
The cult of busy - chanux
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/the-cult-of-busy
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ErrantX
Man, the one _huge_ hack I have learnt in working for corporate clients (we do
PEN testing and other nefarious sneaky stuff :)) is to act and look
busy/harried when you meet them.

If the high powered CEO your meeting thinks you have to be across the city
meeting someone else in a minute or two they treat you with a lot more
respect.

When I started with this stuff I was treated a lot like a lacky because they
mostly talk to my boss and I was "just" turning up the "do" things. If you act
busy they assume:

\- your an important (high ranking) member of the company

\- they are getting # prime star treatment from a company "executive"

\- but most importantly they give you clear instructions, treat you like a
real person and let you leave at a reasonable hour :)

It has even got to the point where, when meeting a client who is likely to
respond this way, I often walk in pretending to be on the phone to my
"secretary" [ha] giving hurried instructions or something.

Not a wonderful way to have to act, but they lap it up :(

~~~
senderista
Nitpick: the contraction of "you are" is "you're," not "your." You may also be
treated with more respect by certain people if you learn to make this
distinction.

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ErrantX
Luckily it's one of the ones that doesn't affect readability too much. I'm not
too interested in people who deal out respect based on minor grammar mistakes
either, sorry :)

(the one that really gets me is when I split words I.e "thi sis". Can't spot
them for the life of me)

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pmjordan
_Luckily it's one of the ones that doesn't affect readability too much._

This may just be me, but the your/you're thing trips me up like crazy. I
usually have to re-read the sentence 2 or 3 times.

~~~
ErrantX
Ah, man. Sorry - I guess because it scans properly for me then I assumed it
does for others.

I've thrown together a script to highlight your/you're on my HN comments(plus
some other bits and pieces that get me) so hopefully I can improve things :)

(I really cannot recognise this and a few other types of mistakes; it's so
damn annoying)

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skmurphy
This reminds me of a great quote by Eric Hoffer:

"The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life
and having no time. It is, rather, born of a vague fear that we are wasting
our life"

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ww520
The "acting busy" part is a natural defense against managers (most of them)
who would pile more work to those who finish early. If you finished early, the
free time is not yours to play with. More work would be piled on your lap,
without additional compensation. "Acting busy" actually cut down on additional
work.

I was with a company which was obsessed with time tracking. We have to record
time spent on bugs, features, meetings, design, documentation, etc. I sat
through management meetings where the SVP pounded on us repeatedly to get our
people to raise their time tracking percentage higher; being 50% tracked was a
failure. Of course, people padded the numbers to make it upto 100%, and some
overzealous individuals have more than 100% time tracked. It was a fucking
retarded process.

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Tycho
'Time credit' - I like it. One thing that really bugs me is when you tell
somebody about some entertaining or worthwhile pursuit of yours, and they
reply saying 'It sounds interesting, but I don't have time for it
unfortunately.' Thereby implying that you are lazy, and they are busy. Argh!
Incidentally, has anyone ever conducted a study correlating number of emails
sent within an organization and productivity? I've walked through large
offices and seen nothing but Lotus Notes on peoples' screens (and I don't mean
frivalous emails either, these are 'important' emails/memos).

~~~
stingraycharles
_[..] and they reply saying 'It sounds interesting, but I don't have time for
it unfortunately.' Thereby implying that you are lazy, and they are busy._

Don't assume they're implying you're lazy, it could very well be a way of
telling you that they don't find it that interesting without being rude.
Besides, what's wrong with having different interests? Isn't it normal that
one person finds something more interesting than the other, and therefore is
willing to spend more of his spare time on it? That doesn't imply one is more
lazy than the other, that just means they have different passions.

~~~
Tycho
The first problem with saying 'I just don't have time for it' is its a bare-
faced lie! I have to resist the urge to scream 'BUT YOU HAVE TIME TO WATCH
EASTENDERS?!' ;)

The second problem is - why not just tell the truth? 'It doesn't really appeal
to me, personally.' (talking about neutral subjects here, not requests for
favours etc)

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Deezul
I think this makes a fairly good case for performance based and measured
employment. I've never understood why most management seems obsessed with just
simply doing and not what you're doing or how you're doing it. If you are
operating at 100% all the time, there is no time to reflect, revise and
improve the tasks your are responsible for. Perhaps it's due to the illusion
that employers need to squeeze every last minute of productivity out you, when
in fact productivity was never intended to be measured in minutes.

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ewjordan
Yes, "I'm too busy" _is_ usually code for "Your request is not important
enough to me to bump the other things that I want to do off of my todo list."

So what? People can plead, barter, and argue with you if you say that
something is not important to you, but "I'm too busy" is pretty unassailable.
What, exactly, is so much better about giving a flat "no" - honesty?
Please...you're still arbitrarily shutting down the request without giving a
reason, and "not important enough to me" is as implicit in "no" as it is in
"too busy".

To me, "busy" means that I have at least a hundred and fifty years worth of
things that I'd like to do, and sixty years to get as far as I can with it. If
you want to push your way in there, give me a damn good reason, and if you
haven't, I have no problem saying whatever it will take to make you go away
with as little interruption to my life as possible...

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mattm
When someone tells you "I'm too busy" what they're really saying is "It's not
a priority/important to me"

~~~
pasbesoin
This reminds me of a useful quote I ran across recently:

"Never make someone else your priority when, to them, you are only an option."

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billybob
Boy, do I know some managers who need to read that...

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og1
I think this is one of those things where the answer is "it depends". I
understand people can seem busy to look productive. But people can also be
idle under the guise of being effective, when they are just not working hard.
Would you consider the Wally character from Dilbert effective?

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jcromartie
A lot of employers will bait their workers with this lure of "time credit"
through the lie of comp time. A lot of people never have the opportunity to
take any of the unknown amount of "comp time" that they've amassed over the
years because _things are too busy_ at work.

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Periodic
For me, I find that busy happens most when I link my activities to external
schedules. When those external schedules force a few things to come together
at once, I get busy because I definitely _want_ to do them all, but I may not
have enough time to do them all at a leisurely pace.

There is a saying for which I don't know the origin that goes, "a patient man
never waits." I think this article gets a little confused about the difference
between busy and hurried. Effective and productive use of time implies
business. Ineffectiave and/or unproductive use of time leads to hurriedness.

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duck
Some great points in this article. Busy is relative, just as time is. Unlike
time, it can't be used as a measurement like it so often is - What are you
guys working on? "We're really busy." Errr... that happens way too often.

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ww520
All he said sounds good on paper but in reality people act and perceive
differently. Acting busy has a number of perceived and real benefits,
otherwise people won't do it.

Acting busy is perceived as important, perceived as in demand, perceived as
hard working, perceived as the salary paid is well-earned, deters additional
work, and deters disruption

In general it just makes you look like a super god. And that's why people do
it.

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mortenjorck
For me, the question is "what is busy?" I try to balance my time between
working on things I have to do, working on things I want to do, doing things
that are fun but not productive, and enjoying a little time simply doing
nothing at all.

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j_baker
You know, I've always noticed that busy people are always in a hurry. People
tend to assume that the latter happens because of the former. But I've
recently begun to believe that it's the other way around.

