a second-order effect.
If I am helping people -- be that for money, or for example, my family -- I get meaning and fulfilment out of it. In those sorts of jobs, I can work 60+ hour weeks and not burn out. I'm in a job I find meaningful right now. It pays half of what I'd make as a SWE optimizing ad clicks, but I'm happy.
I don't work 60-hour weeks right now because of family, but I have worked insane work weeks before, and I probably will again at some point.
How about being a millionare. That seems pretty good and much more feasible than a billion. Nothing is getting cheaper..i would error on the side of trying to earn and invest more. I think for a lot of people work provides meaning in life, and I dont see this as being a bad thing.
I think we can agree that Americans have more money. Or higher paying jobs. Well, except for those who don't (but that's their own fault right?)
But other than money, is the US really better at, well, anything? If you are in the US, and you don't have money - what do you have?
Now sure, I'm making a broad statement, but I'd argue that outside of "we have more money" there's not a whole lot of America that's appealing.
I'll shorten the obligatory "if we are so bad, why does everyone want to come here" question by pointing out;
Not everyone does. But the US has some poor neighbors, so it can seem that way. And;
There is always some group of people who see money as the prime motivator, and hence the US the prime destination.
I say this not to pick on the US, or say its a terrible place. But to encourage some objective introspection. I suspect that the perception that "America is the best country on earth" is the primary stumbling block that prevents America from being anywhere close to the best country on earth.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.