The "Work" Trap

I notice that many of the commentaries misunderstood both the title and content. It's about "work", not work. He's not speaking to extremely occupied people. Quite converse.

The trap here is that procrasinating makes you fail to deliver, guilt stops you from doing anything else (hence, "busy"), and not doing anything else makes you unproductive. Rinse and repeat until you get to the state where no one even bothers anymore to call you to take you out.

That being said, I have a breaking bug in my live web app. I'm going to go out now and take a sloooow macchiato with complimentary homemade croissant. And then I will come back and fix the bug. If anyone calls meanwhile, I'll say I'm not busy.

Statements about time to do things are statements about priorities. You have time to do lots of things, only you have to give up other things. Someone who says they don't have time for something important doesn't understand their priorities.

People who know their priorities work on them in order and get them done because you aren't distracted by less important things.

People who don't know their priorities get distracted by less important things and don't finish important things.

If you want to avoid busy-work, know your priorities.

not suggesting the OP lifted the idea or title, but this Times article from June is a good read on the same subject.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-tra...

It's the classic battle of urgent vs. important. It's easy to fall into a trap by always focusing on the most seemingly "urgent" task at hand while neglecting things that are actually more important. Responding to emails, fixing bugs, or hiring a new developer might seem urgent, but what longer-term goals end up suffering? Things like building company culture, fostering business relationships, or developing long term strategy are hardly urgent, but extremely important things that often get neglected when we fall victim to the day-to-day tyranny of urgency.

This isn't really about work, but rather procrastination. But you don't actually have to have work to be "to busy" to do whatever. I once rented a room in a house where the landlady was divorced and living off of alimony (this was a few years ago). She didn't have any hard demands on her time (like employment), but whenever she didn't want to do something she would tell other people she didn't have time. Funny thing was I think she actually believed it.

I understand where the author is coming from and where he wants to take us to.

But these things are not as black and white as people show them to be. When you chose something over the other, you are just making a trade off. You need to be happy with that trade off or you should not make it. If you feel you will be happy taking hours off and doing something else, then you should be happy for that and not worry about lost money you could have otherwise make if you had worked instead.

Now this is OK for a day or two. If you do this for years, you will lose substantial money compared to your peers. Enough to make that distinction apparent. It will show in everything. The house you live, the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the vacations you take, the food you eat, your hobbies, your lifestyle. There will hardly be anything in your life which won't be affected by this. You should be happy with all this.

Don't go down to a state where you have to tell yourself and people around- 'Even I could have been like the person Y had I worked for X more extra hours, I would have everything he has'

It is called - get out and enjoy life now and then. As someone who is often "busy due to work", it is easy to ignore the fact that you have reached the point of diminishing returns in a given day. Going out, letting your mind wander on to other subjects and just having fun add to life more than just the "hey, I am being social".

Life is certainly more than work, even when we love what we do.

It seems he is saying to take some time to work on your career instead of just focussing on your job all the time. Good advice.

its called Workaholism. the workaholic sabotages to make work because his ultimate fear is not having enough work. google "Chained to the Desk" book on amazon and read it on kindle. also google my post "Hero - Martyr Cycle" or "Kent Beck: Ease At Work (Part 1 of 7)". also read "4 Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris to learn how to really get shit done and go play. also "Rework" and "Getting Real" by 37Signals.

On the other side of things, how do you convince someone who is in this trap to get off their butt and go (with you or not) do something worthwhile?

I can very much relate to that way of working. I found that the best way to avoid falling into this trap, is to start your day with an activity that you enjoy doing, outside. sports are perfect, like going for a bicycle round in the morning. adding the relaxing effects of the released endorphines should give you a great start into the day.

Personally, I'd recommend working on whatever you're interested in and best at. Just hope for the best.

You say "work," I say learn. Artistole's social animal still needs time and space to learn, change, improve. I think "job" is more appropriate. To the comments below, quoting Tim Ferris when he doesn't work 4 hours a week is like quoting Romney about paying taxes.

"Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action." -- Tim Ferris

(this blogpost reminded me of this quote)