Seduced by Busyness?
Picture a successful person. What do you see?
Perhaps it’s a woman in a power suit, hustling around the city. Maybe you see a top level athlete throwing weights around the gym. Your favorite celebrity on a red carpet.
Whoever you imagine, they’re probably actively busy.
When someone wants to build a business, get the grade, or finish the race, the to-do list fills up fast. Sure, there are so many things one could do. Plus, according to pop culture, the successful are always hustling. Sleeping in is not glorifying, daydreaming isn’t exactly sexy.
The origin of the busyness habit
I grew up in the United States public school system. Here, we often used the phrase “busy work” when it came to certain classes. Remember substitute teacher days? a movie along with a questionnaire filled our day of school. Half days were another excuse to pull out worksheets that never got graded. Often times, students were awarded extra credit for completing their crossword the fastest.
Obviously school cannot cancel because the lesson plan is not 100% productive, and teaching children to focus and do the tedious stuff is an important skill. However, in those moments we learned how seductive busyness is. Pretty quickly, kids learn that looking busy reaps rewards. They understand their…
