The Busyness trap

Since childhood, we’ve been taught that it’s good to be busy like a bee. The seeds sown at the start are reaping now in our everyday life.

One of biggest reasons for keeping ourselves busy is, as human beings we always want our brain to be occupied with some work instead of being free. For ex. while standing outside a lift, we keep on pressing the button multiple times instead of waiting for the lift to come post pressing it just once.

Another reason is efforts/time spent on any activity makes us justify our work and keeps us satisfied internally through a myth that we are active and productive & the fad now shows us busy so that we create unrealistic value for ourselves in the eyes of society. However, no one ever made us cognizant about the downside of always being busy. It can lead to burnout, impacts engagement & lead to anxiety issues.

Ultimately busyness trend has become part of organizational culture & integral part of human life. Due to this being busy and being anxious are getting corelated & organizations are becoming full of anxious achievers. Individuals constantly evaluate themselves from the eyes of efforts/time they have spent on work & if one day they have spent lesser time, they label that day as a working holiday from their inner self.

To address this, as organization,

i) Need to incentivize people on output not only time spent on the work. No doubt, currently organizations do value the output but the perceived individual value is more important than output. The value gets built on the efforts or time spent on the work & at the end, appraisals are done more on perceptions than actuals.

ii) Need to audit regularly, whether employees are feeling engaged for the work they do or just working round the clock to meet the deadlines.

iii ) Avoid non value adding work or automate it

Keep few days as no meeting/calling days in a month

iv) Force people to get off the clock & take vacation and during vacations block work mails/calls

V) Leaders to model the behavior by taking break themselves. Like Mark Zuckerberg took two months paternity leave and modeled the right behavior to the team

vi) Build a structure with sufficient manpower to avoid burnouts or overburden employees.

As individuals,

i) Dissect the actual problem & understand that just spending time will not resolve the issue.

ii ) Need to practice self-compassion by knowing the fact that we are not robots that can work 24/7.

iii ) Divert yourself to a hobby or something which gives meaning. This will help in detaching from the work & make one efficient in closing the task within or before the timelines. The opportunity cost of time makes one realize that completing any task quickly is very important.

iv) Try guided meditation or any physical activity, it helps in detaching one from work.

When we are building the robots and AIs, we want them to be like humans and have emotions whereas we humans are becoming like robots and working 24/7 without any emotions. To refrain from being constantly busy is very important since occupied brain cannot innovate or ideate and keeps on repeating the routine. This way we are digging our own grave and impacting our physical and mental health in a big way !!!

Reference – HBR March-April -2023 Issue