As someone who works a 40 hr/week job and a 20 hr/week job, (and the extra hours associated with learning various things that apply to each) while also having 3 kids, sometimes people are actually busy.
I coach little league, too.
I coach little league, too.
Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed ...
Working two jobs and rearing three kids is actually busy. Coaching little league and noodling about on HN, on the other hand, is self-imposed.
If you are working two part-time jobs, you're doing just as much work as a full-timer but not nearly as much pay and certainly not as much in benefits (healthcare, time off, stable work schedule, etc.) that could allow you to USE what leisure you have.
edit. the guy below me/above me said it before me.
Exactly. And I would add that part of the point posed by the article is that we seem to be overly busy, given whatever life objectives/circumstances we have. So, given that a person choses to have, say, a job and 2 kids, then they are busier on average than in times past.
So, the question isn't whether an individual person can choose to be less busy. The question is why do we tend to be busier than ever on average, when we should theoretically have more leisure time.