Busyness
Introduction
The curse of idleness, ie
"...The time it takes you away from something else you feel you should be doing..."
Arthur Brooks, 2024b
Many people have an irrational fear of idleness with busy schedules, deadlines to meet, obligations, commitments, etc. This results in increasing stress levels with too little time but with too much to do; the net result is reduced discretionary time which lowers happiness, etc.
However,
"...You can also have too much free time that reduces life satisfaction due to idleness...... too much discretionary time is scarier than too little, and we either correct or avoid...... we don't know how to use it, free time can become idleness, which leads to boredom and humans hate boredom..."
Arthur Brooks, 2024b
Research has shown
"...The optimum number of free-time hours in a working day was 9.5 - more than half of people's time awake......(yet) the average number of discretionary hours found......1.8..."
University of Pennsylvania and UCLA as quoted by Arthur Brooks, 2024b
This can have a negative impact on well-being:
"...worldwide, 2016 as a result of working at least 55 hours a week, about 398,000 people died from a stroke and 347,000 from heart disease..."
World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organisation as quoted by Arthur Brooks, 2024b
Furthermore,
"...Many people seem to be inflicting greater busyness on themselves than is necessary......52% of Americans are usually trying to do more than one thing at a time, and 60% sometimes feel too busy to enjoy life. When it comes to parents with children under the age of 18 a full 74% said they sometimes feel too busy to enjoy life..."
Pew Research Centre as quoted by Arthur Brooks, 2024
Default Mode Network (DMN)
DMN is the part of the brain that is activated when it is under-utilised and is associated with rumination and self-preoccupation:
"...The pattern of thought when that network is involved can be merely trivia (how did my fingernails get so dirty?) or speculatively terrifying (what could my teenager be up to?)..."
Arthur Brooks, 2024b
To handle this unproductive state, you force yourself to stay busy, eg scrolling the Internet, watching TV, etc. Thus, it is a self-imposed creation after you commit to many things so that you are not idle.
In addition to the dread of anxiously-pensive boredom, other factors are involved:
- societal pressure, ie busyness tends to confirm social status as over-worked lifestyles are rated highly
- work performance and busyness tend to be positively correlated, ie research has shown
"...Busy people have faster processing speed, better memory, better reasoning, and more knowledge than less busy people......many people seem to be inflicting greater busyness on themselves than is necessary because of a fear of idleness..."
Arthur Brooks, 2024b
How to Handle DMN
- first you need to acknowledge DMN and be willing to confront it
- monitor your work patterns and commitments (you are looking for signs of idleness aversion, eg
"... If you have a hole in your schedule, do you jam it with a low-priority meeting or tasks that you would ordinarily avoid?
When you unexpectedly find yourself with a free hour because of the cancellation, do you fill it with 'make-work', such as calls and e-mails that are not necessary?..."
Arthur Brooks, 2024b
One way to handle idle time is to start brainstorming which can put you in a pleasurable flow state, ie give you energy and refresh you, creating an incentive to do it more often. For example,
"... Google reserves 20% of engineers' time for projects of their own choosing - literally whatever they want to work on. This free fifth of their time has generated more than half of the company's highest-revenue-generating products including Gmail, Google maps and Google Earth..."
Arthur Brooks, 2024b
Another way is to make a list of things that need to be done tomorrow and prioritise them based on your keenness to do them so that you end up focusing on the top 5 to do.
NB Obviously if something becomes urgent and/or important you can change the list.