Source: Unsplash/Robert Bye
In my 2019 book, The Power of Human, I recount an anecdote about a man who immigrated to the United States and soon came to believe that the word “busy” meant “good” because when he asked people, “How are you doing?” they often responded, “Busy.”
Nora Rosendahl, the chief operating officer of the performance coaching firm Hintsa, discovered the same thing when she conducted a small social experiment by documenting answers to the question “How are you?” over the course of a week. By her count, nearly eight out of 10 people said, “Busy.”
Academic research suggests that our days are becoming increasingly jam-packed. One analysis of holiday letters indicates that references to “crazy schedules” have risen dramatically since the 1960s, for example. And an analysis of Gallup data by Harvard Business School’s Ashley Whillans found that the percentage of employed Americans reporting that they “never had enough time” rose from 70% in 2011 to 80% in 2018.
The reasons for the rise in “time poverty” (as social scientists have termed it) are numerous and nuanced, but corporate cultures that value busyness are at least partially to blame — and in theory should also be easy to correct. Put simply, busyness has become a status symbol. Research led by the Columbia marketing professor Silvia Bellezza shows that people perceive others who are busy — and who use products indicating they’re busy (like a Bluetooth headset for multitasking) — to be important and impressive.
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