Busy?

If I had to name one pet peeve with most professionals it is the repeated claim that they are 'busy' and in particular 'too busy'. Ask someone to elaborate it's surprising how many times (about 30%) they actually can't.

People spend a lot of time at work. Time they are compensated for no matter how meagerly they think they are. But they people who can't substantiate their claims of business are not just annoying but concerning.

Concerning because overwork leads to so many problems. Firstly the health ones, the longer hours you do the less likely you are to prepare your own meals, then you spend less time on yourself, and you are not the inexhaustable reservoir of energy, and more importantly ideas that you think you are.

It's like when Terry Pratchett said that aspiring fantasy authors have to read outside the genre of fantasy. Any ambitious career person has to spend time looking outside the prism of your company. A company is its own microcosm and are prone to living in their own reality rather than the greater reality of the marketplace. A few employees will have daily customer and end user contact, but many in marketing, accounting, IT, logistics etc. can come close to never having contact with the end of their value chain.

Work suffers because you suffer. Your lack of personal interests and relationships shrinks your range of stimuli, like trying to get new ideas from a painting by looking at the one painting again and again. You tick people off who like you and want to spend time with you. You probably have a more involved relationship with your boss than your own father or mother at times.

I mean spend time with people you choose to be with and who choose to be with you. When you aren't forced together and defined by an organisational chart you have the opportunity to use real people skills as opposed to corporate ones.

That's just speaking of the work life balance. Many people won't attempt to achieve it because they are 'too busy', ie. their job somehow depends on them working overtime every day.

The adage 'the work expands to fill the time available' is true. Furthermore your average person is terrible at time management and prioritising. It is almost everyones natural inclination to 'feed a crying child' that is, they confuse urgent with important. Many can't see a difference between the two.

That's why claims to be 'busy' are so infuriating. Why the fuck would anyone have a contract that says '9-5' for a job that actually requires '8-6' or greater? Have your employers lured you into a position under false pretenses? In my experience I highly doubt it. Most people who are most 'enthusiastic' for lack of a better word think they are getting ahead by doing it.

Like 'urgent' and 'important' they confuse 'work' with 'value' and can't see a difference between the two. I think most people create most of their value in any given task or job in about 3 hours of their day, maybe less. I draw on average for 1.5-2 hours per day and get tremendous value out of the exercise, making steady progress. More progress than I made in a week at my old job.

There are some exceptions though, but they aren't what you'd think. Sure surgeons performing 8 hour procedures shouldn't look at the clock on the wall after 3 hours and say 'close him up, we've already contributed 80% of the value' but they work in a rare profession where urgency and importance actually correlate - saving lives. What I was thinking of is more like my part time job now - call center work. The task is pretty rote and repetitive, and provided you can stay in a good professional mood you can contribute value for 6-7 hours to the same standard. The only caveat being that your throat may wear out.

But again, when you are performing market research your goals and productivity are absolute, and very measurable. Surveys per hour, refusal rates and so on. Most 'knowledge workers' if you ask them what the companies objective is will come up with an elaborated version of 'more'.

Management standards are so low in Australia that it is rare to see a manager. (most often called 'Director' 'Vice President' or 'CEO') You spot more frequently another worker with an inflated title. No management is actually done, but they will occasionally exercise authority.

Thus in your average organisation you will see an extended line of chinese whispers where priorities get mutated or forgotten down the 'chain of command' few 'managers' will perform adequate anual reviews, just like few will write an honest reference letter. In summary, few people have any idea why they are busy, as in what productive work they are actually meant to do. They just want to do more, and feel that more is the answer. Not better, not strategic, not smarter, just more.

So it really gets up my nose when people tell me they are too busy, especially too busy to plan. Anyone that doesn't have a plan that says in concrete terms what they are trying to achieve cannot substantiate that they are busy. A person that doesn't have scheduled their actual priorities from said plan cannot tell me where their time goes, and thus cannot be busy.

These people tick me off because they are my friends, and they could be so much happier, healthier and nicer, and have more time to spend with me and their other friends AND be better at their job if they spent less time doing more and more time doing the right things. I can't blame them directly a lot of social conditioning and bad management standards have often encouraged them into the fallacy of 'busy' but I can get angry when they tell me they are too busy to change.

Because its the equivalent of saying 'I'm too busy to be better at my job'. Plus I actually have a trauma surgeon friend and he finds plenty of time to catch up. So anyone not stitching up car crash and drunken brawl victims really has no excuse and no right to call themselves 'busy'.