How busyness leads to bad decisions

Email is the perfect addictive slot machine of our attention.

Our brain craves something new and likes being interrupted with some notification rather than focusing on one task continuously.

Email is pseudo work masquerading as real work and is not productive if handled all the time.

People love being busy and cannot sit idle. A study found people preferred giving themselves electric shocks rather than sitting idly all day.

Smoking, for example, is habit-forming due to the same reason, having something to do, instead of being idle.

People who are checking their emails on a pre-set schedule are less stressed out than people in front of the inbox the whole day, replying to emails as they come, eventually increasing their incoming mails and avoiding real productive work.

A scarcity mindset, the feeling that we have less time, is the same as having less money.

We don't have space, the peace or the mental clarity to do what's right or important, so we end up doing what's urgent and stay trapped in the tunnel.

If we plan our limited time, taking care of focusing on productive work, rather than doing unproductive 'busy' work all the time, we end up being more accurate, and careful, leading to growth and real benefits of work.