
Busy to Death - Tomte
https://barryoreilly.com/2017/05/31/busy-to-death/amp/
======
TeMPOraL
Looking busy can sometimes be a defense mechanism for protecting your own
space and peace of mind. When your cow-orkers, friends and family see you Very
Busy, they'll be less likely to interrupt you all the time with irrelevant
bullshit.

In fact, this works extremely well, because people usually _respect_ the fact
that someone is working. On the other hand, when they see you not working,
they think it gives them the right to acquire your time.

Sure, a socially savvy person could probably handle all of this by simply
talking to others and asserting the boundaries. But for the rest of us, this
simple trick of looking busy can help reduce the amount of human interaction
to a remotely healthy level (and for many people, myself included, even the
act of assertive rejection is hugely mentally taxing).

~~~
baby
> On the other hand, when they see you not working, they think it gives them
> the right to acquire your time

Sure, for close people, but your friends will stop talking to you if you do
not have time for them.

I remember reading that a good technique could be to organize a meetup (a
movie, a bbq, a dinner, drinks, ...) with all your friends once a week (or
once every other week or ...)

This way your friends know when they can get in touch with you, you also see
all of them at the same time and they can meet each other.

~~~
stinkytaco
Or just spend time with your friends. It's not about "you take up too much of
my time" because then they wouldn't be friends, it's more about "you are
expecting my time RIGHT NOW".

------
shubhamjain
I am often bemused how people actually end up being so busy. At times, I have
felt insecure about my "free time" — sort of how I might be running behind
people who are constantly occupied. But, taking a closer look, you can see how
a lot of work that busy people do is something that can be reduced, optimised,
and even completely done away with. Checking emails, and reports, taking calls
that need not be taken, endlessly digressing in meetings, and sometimes, even
more obvious, like, squandering time in checking HN, Reddit, and Facebook.

The latter isn't so harmful in moderate amounts but I have people who spend
their entire workday talking and checking FB, finishing their work only late
at night — being "too busy and hard-working".

I think our society needs to learn that having no free-time is pernicious, but
more importantly, unnecessary. There are multitudes of ways in which the work
can be optimised with a little effort.

~~~
yrio
I think the last problem is commonly called "procrastination" and different
from workaholism & doing busywork like creating needless meetings, reports,
etc.

~~~
shubhamjain
True, it's different. My point was people could be achieving little during the
daytime and feel compelled to work during the night and hence, be very busy.
The work schedule might look like 12 hours/day but in actual terms, the real
work only occupied 3-4 hours.

------
computator
> Thinking is an activity too—don’t undervalue it. Make time and space for it
> in your daily work schedule.

This is why I find it impossible to work effectively in open-plan offices. I'm
often looking off in to space, thinking. But I feel compelled to make
clickety-clack noises on a keyboard, continuously and unproductively, lest
people think I'm not working.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
> But I feel compelled to make clickety-clack noises on a keyboard,
> continuously and unproductively, lest people think I'm not working.

Easier said than done, but some unsolicited suggestions:

1) Acquire the self confidence that your results will speak for themselves,
appearances be damned. 2) Realize your coworkers also value thinking, and
recognize it properly. 3) Realize your coworkers are probably too busy
worrying about their own appearances. 4) Any busybodies not too busy worrying
about their own appearances can see through your unproductive busywork anyways
;) 5) Consider journaling / take stream-of-concious notes / mind-mapping.
Might slow your thinking down some, but might compensate for memory some too.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _5) Consider journaling / take stream-of-concious notes / mind-mapping.
> Might slow your thinking down some, but might compensate for memory some
> too._

I found myself unable to focus on thinking in the office, when there are other
people present. I learned to compensate for that by doing my thinking in
writing - I just start dumping my thoughts and talking to myself through my
text editor. It feels a bit slower, but it does wonders for concentration and
for short-term memory.

~~~
criddell
Is a text editor more effective for you than pen and paper?

I like a text editor because I can type faster than I can write, but something
about writing on a paper works better for me.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Pen and paper can reflect my thinking better, but I'm an order of magnitude
faster with a text editor than with handwriting - and the benefits of keeping
flow and writing at the speed of thought more than compensate for lesser
expressive power.

------
averagewall
In jobs where I feel sure I'm doing my job well, I overtly show when I'm not
busy. Walking around, playing video games, chatting, even working on my own
business (with boss's permission) etc. I see other people worriedly noticing
when the boss is coming or being afraid that the guard will notice they often
turn up late in the morning. But it doesn't bother me at all. I'm doing what I
was hired to do and there's no need to make a show of working. Sometimes
coworkers see me on the computer and say "you're working hard" but I laugh and
say "no, I've been pissing around all day, I'm really lazy". Of course this
does depend on the job - sometime you are hired to make full use of your time,
not just get things finished.

However, I have worked in places where I always felt I wasn't performing well
enough. Stayed at my desk doing "things" as fast as I could and still being
behind on deadlines, a couple of times by making big mistakes that meant weeks
of work turned out to be useless. I'd go home drained and stressed and still
not be refreshed enough to think clearly again the next morning.

~~~
w0utert
Being lazy is a good personality trait to have if you are a developer, as long
as you channel your laziness to be more efficient and get more done in less
time. This frees up time you can spend thinking, relaxing, or reading/learning
about stuff not directly related to the immediate task at hand. Over the long
term you will learn more, stress less, produce fewer bugs, etc.

The people I value the most as co-workers, who have the most diverse skillset,
and who are able to tackle the most complex problems, are exactly the people
who are the least 'busy', who spend the least amount talking, typing, going to
meetings, don't complaining how busy they are, how many hours they've worked,
etc.

~~~
rmah
That's not being lazy. That's being proactive in improving your productivity.
This is the opposite of lazy.

~~~
airfoil
man perl | grep -iA 1 laziness

:)

------
coldcode
I work at a big company where my manager is always 100% booked in meetings all
day, and so are all the people he has to interact with. I never talk with him
except for quick slack questions. Meanwhile we are finally pushing the biggest
release ever of one of our apps to the app store this week after working for
more than a year on our part, yet the next big release is supposed to be code
complete next week already. I took one day off Friday and paid for it by
having work on my day off today due to yet another problem at the last minute.
Yet executives expect arbitrary dates for things without regard for how much
pain it costs. Every release is filled with last minute problems fixed in a
hurry to meet iron clad schedules. This isn't sustainable.

~~~
diogenescynic
I relate to your comment a lot. My boss is completely unavailable except for a
brief 1:1 meeting every other week. We are constantly given arbitrary, yet
impossible deadlines to meet. Then the objectives change mid-stream and have
to start over... It seems totally toxic and I'm already looking for another
job. I'm totally burnt out of working like this.

~~~
ryandrake
Good luck. I don't think I have ever in my life worked for a single company
where management was not fully booked in back-to-back meetings for 10 hours
each day. What you've described is standard and normal, and something you will
find in most companies. The grass is not greener...

------
scandox
Another aspect to this is that many people (hand sheepishly up) allow other
people to determine their priorities both in work and life.

It's much easier to react to external pressure by giving way than it is to
pursue internally set goals while resisting external pressure.

~~~
draw_down
Yeah, but long term, living that way is hard as hell. I've made that mistake
quite a few times, and digging myself out is painful, every time.

------
the-dude
At my first junior gig as a programmer ( I was still a student ), a co-worker
learned me this :

"If you don't have the time to help others, you are not doing your job right".

Which he learned from a senior in his internship.

~~~
acdha
… or your employer is unwilling to setup an environment in which you can do
your job well. This is usually an excellent sign that you should find a more
competent employer.

------
epx
Once a guy chose not to go to office, instead he went to Starbucks -- so he
could finish an important document (not some side project, but the kind of
document he was paid to write). True story.

~~~
dkarl
That reminds me of my second job in the industry. My boss was very chatty and
would keep me on the phone for hours every day if I let him, so I kept making
up things so I could work without interruption. Funny thing, he was extremely
lonely, had no life and loved to talk about mine, so I could tell him "my
girlfriend is angry at me, it's really bad, I need to take care of it right
now." I'd hang up, code for a few hours, and then call him back and make up a
story about the fight I had with my girlfriend. That worked much better than
telling him I needed some time to, you know, _do_ all the stuff we talked
about on the phone all day.

------
speedplane
In professions where you get paid by the hour (e.g., contractors, lawyers,
etc.) being busy is a proxy for making more money. So when people say, "I've
been swamped," it's a polite way of them saying "I'm making bank."

~~~
coldtea
> _In professions where you get paid by the hour (e.g., contractors, lawyers,
> etc.) being busy is a proxy for making more money._

On the other hand, in blue collar and McJobs, it's usually the opposite.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
A lot of McJobs I've had nearly require busyness. If the boss sees you
chatting with coworkers - it doesn't matter if the customer just left and it
has been 2 minutes - You get told that there is plenty to do. If you can't
find things, clean.

Of course, it has nothing to do with how much money is being made. Many don't
do this because a lot of it _feels_ like busywork, but it is what it is.

------
norswap
Related: "In Praise of Idleness"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676435)

------
chaostheory
7 Habits of Highly Effective People goes into this in depth with its quandrant
system of time management:

q1: important and urgent q2: important and not urgent - the focus of the
article q3: unimportant and urgent q4: unimportant and not urgent i.e. video
games

~~~
rdiddly
Many interruptions are q3 - unimportant (to my goals) and urgent (to the
person interrupting)

------
rodionos
This goes against the 'execution matters' mantra that I subscribe to.

------
ayan
This went a long way to make a Vanilla Ice joke.

~~~
kelvin0
I don't see how you can go from 'Busy to death' and segue into a 'Vanilla Ice
the Rapper' joke. Care to enlighten us? Alright stop, collaborate and
listen...

~~~
flavio81
The article _does_ make a Vanilla Ice joke, if you read carefully.

------
fizixer
The anecdote at the beginning utterly fails to convey anything meaningful.

