Say you’re “busy” and people will think you’re important.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to say, I’m not very busy.

In today’s news, Americans who always say they’re “busy” are seen as more important, as validated by some new sciency research.

In case you needed some university guys in lab coats to state you the obvious.

I would argue the same is true for other culturally-similar English-speaking countries: the UK, or at least that’s my impression having lived a short time there, and Australia, my dear home country, despite its universal reputation as a land full of jobless surfers and crocodile hunters who have never seen the inside of an office cubicle in their lives.

Yes, in Australia’s major cities at least, the phenomenon of overtime-work-martyrdom is alive and well. Humble-bragging about being busy is an art. If your life is leisurely, it’s because you must be a dole-bludger.

Because what is the opposite of busy? Calm? Relaxed? Having work-life balance? A thesaurus search for the antonyms of “busy” actually brings up the words unemployed, idle, lazy and inactive. That’s closer to how we view it.

We used to associate a life of leisure with high status. Now the perception is the opposite.

The researchers of the aforementioned study have linked the shift to busy people being seen as in-demand:

We think that the shift from leisure-as-status to busyness-as-status may be linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economies. In such economies, individuals who possess the human capital characteristics that employers or clients value (e.g., competence and ambition) are expected to be in high demand and short supply on the job market. Thus, by telling others that we are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status.

Perhaps you could sum it up even more simply as coming down to money. If you work in the kind of job where you’re always at the office, always picking up phone calls, always burying your thoughts in work, you must be in the kind of corporate job that brings in the big bucks.

And we live in a society in which money is valued above all else.

Sadly this means that many people strive to end up in jobs with big pay checks and busy-and-important titles and stressful long days that swallow up the time they otherwise would have had to enjoy those big pay checks.

Now if you misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting that pursuing a career is wrong. Or that being busy is always a bad thing. Simply that there is this culture, this environment, in which money and status are only granted once one’s time and personal life are ritually sacrificed at the alter of “busyness”, and that this culture is what’s dangerous.

What if we valued time? What if we valued human connection? What if we valued doing something meaningful instead of something that earns dollars? Would we still see those time-sacrificers as the most “important” people?

Perhaps the problem is not even that we view being busy as being important, but that we have a skewed idea of what’s important to begin with.

In reality, there are plenty of passionate people in the corporate world who are super-busy and super-important in their field. There are also plenty of people outside the corporate world who are super-busy fixing problems and saving lives and raising children and creating art and laying bricks and whatever. They’re important too.

And there are people who kind of aren’t that busy, but they’re ok with that because they don’t mind if they’re not considered “important” by the average American. And they don’t value money as much as they value having the time for connecting with people and travelling and personal development and solitude (can’t a person be busy relaxing?) And they find joy in being able to get up at 10am on a Monday morning and write this random article for no other reason than because they feel like it.

So here’s the final question. Are you busy because you want to be, because you enjoy your work or believe you’re doing something truly important? Or are you busy because you care about the status that comes with being busy?

(Or are you just… happy with not being that busy?)

Just posing the question. Now excuse me while I go make myself another cup of tea and consider whether or not to change out of my pyjamas.