Busyness

Glenda @ Mitchell News

Be intentional about what you choose to do. Be intentional about actually doing it.

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Busyness

The New Status Symbol

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*Hot Off The Press*

The start of the month of March was somewhat unusual.  The first couple of weeks were spent tracking Cyclone Alfred as it played erratically off the Queensland Coast, creating uncertainty and angst as it made its way like a slow-moving freight train.

My brother and sister-in-law were visiting from South Africa and managed to fit in a few days with us.  Unfortunately the day of their arrival was more than a little chaotic as Hervey Bay was hit with what they have deemed to be a once in four hundred year event! Up to 500mm of rain fell in a few hours.  It all happened so quickly and we ended up being one of those cars on the road when you shouldn’t be.  By God’s grace, we managed to get there and back to collect them and our home escaped with a small leak and a wet shed floor.

The rest of the month was more routine – spent working, gardening and running.  I enjoyed attending a couple of workshops – good to be on the other side for a change – and kicking off my first group coaching series for the year.

For those of you that are tracking my blogs on Substack, my apologies for being a bit light on.  I am still getting used to the freedom that this writing offers over some of the platforms and look forward to making more use of it.

As mentioned previously, if there are any topics that you would like me to explore or if you would like to be a “guest” writer on either blog, let me know.

The topic for this month seems to be a hot one for many people.  It is a little longer than normal – it felt as though it needed a bit more content to do it justice.

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*Busyness – The New Status Symbol*

“Hey, do you have a minute?”

Chances are, your answer to that question is, “No, not really…”

Just this week, many friends and clients I’ve spoken to have voiced a familiar refrain:

“I’m just so busy.”

“Things are hectic.”

“I don’t have time.”

I fell into this trap myself.  I noticed that “busy” had become my default response.

“How’s your week?” Busy.

“Can you jump on a call?” No, I’m too busy.

“When will you get to this?” I’ll try—I’ve just been so busy.

I was practically using busy as punctuation. I didn’t even try to explain my priorities, my focus, or even take ownership of my choices. I was defaulting to busy instead of being intentional about where my time and energy went.

I was treating my schedule like a never-ending endurance test, with no clear game plan.

Let me ask you this: Do you ever ask someone how they are and they respond with, “Things are good. I’m not too busy. I have a nice balance going. I love all the free time I have to do what I love.” If that is someone you know, they’re certainly in the minority.

Life in general (and professional life in particular) is centred on a culture of busyness. But is it out of necessity, or are we addicted to busyness? Does the “I’m sooo busy!” mantra and chronic unavailability validate us? Does it make us feel more important? Like things are moving forward and we’re winning at life?

As much as we complain about busyness, most of us fear its opposite even more: “Having time” might indicate not being in demand. We often equate free time with a lack of success or desirability.

The Value of Busyness

Whom do you hold in higher regard: Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mao Tse Tung, politicians known for working long hours, or Keir Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom, who said he would not work on Fridays past six o’clock in the evening, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who took a few weeks off following her re-election?

The answer is perhaps not as simple as you first think or the one you’d prefer to hear or admit.

The response also varies depending on the nation and society that a person moves in.

The fact that the first group of politicians is American or Asian and the second group is European may not be a coincidence. It is true that there are significant cultural disparities in the way that nations associate ‘busyness’ and lengthy work hours with status.

Admiring long hours of work is positively correlated with a productivity orientation, perceived social mobility, and the conviction that hard effort leads to success and social affirmation. According to research by Silvia Bellezza, an associate professor of business in marketing at Columbia Business School (Bellezza, et.al., 2016), these aspects are often higher in American society than in continental Europe. In Asian societies, especially those in China and India, dedication to work is seen as a virtue, often leading to long working hours and a high degree of commitment to one’s job. (Kalita 2023).

Put simply, in America and Asia, busyness and a lack of leisure time have become increasingly pervasive status symbols that most people attribute to higher social status individuals.

In Australia, the answer is mixed.

The Evolution of Busyness

Historically, working long hours didn’t generate admiration. In ancient Greece, slaves performed labour and free men had nothing but contempt for work.  In ancient Rome, otium, the Latin word signifying freedom from work and leisure time, was highly value by the wealthy aristocrats who could happily afford not to work for a living.

Fast forward to the 19th century and the attitude did not appear to have changed.  The American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen proposed that “conspicuous abstention from labour … becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement,” whereas “labour is a mark of poverty and subjection, inconsistent with a reputable standing in the community.”

In the television series Downton Abbey, which is based on a fictional upper-class family living on a Yorkshire country estate between 1912 and 1926, Countess Violet Crawley even asks with a curious tone, “What is a weekend?”

An upper crust British woman in the early 20th century was too aristocratic to even recognise the concept of a week divided by work and leisure.

What a difference less than a century has made.

A study published in 1970 by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research indicates that an entire century of diminishing work hours in the United States started to reverse, especially for highly educated, well-paid men. The U.S. Census Bureau’s more recent data also indicates that the wealthiest people work the longest hours. (Kuhn and Lozano, 2006).

Today, Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on the planet, prides himself on being a workaholic, working 80-100 hours per week. On social media, celebrities brag about their busy lives and hectic work schedules.

Part of this monumental shift could be attributed to the rise of knowledge-intensive economies. In the past, working hard in economic systems that were mostly based on less-skilled agriculture and manufacturing may have been perceived as virtuous; but it may not have implied an individual was in high demand.

Labour markets are increasingly highly structured and competitive, where human capital is one of the most prized economic assets. On the supply side, workers invest heavily in their education and skill development, recognising that their human capital is their most marketable resource. On the demand side, companies, institutions, and head-hunters compete to attract and retain top talent and the best brains.

All these factors have converged to create an environment where long work hours have become a status symbol and a way for individuals to prove their value.

Has the change made us more productive or happier

It is intriguing that despite the well-known negative effects of an overworked lifestyle on happiness, wellbeing, and health, many people still see a busy lifestyle as desirable and identify it with status.

Modern day corporations ignore that fact that productivity does not always follow from longer workdays.   We need to learn to work smarter, not harder continues to be merely a rhetoric.  In their quest for unbridled growth and excessive profits, they are pushing for their employees to work harder, often ignoring the well-being of their employees. 

This work culture is promoted by the formerly mentioned Elon Musk at his social media company X (formerly known as Twitter) and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Reporter Caroline Colvin writes:

“Elon Musk is not the best at the whole employee experience thing, he has created toxic work environments across X, Tesla and SpaceX. Along with his billionaire bravado, Elon Musk is now synonymous with toxic workplace”. (Colvin, 2023).

Kristi Coulter, a former executive who spent 12 years in various positions at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle says – “Working in Amazon offices was like slowly killing yourself” (Colomé, 2023),”

In September 2024, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that Amazon would force all employees to return to the office, bringing an end to their flexible working conditions. Predictably, this led to outrage among many Amazon employees, but frankly there is little evidence that their management cares.

There are numerous tragic stories about the lives of employee deaths bring linked to overworking by employers. In 2022, an audit & assurance specialist at a large Sydney firm died when she committed suicide by plunging from the terrace of her firm’s tower block in the Sydney CBD. 

A couple of years later, came the tragic news from India that a 26-year-old Chartered Accountant, lost her life due to a “backbreaking workload” and “work stress”. Her mother, sent an email to the firm’s Chairman, detailing the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death. She described it as a “wake-up call”for the company to reevaluate its work culture and prioritise the well-being of its employees.

I wonder whether there has been any change in the culture.

Is there a reversal in the wind?

Many contend that the pace of life has become so fast that we may gradually return to praising leisure time and admiring slower lifestyles as status symbols. Many professionals, particularly the younger ones, are calling for a slowdown at work, challenging the workaholic lives of before the pandemic, asking for shorter and more flexible workweeks, and scheduling more time for leisure. Instead of applauding promotions, Gen Zs are boasting on social media about their “quiet quitting” and “great resignation” trends.

In 2016, France pioneered the “right to disconnect” law, making it mandatory for companies with more than 50 employees to establish parameters for after-hours.

The European Union (EU) defines the right to disconnect as:

“a worker’s right to be able to disengage from work and refrain from engaging in work-related electronic communications, such as emails or other messages, during non-work hours”.

In 2024, Australia followed France’s lead and implemented a “right to disconnect” rule, offering relief to people who feel forced to take calls or read messages from employers after they finish their day’s work. The new law allows employees to ignore communications after hours if they choose to, without fear of being punished by their bosses.

Other countries that have adopted such laws are Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, Slovakia, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Ireland and the Philippines.

Could this signal a reversal toward valuing leisure as much as in the past?

Optimism alone may not be enough and some of these trends may be fleeting. Almost a century ago, the influential English economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advancements would reduce our workweek to just 15 hours by 2028, but that vision is clearly not materialising.

If AI enhances our productivity and efficiency at work, will we use the extra time to enjoy our lives, or will we simply cram more tasks into an already overloaded schedule, seeking a sense of importance?

For our sake, I hope we choose the former.

The Individual Choice

The problem has become so systemic, that it’s not only the organisation that needs to recognise the problem and to act.  We can be our own worst enemy.

I was coaching a high-potential leader who was constantly overwhelmed. Every session started the same way:

“I’m just so busy.”

Deadlines were slipping, emails were piling up, and she felt like she was in survival mode.

I gave her a challenge:

“Remove the word ‘busy’ from your vocabulary for the next fortnight.”

Instead of saying, “I’m too busy for that,” she had to say:

✔️ “That’s not a priority right now.”

✔️ “I need to reallocate my time.”

✔️ “I’ll say no to this, so I can focus on that.”

By the next session, she had more clarity, made better decisions, and felt less overwhelmed.

Not longer thereafter, she was called in by her manager to discuss her ‘workload’. Her first thought was “oh no, they will add more to my workload as they’ve discovered that I’ve been working under my contracted hours”.  She prepared herself for being loaded up with more work and additional responsibilities.

She was astounded by the opening line in the meeting: “Kylie (name changed), we need to reduce your workload as you’re well over by 20%.”

How had she come to the catastrophic conclusion that she was under her workload?

I had started working with her because of previous burnout and within a relatively short time, she was no longer experiencing chronic stress at work.  In addition to the “busy” challenge, she had committed to engaging in work that was meaningful, easy to measure achievement and consistent with her values.

This didn’t mean that there weren’t periods of moderate stress. There were times when she had worked around the clock, but she had allowed herself more restful times when things were ticking along.  She had declined less important work. She had even started to enjoy family and social life without the guilt of not working.

Unfortunately, there was still one very irrational belief that coloured her thinking.

If I am not stressed and time-poor then I am not being productive.

She had assumed that because she was not as tired and stressed, she was not working to her capacity.

Dr Anna Akbari called it the Culture of Busyness, where we associate being ‘busy’ and chronically stressed as an indication of productivity and success.

If being a workaholic is a Western status symbol, then it is unsurprising that 46% of Australians consider our workplace mentally unhealthy.  Being time-poor or feeling overwhelmed is often how people describe being chronically stressed. And being chronically stressed predicts higher rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental health disorders.

Stress is not a measure of productivity

It’s important that being chronically and excessively stressed isn’t a way of life to measure our achievements and productivity. In fact, all the evidence points to the opposite: excessive and chronic stress can impair our ability to concentrate, solve problems, and remember things. In short, it makes us less productive.

On the other hand, moderate stress is a part of life and can help us complete important tasks. In fact, when stress is related to meaningful outcomes, it can increase organisational resilience against future stressors.

For example, in the work context, being able to tolerate a short period of stress when putting together a pitch for a client can create resilience if it helps the company secure a lucrative client and everybody is rewarded for their efforts (i.e., a meaningful outcome). On the other hand, stress that is uncontrollable and meaningless such as workplace bullying or unreasonably high workloads can increase mental health problems for the individual and is costly to the workplace.

Top tips to manage workplace stress

Having personally experienced first-hand workplace stress and helped others reduce the negative impacts of stress on their lives, here are my top three tips:

• Thinking errors: be mindful of unreasonable beliefs and thoughts, especially the incorrect connection between chronic stress and productivity (i.e., If I’m not stressed, I’m not working hard enough).
• Meaningful work: Look over your to-do list and consider whether any of your targets/deadlines involve projects that are meaningful to you. Otherwise, it may be time to have a discussion with your supervisor about making your role more challenging and valuable.
• Be proactive about chronic stress: chronic stress should not be a way of life. Chat to your supervisor or decide to engage an expert. It may be time to make some reasonable adjustments for your health at work.

It is possible to be highly productive without being chronically stressed and tired.

Reduced Work Hours ≠ Reduced Busyness

So now you’ve taken on board the factors to reduce your busyness at work and increase your leisure time.  You have even spoken to your manager about it.  Somehow things should be different, but you are still finding yourself saying “I’m too busy”. 

You may not wish to hear this, but leisure can still be part of busyness.

Even if you increase the time available for leisure, you can still hold on to the busyness status symbol and become stressed about managing your leisure time.

Perhaps you need to pause and ask yourself: What’s really Behind “I’m Busy”?

🏀 Are you playing defence? (Reacting to everything instead of setting priorities.)

🏉 Are you spreading yourself too thin? (Trying to be everywhere at once, in every meeting, at every sports game, no delegating, like a midfielder who refuses to pass the ball.)

🎾 Are you avoiding something? (Using busy as a smokescreen for procrastination, avoiding making a decision or not wanting to have a tough conversation.)

🏋️ Are you overdoing it? (Mistaking effort for effectiveness—more hours ≠ better results.)

🚲 Is it lack of clarity? (Juggling too many things without clear priorities.)

⛳ Is it poor boundaries? (Saying yes to too much)

Let’s be honest: “busy” is often an excuse for not owning our choices.

Or are you still seeing busyness as a measure of success, a way of defining your identity or determining your importance?

And perhaps even more astonishing – have you found your answers to the questions to be the same or similar whether about work or leisure activities?

Changing the Measure of Success

What if you turned it around?

Rather than measuring success by your lack of time, what if you started to measure success via the quality time you dedicate to what is of most value to you and those that are important to you – all key areas of your life, including work and leisure.

I’ll admit it, I didn’t think it was possible to be an un-busy adult professional–then I ran a life experiment.  I stepped out of full-time corporate life and went to live in Italy for a couple of years.

Each morning, my husband and I went for a run followed by a trip to a bar for a coffee and pastry.

I spent time buying fresh ingredients and cooking food from scratch.  I dedicated specific hours of the day and days of the week to my work.  I wrote a book and worked with a publisher to have it released.  I volunteered my time to coach, mentor and support people in various aspects of their lives.

Sunshine, sweat, great food, rewarding work, quality time with people were all important to me, yet were getting pushed out of my daily life pre-experiment.

So what changed? I kept asking myself, “Where did all this time come from? How is this possible?”

It wasn’t completely clear to me what forces were at work until I returned from living abroad.  I began reaching out to people back in Australia. One by one, the responses were nearly identical: “So great to have you back, can’t wait to catch up, just not sure when–things are crazy here!” Ah, the busy life. It’s an epidemic.

Workaholics who don’t create balance are less productive at work and those of us who over-commit socially end up feeling like we haven’t actually connected meaningfully with anyone. Lose-lose.

And then it occurred to me: That was often me just a couple of years ago. Would I automatically slip back into the culture of busyness? And could it even be resisted?

Eliminating busyness may seem like an elusive dream– similar to taking control of the ever-growing inbox. My recent journey helped me take a long look in the mirror and ask, “Am I one of those Busy People?” For me, the answer was yes, I was. And I didn’t like it. It didn’t make me happy. And while I have no doubt that there will be weeks and months where I will be super busy again that doesn’t mean making that my default mode of operating.

And what about you? Are you one of those Busy People? Do you enjoy wearing the label?  Does it make you happy? And if not, are you ready to commit to changing it? Are you ready to take the anti-busyness pledge and allow yourself to feel the difference? What small changes can you implement to un-busy yourself each day?

Final Thoughts: Stop Running in Circles, Start Winning

Imagine a coach asking a top athlete about their training strategy, and they answer:

“Oh, I don’t really have one. I just run around and stay as busy as possible.”

Sounds ridiculous, right? That’s because elite athletes don’t train harder—they train smarter.

Yet, many of us treat busyness as a badge of honour, filling every available minute with tasks, meetings, and back-to-back Zoom calls – confusing motion with progress.  Our social calendars are full of weekends away, dinner engagements and gym workouts – our busyness extends into our so-called leisure time.

The best athletes don’t just train harder; they train with purpose.

“Busy” isn’t the problem.

It’s about how we choose to spend our time, energy, and resources.

So next time you catch yourself saying, “I’m busy,” stop and ask:

Am I just running in circles, or am I actually winning the game?

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*The 7Ps – To be intentional about what you choose to do and intentional about actually doing it”

Key to getting out of the busyness cycle it being clear about what is important to you and those around you – in this model, that it termed as your Passion.  Passion forms the basis for prioritising and tackling those things that are important and eliminating those that are less so.

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*Quote of the Month*

“A busy life is not a symbol of status. It’s a symptom of trying to do too much for too many people,”

– Adam Grant

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*Kicking Out The Bucket List*

For further information or to order the book directly (signed copies available)

It is also available from Amazon, Kobo, Booktopia, Barnes & Noble and other leading book retailers.

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I’d love to hear your stories of where you have been able to eliminate busy from your life and the impact it has had on both your productivity and well-being.

If you would like some help in actioning the un-busyness pledge, please contact me.

Glenda

About The Author

Glenda Mitchell

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