“I’m really busy” — That’s No Accident
It’s when you’re too busy to pay attention to yourself, that you need to do so
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“Thanks for taking the time, Narayan,” said Rajan (name disguised).
“I’m having a hard time working out what I should do, and P suggested I talk to you.” Rajan was in his late fifties, and about to retire as the head of a financial services company. We explored his options together.
“One obvious option would be for me to find Boards I could join,” said Rajan. “I have experience running financial services in different parts of the world and I could add value to a Board. I want to teach as well, and I was wondering if you could help me teach at INSEAD.”
As I listened to Rajan, I sensed anxiety about his next step but a lack of interest in exploring other options. I tried encouraging him to think more broadly – “do you even need to work?” I asked him. “Do you need the income?”
Rajan thought about it. “No,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate, made some good investments, so I’m secure – my whole family’s secure, even if I never work again. But I’ve got to do something,” Rajan said reasonably. “I’m too young to do nothing at all.”
But when it came to what he could do, he returned to his theme – could I help him get on Boards and teach. And so, to the best of my ability, I did.
I didn’t see Rajan for a while after that but couldn’t forget him. His unwillingness to consider the wide range of options available to him, niggled at me. Why would someone with his accomplishments, financial security, and luxury of choices – rush into action without considering all his options?
When confronted with hard to understand behavior, it helps me to assume that the behavior is “a feature, not a bug”. In other words, Rajan was not exploring his options by design, not accident. Why might that be? What did he worry might happen if he were to pause and reflect?
All of us, on occasion, avoid looking closely at ourselves too. We acknowledge the value of a pause to reflect on our thoughts and behavior yet find that we are too busy to pause. All too often we are incredibly, unceasingly, terrifyingly busy.
Might this universally prevalent busyness also be a feature not a bug? What might that mean?
First, our busyness can hurt us, sometimes severely. It causes our stress levels to go through the roof, damages our families, and triggers cardiac problems among many other outcomes – this is not a benign condition but a malignantly dangerous one.
Second, work may not be all that keeps us busy – leisure can keep us very busy too. Preparing to climb Kilimanjaro, training for an ultra-marathon, or just drinking with friends, have similar effects – they keep us busy and seem to deny us time to stop and reflect.
Finally – and this really is the clincher – “objective” reasons rarely explain busyness. Few people I meet face imminent job loss, yet many act as if they do. No one really needs to answer email on vacation. In a busy year at work, nobody must work even harder at leisure.
So, there must be some other purpose this busyness serves. It seems unlikely that a lack of time prevents us from reflecting upon ourselves. Rather, the reverse seems more probable – we keep ourselves busy so that we spend less time on ourselves.
Why might we do this?
We all have significant and negative thoughts and experiences that we avoid looking at. One executive avoided thinking about an “inappropriately stern” email from her boss. Another didn’t want to acknowledge the behavioral issues of one of his young children. Yet another didn’t want to think about her fraying relationship.
The things we avoid thinking about vary widely – avoidance, however, seems universal.
A previous note showed that we should pay attention to what we experience on the outside – events and stimuli – and on the inside – our thoughts and feelings. Another said that we should specifically seek out anything we might be avoiding. This note predicts that we will often find ourselves too busy to do either. Finding ourselves too busy to focus on ourselves further indicates that we will benefit greatly from doing so.
Practical steps:
Block twenty minutes in your calendar on three out of the next seven days, when you will be uninterrupted. Choose a time in the middle of the day when your devices can remind you of your task.
On each of your chosen three days, spend the first fifteen minutes doing the exercise described here – go through all the people in your life and thoughts you might be avoiding about them. In the last five minutes, do the leaves on a stream exercise to defuse any painful thoughts you uncover.
Then, reflect on your experience of doing the exercise. What thoughts were you avoiding? What aspect of “busyness” helped you avoid them? What happened when you looked at/ defused your unpleasant thoughts? In the future, what kinds of busyness will tell you that you are avoiding something?
Rajan and I eventually worked together again. When he did the preceding exercises, he found that he worried about how he would appear to his friends if he wasn’t on the Board of a major company (or did not teach at a prestigious business school) after retiring. Reflection helped him discover that he didn’t care.
He now sits on the Board of an NGO that promotes financial literacy for poor women in the region; he mentors students at a local college who aspire to work in finance; and, until Covid, traveled to visit his children.
