Addicted to busyness
As our daily to-do lists grow ever longer, Emily Writes looks at the concept that busyness is a choice.
Writer Tim Kreider once said ‘‘Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.’’
Ya girl has rickets. I feel too busy to even write about being busy and I know I’m not the only one. Apparently we are all addicted to being busy. But to be addicted you must have once had a high, right? And I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed being busy.
Since becoming a mum six years ago, I’ve struggled with always feeling like I’m meant to be doing something. I’m a naturally lazy person and I’ve never been one to want to be busy. When people said to me they were ‘‘good – keeping busy’’ it felt like an oxymoron.
And yet here I am, rushing and rushing and answering every ‘‘How are you?’’ with ‘‘Busy!’’
Some people believe being busy is about your ego. It’s apparently an act of vanity to say you’re ‘‘super busy’’. Rushing around, flying from one task to another without a break, it’s bad for you, we’re told.
And we’re told we are responsible for our busyness and we can just opt out. I’m not so sure.
It sounds remarkably like the ‘‘Sleep when the baby sleeps’’ adage.
I work at least three jobs and have two children aged 6 and 3. I am busy. It’s a fact.
But can I do something about it? I’ve been wondering this in the face of this backlash against busyness. The tide seems to be turning with people quite sure that being busy is self-imposed. My husband told me I wouldn’t be stressed if I stopped taking on voluntary tasks.
But is helping out at your child’s kindergarten or organising a fundraiser really voluntary? Isn’t it lazy to be idle when there’s just so much to do?
Boomers seem to be pushing the approach that we all just need to live slow. But that’s kind of easy to say when you’re being paid well enough that you can take regular breaks, when you can relax in a house that you own, when you have to work only one job that pays well. When a sick day won’t mess with your finances for a week you can definitely chill out.
I hear more and more people calling for us to go back in time to better days. I’m not that sure these better days were better for everyone. Although I would love to have been able to buy a threebedroom house for $250,000 living on one income.
Lamenting the days when you had no responsibilities only really works if you were a kid with no responsibilities.
I began working at 15 and have always had a job since. Many young people I know were the same, waking up at 6am on the weekends (I worked in the fish bar at Woolworths, cleaning the mussel tank), working minimum-wage jobs while finishing high school, then working minimum-wage jobs while studying, then paying off a massive student loan while working a barely-overminimum-wage job.
It’s interesting that so much of the criticism of my generation is that we’re lazy and don’t work, while the generation claiming this is now saying it’s a crime to be busy.
But, it’s also true that I, and others not sure busyness is a trap, might just be defensive.
We might be projecting. If we believe being busy shows our lives have meaning, that what we’re doing is important, why would we ever stop it?
How can we stop being busy when our lives kind of depend on it?
You’re not paid if you don’t work and so many people these days have job insecurity. I’m a freelancer. It’s not an easy gig. And with more and more families falling into poverty, I feel like we can’t swap Sunday afternoons lying about at home for preparing meals for others who need them. Charity should not be shoved for idleness, right?
Maybe busy is just who we are now? Maybe this is really a defence of busyness?
Researchers at the University of Texas tested more than
300 adults aged 50 to 89 on busyness and cognition. They found the busiest people were also the ones who scored highest on cognition tests showing better processing speed, memory, reasoning and crystallised knowledge.
In a study, The Busier the
Better, researchers found that in a group of more than 300 people, being busy was linked with faster brain processing speed, better working memory and episodic memory, and better reasoning. Around 500,000 tasks carried out by almost 29,000 users were analysed. Researchers found it took busy people an average of 12 days to complete an activity. ‘‘Nonbusy’’ people took 19 days.
Now, I often can’t remember my own child’s name so I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but surely it’s a point or two in favour of busy?
Ultimately, stress is really the killer, whether you’re busy or idle – feeling under pressure or feeling free. Maybe that’s the key to feeling balanced. I guess I’ll get busy trying to get some balance.
I work at least three jobs and have two children aged 6 and 3. I am busy. It’s a fact. But can I do something about it?