Stop polishing the busy badge
It's a trap, y'all
“He not busy being born is busy dying.” —Bob Dylan
The only thing a former coworker, let’s call him Chad,* seemed to do at the company was to suggest, coordinate, then cancel, meetings. Some people thought he was a marvel, even though several of us never saw him accomplish a thing.
Isn’t it astonishing how much time a person can spend running circles around meaningful progress, and even around actually living?
I’ve been musing about busyness, and what a trap it usually is. Somewhere in their 30s, most everyone from employees and entrepreneurs and stay-at-home moms start wearing it as a spiffy badge of honor: “I”m so busy.”
The lucky ones wake up. They take off the badge. Or at least they stop polishing it and catch themselves pointing at and talking about it. And start to ask things like: “What’s all this busyness for anyway?” and “Is some of this busyness actually a choice?”
Here's to your big dreams, the wonder of being human, and to really living. See you in the next one…
P.S. Maybe you’ve caught this already, but “Chad” is what I call every decent guy who’s given me not-totally-flattering material to write about. Like I’ve said before, I’m not in the business of hurting feelings…
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