The 'Busy' Trap

• If you live in America in the 21st century you've probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are.
• We count the ways you've been told how busy you are, and the stock response is a kind of congratulation: "That's a good problem to have."
• It's almost always people whose busyness is purely self-imposed.
• They're busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety because they're addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously, your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, and in-demand every hour of the day.

It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.