What it Really Means to be Busy and How to Get off the Treadmill

We love to boast about how busy we are. ‘Fine’ or ‘good’ are no longer acceptable responses to the question of ‘how are you?’, instead, it’s been replaced with the answer ‘really busy!’. Even if it’s not true we must maintain a façade that portrays that we are, so we work longer hours to outwardly depict busyness to our colleagues, bosses, and subordinates. The ridiculousness of this is that we work longer hours while completing the same amount of work which in actually makes us less productive.

The fact is, we are no longer paid commensurately for our skills, we are paid to be busy.

This is illustrated most pertinently by the locksmith anecdote:

He comes and picks your lock allowing you to get into your apartment in two minutes. Instead of thanking him for the skill and expertise he has just utilised to alleviate your problem as quickly as possible we question why it costs $120 dollars.

The same locksmith earlier in his career used to take 25 minutes, often broke the lock leaving customers with the standard $120 dollar bill plus $25 dollars for the cost of a new lock. They were locked out of their homes for a longer period of time and they were forced to pay more due to his incompetence but because it took more time and appeared to take more effort the…