“Never mistake activity for achievement.” Basketball coach John Wooden
In 1840, certain members of France’s elite found it fashionable to stroll through the Parisian arcades with a turtle on a string. Walking a reptile was just one of many flamboyant ways so called “gentlemen strollers” signaled their wealth. Back then, an abundance of time was a sign of status. Letting a turtle set your walking pace was a blatant statement that you had plenty of leisure time and, therefore, money. By the end of the 19th century, economists were predicting that leisure was on course to be a status symbol of wealth and that, in the next century, work would shrink to 15 hours a week for those in the upper class. It was thought that, with so much leisure time, the major concern of the wealthy would be finding ways to effectively use their freedom and unscheduled time.
These predictions have, of course, not been realized, as well-off people in the western world work far more than three hours a day. Indeed, rather than walking their turtles, the opposite is now true for those in the upper echelons of society. Whereas having plenty of leisure time in the year 1900 was a status symbol of the wealthy, being busy or having a “crazy” schedule is now considered fashionable as it is a way of signaling to others that you are skilled, important, and that your intellectual capital is in demand.
Even now that working from home has eliminated long commutes for some, people’s schedules continue to be increasingly jam-packed; the percentage of employed Americans reporting serious time crunches rose from 70% in 2011 to 80% in the past four years. Busyness is not isolated to the workplace but has seeped into our personal relationships as well. Since the 1970’s, words such as “hectic”, “crazy”, and “stressed” have appeared in interpersonal correspondence with astonishing frequency, as we increasingly brag to others about the pace of our lives. Interestingly, this type of signaling can boost our status: studies have found that people who describe their lives as “crazy busy” are rated as having more money, better skills, and a higher status than those who describe their lives as “relaxed”. Other subtle ways of signaling busyness, such as having your groceries delivered or wearing a Bluetooth headset, have been found to create the impression of being important and more skilled by others.
Why are some people so attracted to busyness? The reasons for the current rise in what is termed “time poverty” are varied and nuanced, but is largely wrapped up in the proclivities of the human brain as well as environmental, cultural, and social influences. Granted, the hustle of everyday life is, for those who live on poverty’s razor edge, not a status symbol but a matter of survival. For them, insufficient sleep, crushingly long workdays, and a lack of time off are a matter of economics rather than self-importance. Rather, busyness is a badge of honor mostly for college educated, middle to upper middle class white collar workers with salaried jobs—that is, those who can afford leisure time but are reluctant to use it.
Studies have shown that across the United States, France, and South Korea, people consider those who exert a high level of effort and time commitment to be morally admirable, regardless of their productivity. This is related to what social psychologists describe as “effort justification”, which is a belief that the harder we work to achieve something, the more we value it, even if that task is onerous or meaningless. We justify our efforts by reasoning that effort pays off and that the harder you work, the greater the reward. Of course, experience tells us this is false, as life rarely follows the simple equation of effort in, reward out. Even Sisyphus, who endlessly toiled through the mundane and meaningless task of pushing a boulder up the side of a mountain, only to have it roll back down, in the end, never got a bonus or a decent retirement package. The gods doomed him to perform that absurd task forever. Busyness may not be the golden ticket to a good life, but it certainly makes us feel like we deserve it.
Even though most of us recognize the downsides of being too busy, the human brain has a fondness for always being turned “on”, with our attention firmly attached to some task, even if it is mundane. While we recognize and complain about expending effort on meaningless work, our brains simultaneously resist being idle. One famous experiment found that people were more likely to administer an electric shock to themselves than sit still with their own thoughts in a laboratory room. We seem to have a strong aversion to idleness; studies show that people will choose something to keep themselves busy, even if it is a meaningless task such as disassembling and reassembling a bracelet, rather than just wait and do nothing for 15 minutes.
Not all tasks are created equal. Work that is meaningful and uses our skills keeps us in a state of focused concentration, even if it requires effort for an extended period of time. When we are doing meaningful work, we are totally absorbed in the moment, and time seems to evaporate. Busyness puts us in a completely different state of mind as it involves tasks that don’t require much thought and can be completed while being distracted. It’s no surprise that multitasking is common when we are overloaded with shallow tasks. Multitasking, with its rapid shifting of attention from one task to another, has been shown to make us more prone to errors and much less productive. Our brains are not designed for multitasking; it can take up to 20 minutes to realign our attention when we shift focus from one task to another. Concentrating on one task exclusively is in sync with the way we are wired. Not only do meaningful tasks provide more satisfaction, the deep concentration they require has been found to strengthen neural connections, enabling them to be more efficient and fire faster in the future.
Although busyness is common in many workplaces, which are notorious for endless paperwork and meetings, it is just as likely to seep into everyday life. Shallow tasks act like pebbles in our shoes; having one pebble may be annoying, but several make it painful to walk. Our world has become more complicated; frequently we must navigate numerous obstacles just to get through the day. We face endless logins, security codes, and verifications, and we wait on hold for hours with government agencies or service providers. Visits to the doctor require reams of paperwork—the very first gate you must pass through in any health care facility requires verification of insurance. Even a trip to the grocery store can be overwhelming as the aisles are filled with multiple choices. Each extra step we encounter takes a small slice of our valuable attention which, combined with the continual beeping, buzzing, and blinking of our phones, watches, and other devices, elevate feelings of busyness while time for meaningful work evaporates.
Busyness can have serious consequences on our health. Feeling as if we have a lot to do keeps our nervous system on alert which, in the short term, may help us focus and get things done, but eventually overwhelms our ability to rest and digest. The effects of busyness emerge slowly, and they frequently appear as seemingly random symptoms. There is evidence that gastrointestinal issues, such as gas, bloating, and other stomach issues, may be due to an overactivation of our sympathetic nervous system, the so-called “fight or flight” branch of our autonomic nervous system. Other symptoms include sleep disturbances, fatigue or achiness, low back pain, weight gain or loss, and shifts in moods such as increased hostility, pessimism, or cynicism. These symptoms accumulate until they morph into what is now recognized as burn-out, a syndrome that results from exposure to chronic stress that includes feelings of exhaustion, negativity, and reduced productivity.
Despite what popular culture tells us, burnout cannot be fixed with so-called “self-care” activities—vacations, mental health days, aromatherapy, massage, and so on. Suggesting that self-care is the cure lays blame on the individual and simply loads up the already heavy “to do” list. It is also not realistic—someone taking care of a sick parent or working a demanding job rarely has the freedom to take time off. Rather, psychologists suggest that we look to see if we can eliminate just one or two onerous tasks to free up time, even if it is just for 30 minutes a day. We can use that time to engage in a meaningful activity that cultivates feelings of security, restfulness, and calm—conditions that are necessary for our rest and digest response to be activated.
As we emerge from the pandemic, there is a movement among the wealthy to “decelerate” and slow things down. Many of us would reap the health benefits of a slower pace to life, with fewer time spent doing mindless tasks, but I suspect that those who can afford to step out of the busyness trap are those who are more likely to have the economic freedom to slow down. Perhaps they will once again have occasion to walk their turtles. For the rest of us, we’ll have to find a few meaningless tasks to drop, if we can, while carving out moments throughout our day in which we can take a breath, land on solid ground, and find a home in our circumstances. I invite you to take some time to discover ways in which you can do less, to explore what keeps you stable and promotes feelings of support. How might you encourage more rest and less busyness in your life?
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