Being ‘Too Busy’ Means Your Personal Strategy Sucks | Hacker News Reader

Being ‘Too Busy’ Means Your Personal Strategy Sucks

rogermartin.medium.com

35 pointskiyanwang30 comments

This essay really hits me wrong. Perhaps its because I am a human and not simply a "unit of production". Also the "personal playing to win strategy" immediately reminds me of the parody program "refuse to lose" from the film "Little Miss Sunshine".

I am a 58 year-old man with a family. Today I'm giving the eulogy at my Uncle's memorial. In the last weeks of his life I was one of his principal care givers in home hospice. I've been helping my daughter through one of the most challenging times of her life. My wife just broke her wrist and severely injured her back and had trauma surgery two days ago. The FBI keeps showing up at my door looking for an interview (my brother is a fugitive on the most wanted list). In my view, part of being a man is supporting those around you with strength and love. I haven't seen Barbie or Oppenheimer, I've had to temporarily set aside my FAA training for work. I've been too busy supporting my family during a challenging time. I'm at full capacity.

One thing I've refused to stop doing is working out - so I get up at 5:30 to make sure I can have the time to do so. This is part of my personal care routine that means the most for my mental health as well as my physical health.

Its entirely possible my personal strategy sucks. However I think this essay sucks.

I think the essay applies mainly to those in upper management positions... it is far from helpful for those involved in the nitty-gritty of daily life who aren't hired into a position where they have basically a team of employees under their jurisdiction.

The one principle that I did pick up is "look at your current use of time, and figure out what activities don't contribute to achieving your goals, and find ways to reduce the amount of time you spend on them."

Unfortunately I'm not sure I'd be able to offload things like earning an income or managing the kids, which are the two things that soak up about 95% of my waking hours!

> Unfortunately I'm not sure I'd be able to offload things like earning an income or managing the kids, which are the two things that soak up about 95% of my waking hours!

No excuses. Live in the wilderness. Use children as bait to catch animals to eat. No income needed. No kids to care for. Problem solved.

I think you’re correct. It still hits me wrong. Work is life for only specific subgroup of workers including upper management.

The tone of the entire essay is ripe for parody.

I’m not even sure this essay is good for those folks. My spouse regularly spends time with managers and executives at their company, and since the pandemic started it’s become clear that it’s pretty much the same for them.

I also offer that it’s entirely acceptable that “I don’t have time” means “there’s no time”, and sometimes it means “I’m not going to take the time”.

Philosophy questions apart (like the article), for most normal people when you encounter the phrase "I'm too busy" 9 out of 10 times it just means "I don't want to do whatever you are proposing but don't want to tell you that to your face". It could be only half a lie though, like they could be busy in general and the proposal you gave them is in their "relax time" so they are too busy actually relaxing to do it. Or they could have all the time in the world and still say that.

This so much. I think we all have a limited time available for what we want to do in life, so when someone asks me to do some specific thing-- I really AM too busy. I have other priorities already allocated...

Or we lack the energy/motivation to add more to our life.

Yeah, this exactly. I've moved away from describing things as "too busy" and say something like "out of capacity." I don't love the term capacity, but it's the best I have. It's some combo of time, energy, and if I feel like adding more to my plate. That feels closer to accurate for what I'm trying to explain.

There are plenty of times where I have actual free minutes, like writing this post, but that doesn't really mean I've got capacity to learn something new or do some new adventure.

Maybe some can fill every minute of their day with the next thing, but it's not for me. Seems like a losing strategy long term!

Note that my comment doesn't really seem to relate to the article itself. I'm not really sure what the article is talking about lol. Corporate/executive speak stuff I guess?

I don't really get what this article is trying to say...

It seems to kind of skip over what they mean by "too busy". Are they arguing that being too occupied to focus on another equally important task is a personal problem (which is obviously a ridiculous idea), or are they talking about people who just don't want to do something and thus pass it off as being too busy? Or is it about someone who's occupied with a task they think is more important?

Plus, all the buzzwords at the start made me think I was about to be sold a scammy self improvement course by a crypto-influencer.

I'll summarize it for you:

'I'm the bomb! Just awesome. Here's the evidence. If you are a CEO looking to improve your time management and delegation skills, you can throw lots of money at me and I can coach you into being almost as good as me.

This article took 1/24th days of my time. B-)'

My takeaway from the article was that "too busy" really means "spending too much time on things that don't actually matter." Or perhaps more concretely, being too inefficient with your time.

"I'm busy" is the standard lie because "I don't want to spend time with you" is not socially acceptable. Not because i dislike the other person, but because i'd rather have time for myself.

Yeah, I used to take pride in always being willing to help people out with programming, but over time I've ended up saying "I'm too busy" more and more often.

To be honest, most of the time, I'm not busy. I just don't have the energy to constantly be a tutoring service.

You don't have time to exercise or practice piano or whatever. You make time.

So "I'm too busy to do that" means "I don't choose to make time for that.*=

This is how I’ve come to use that term mostly.

The various reserves of intellectual, technical, social, and other pools of energy reserves are all allocated elsewhere. I’m not going to make time for everyone and everything ever.

More precisely, "What you're asking is not worth what I'd have to give up."

Nothing wrong with that.

What compels someone to write this kind of banal pontification? More importantly, what compels someone to read it and then suggest it to others?

Probably the same thing that prompted this very comment.

if i walk by a pile of shit in my neighborhood and make a comment on it, i'm not the same as the person that took/excreted the shit in my neighborhood.

No, but the issue is assuming anyone wants to hear what you think about it. The pile of shit in the authors life are people who claim to be too busy. He's just saying he doesn't like it.

So you're the same.

> to hear what you think about it

my comment had two sentences, both ending with question marks. did you know that sentences that end in question marks aren't statements (of fact or opinion)?

Do you intend to give the air of smug self importance? It's tacky.

I would expect someone so clearly intelligent to know a rhetorical question when they use it.

> Do you intend to give the air of smug self importance? It's tacky.

there's a very weird, counterintuitive, psychological phenomenon on display here. somehow, in your opinion, the article itself doesn't cross the threshold into "smug self-importance" even though there's a strong call to action/categorical imperative (espoused/propounded) in the article. on the otherhand, me suggesting that that's the case, is smug self-importance. there's a word (maybe several) for this phenomenon: hypocrisy.

Thatsthepoint.jpg

...

Try to be less condescending. It serves no purpose other than broadcasting ignorance. Have a good one.

A lot of this is just offloading to others and seems like fair advice for CEOs. But most people only have themselves as a labourer.

I don't necessarily disagree. However, I do think that people spend a lot of time on things that don't actually matter that much in the grand scheme.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be doing tickets that have been assigned to them or whatever, but I am saying that if people took 30 minutes to step back and look at the big picture objectives more often - or if their managers spent more time clearly communicating such things - they'd stop wasting a lot of time on things that seem important in the very myopic context of the task they just completed.

I am too busy to read TFA where its author can't be bothered to fix obvious typos in his opening infographic. Clearly a winning strategy.

Sometimes I mentally substitute the word “busy” with “lazy”. Am I actually too busy to do something useful, or am I just too lazy?

I think that’s a good question to ask, but maybe best asked alongside other questions since the answer is not likely a binary choice between busy/lazy:

- Am I overextended?

- Is it something I value?

- Is it a thing that I “want to want” or know I’ll enjoy once I start doing it?

- Is it an unreasonable expectation set by the less ideal aspects of society?

Laziness is a possibility, but just one of many.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com