“Nobody
is busy, nobody is free; it is all about priorities.” To be very honest,
this is a brutal truth considering the fact that “Busyness” is the most common
urban epidemic. I strongly feel that it is the most prevalent non-communicable
disease after diabetes and hypertension. If someone tells you that he/she is
busy right now, that simply means your place is not high enough in the priority
list during that moment. Almost all are
part of the “Busyness” spectrum. Being a
90s kid I realize that I am fortunate enough to witness the amazing
technological transitions. The journey
from the huge Beetel landline phones to the sophisticated iPhone X, Bajaj
Chetak scooters to the fascinating cars by Tesla, greeting cards to e-mails/WhatsApp,
slambook to Facebook, and play grounds to the play stations highlights the
technological advancements and the zeal to bring more comfort and fun to the
human life. In the 90s, if you had asked any of the school kids the reason why
computers were invented, the unambiguous answer would have been “to save time”.
But now, there is an element of ambiguity! I seriously can not understand if
the technological innovations were aimed to save time or to extract more work
in the same time period! I remember a narration from the book “Autopilot” by
Andrew Smart. He has described how
employees in a Romanian company used to leave office during lunch hours after
their work-speed increased with the installation of computers in the
office. This used to happen because they
wanted to do a fixed amount of work per day and it was significantly speeded by
the use of computers. So clearly, the computers improved the quality of life! Experts
from the IT company from Denmark who installed the computers were flummoxed as
Romanians did not want to do twice as much work now that they had computers,
and the Roamanians thought the Danes were crazy for expecting them to do twice
as much work just because they could do it faster. This confusion between the Romanians and
Danes may be attributed to the cultural gaps but again it surfaces the
fundamental question- “Why were computers invented- to give us more free time
or to increase the productivity?” However, the challenge in the current time is
so much that we can’t imagine leaving the workplace during lunch hours even if
we finish the work for the day. We tend to work more; we tend to produce more,
because we realise that in the rat race someone else in some other part of the
world may overtake us on some other day.
On the other hand, we are more
connected to each other than that is required.
To live happily we need some extremely strong emotional connections and
some absolutely true friends. These connections are the real “signals” for our
emotional, personal, and professional growth.
However, too much of social networks have provided us a huge number of
superficial connections that dilute the connectivity with the people who really
matter to us. Every minute of the day,
every day of the week, and every month of the year we check the phones for new
texts, new e-mails, new comments on our posts, new likes on our pictures in
social media. In short, the part of the
brain that must have been enjoying short vacation in the absence of the connecting
tools is getting overworked and gives us a sense of “Busyness”! Now I am really
tempted to go back to 90s again. I can recall that people had two lives during that
time- (i) work, and (ii) family. There was no scope to embrace the unwanted
“busyness” and the primary connections used to be absolutely strong. It is the time to introspect, it is the time
to overcome the “peer” pressure, “beer” pressure, “dear” pressure, “shear”
pressure, “sheer” pressure, “Mere” pressure, “gear” pressure; whatever pressure
you have! Rat race is forever but those people who matter to you are not; so
prioritise early and don’t make “Busyness” the business !
