An idea to help us escape 'the busy trap'

“I’m so busy” is the plea of most workers.

That “plea”, writer Tim Kreider says in the New York Time arises when people find they have fallen into what he calls “the busy trap”.

Tim Kreider's book,
 'We Learn Nothing'.

Kreider says that those in that “trap” is “almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence”.

Writing in the “Opinionator” in a story headed: “The ‘busy’ trap”, Kreider said that almost everyone he knows is busy.

The idea of busy is just that, an idea, and if people imagine they are busy then they are busy – it illustrates the power of ideas.

Working eight hours a day, and frequently longer, is simply an idea an idea that has perverted the human psyche and the four-hour day is just that, an idea; an idea with the power to erode the idea of ‘busy’.

Tim Kreider is the author of “We Learn Nothing.”