Too Busy ?

How often have you heard this lately:

“I’d love to help out but I’m Too Busy right now”

Yeah right! But everybody seems to be saying this these days. And their net output does not seem to have increased. And they don’t seem to be experiencing a proportional level of achievement from it. So what does this oft heard statement actually mean?

How busy are you really then? You are probably experiencing a mix of the following:

1. Doing things useful to society
2. Doing things useful to yourself
3. Doing things that are neither 1 or 2 above

Given output is not incrementing exponentially it would seem the latter statement forms the vast majority of this “busyness”. And we’re burning a heck of a lot of fossil fuels doing it. About 95% of the stuff we do and buy has a carbon footprint. If most of it is used within idling activities, what does this say about our society and what impact does it have on our quality of life as individuals.

Here are some of the nastier culprits depleting our quality of life:

Laptop Leisure

• Taking laptop to bed with you
• Watching TV while “finishing” the days work
• Sunday night binge – preparing for tomorrow morning
• Answering work calls on holiday. Don’t you think the world will continue without you

The Email Plague - “I have a 1000 emails to do since the weekend”

• Why? What makes them so important
• They are all imporatant ergo, none of them are
  
• None are important, so they are all SPAM
• Somewhere in between, so you wasted a lot of time figuring that out
  
• Forgotten how to talk to people? If they are really important , go see them, pick up the phone

At Work Politics

• Competition for pay rises and even keeping your job
• AKA back protection or Vertical Teamwork
• Much time is spent being seen to do the right thing
• Brown Nosing the boss
• Maximise time spent travelling to meetings that don’t need you
  

Status Anxiety or Pseudo Quality of Life

• Lots of time spent earning more money to buy more stuff to throw away
• Throwing away gives you status among peers
• The race to keep up with the latest gadgets, trends, fashions
• Cattle Class Holidays as far away as possible. Why suffer? It’s a holiday isn’t it
  

So what is the resulting behaviour? People will do the things that are most likely to keep them in their job and make them feel like they have achieved something (even if they have not) And also things that will make them look better than their peers and even pay lip service to Quality of Life factors.

Where does this leave us. Quality of Life and a selfless pursuit of a better society are secondary to most individuals. See Tragedy of the Commons for more on this. The challenge of raising individuals’ consciousness to the needs of future society is difficult. We don’t seem to care about other people enough essentially...or are denying it is a problem because its so difficult and uncomfortable to think about.

How can this consciousness be raised and what’s in it for the individual. And will it need a very hard landing to trigger a change. Such as the climate is threatening to do.