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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=idiom
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.
Deleted Comment
Makes it sound less offensive, no?
People who call me get served last, the fastest way to get my attention is a message or an email.
(Implicit in that I suppose: no, not a parent. Appreciate that can't work for everyone in all stages of life.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
[1] Book 4, XX [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Plague
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People are important.