The busy badge syndrome

“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 !