Humour

Busy-ness as unusual

T A Balasubramanian writes about Busy Demon, an invisible epidemic that makes its victims too busy to notice how busy they are

It is time to revisit Bobo Jitter, the ever-wearied CIO at Bazooka Company, as he drops in for another session with Dr Don Jong. Referred to by his fans as The Oddfather, Dr Jong has a unique and unwavering technique for deciphering the never-ending conundrums of technology’s unpredictable frontiers.

“You seem on edge, Bobo. Put your feet up and relax. What seems to be the, ah, provocation that makes you wring your hands with such a doleful expression?”

“I am thinking right now of the work I have left over from last week—the people I have not called, the jobs that I have not finished, the mail I have not answered. I have become too preoccupied with things left undone in the past, Doc. I feel like a monkey chasing his own tail sometimes.”

“User requests pending, suppliers calling for their dues, and so on … your work is always in progress, eh? But that is only the signature of a busy CIO, my boy.”

“Busy? I think I have reached a breaking point, Doc.”

“And why do you think so? There’s nothing wrong with keeping busy when there is much to be done—plenty of people thrive on a sense of purpose and accomplishment, eh?”

“That is when you imagine a normal work life. Let me tell you what I mean, Doc, by citing an incident that made me wonder if I was losing the battle. I was waiting on the ground floor for the elevator to come down eight floors, and I found myself screaming at the door, requesting it to open faster, while punching the button furiously.”

“Oh, so it was a busy work day, and you were too impatient?”

“No. It was a peaceful holiday, and I was planning on going up to the 8th floor for a leisurely lunch.”

“Hmm, that is serious. I was recently at a seminar where the discussion was about the nature of today’s hectic work life. According to my dear friend and fellow-psychiatrist, Dr Doolittle, being busy has become a kind of status symbol, a real reversal of the leisure-class philosophy.”

“Status symbol? Come on, Doc, your friend has no idea of what I went through with the elevator button.”

“Dr Doolittle should know—he had a similar experience. He tells me that he got violently angry with a slow moving luggage conveyor at the airport while on a vacation, and actually kicked the offending machine.”

“So was he taken away by the authorities for strange behaviour?”

“Fortunately, no. He finally calmed himself, and timed how long his luggage actually took—all of 10 minutes. He tells me,

wonderingly—‘What a fool I had become—a man in a tearing hurry even when I had no need to hurry.’  He realized then that he was too busy to notice that he had turned into a victim of the Busy Demon.”

“And what exactly is the Busy Demon?”

“You could say that it is an invisible epidemic where the afflicted victims are too busy to notice that they are too busy. According to Dr Doolittle, apart from status seeking, there are over two dozen overlapping reasons why we all fall into the dark pit of being overly busy. Here are some of them. It is a kind of high. It is so easy with mobile phones and PDAs just a touch away. Also, we are afraid that we will be left out of the rat race if we slow down, even though we may detest the race, and the rats. Then again, we avoid dealing with the really major issues in life—global warming, ageing, health—by running from task to task like frenzied monkeys on a binge. But the slinkiest reason of all might be that we simply do not know how not to be busy.”

“Is that true for most people you meet, Doc?”

“Fortunately, Bobo, I am inclined to be lazy—perhaps it runs in my genes. Personally, I find myself getting annoyed by how busy my clients seem these days. I put aside the possibility that they are avoiding me, but it is galling to find that some are so busy that they barely have time to tell me they do not have time to talk—even on the phone. Every phone call I get, no matter how short, seems to be interrupted by several others in the background that my clients seem to make even as they talk to me.”

“So you think I am getting drawn under the spell of this Busy Demon, too?”

“It would seem so, Bobo. Getting angry with elevators while on a vacation is surely not a healthy way of life, eh? We are all exposed to—shall we say—what seem to be these time-sucking annoying accessories of modern life, and it may be a good idea to loosen up, sometimes, and tune out.”

“Well, Doc, it seems that you yourself have not been afflicted, eh?”

“I hope so, my boy. But—and I am almost embarrassed to admit this—I do have time to read long boring novels, watch a movie or play once in a while and have the occasional long, five-course lunch with a friend. In this new, ever-rushing world, however, I sometimes feel as if I am the strangest misfit of all.”

“As indeed you may be. No offence.”

“That’s fine, Bobo. However, if you observe the paradox, it is in part the desire for control over their lives that has led people to lose it.”

“What do you mean, Doc?”

“Imagine you are an iron pin surrounded by a hundred irresistible magnets. People are excessively busy because they allow themselves to respond to every magnet. Tracking too much data they never need. Processing too much information being thrown at them. Answering to too many people. Taking on too many tasks. And for what? They have convinced themselves that this is the way they must live in order to keep up and stay in control. But it is the magnets that have the control.”

“So keeping the Busy Demon away is not easy, eh? Well, Doc, magnets or no magnets, surely there are many who have no options? There are those who must work exhausting hours simply to survive. I cannot imagine what I would do if I were not a CIO, for example—I would probably get bored and stagnate.”

“Look at it this way, Bobo—you are lucky to be busy engaged in doing something that you enjoy, even if it happens to be stressful at times, eh? Most people would exchange being bored and stagnant for a little stress if they were doing something they loved. But we are not talking about these happy souls. We are speaking about those who choose to keep up a frenetic pace that seems largely self-imposed, even unnecessary. And surely, unenjoyable?”

“The stress-is-my-birthright folks?”

“Indeed. These are people who are overworked and overwhelmed, and yet they seem to like complaining endlessly about their predicament—and it is often with an undertone of boastfulness. The hidden message is that they are so busy because they are so important. If they sit idle for a minute, they imagine that perhaps the world might be in danger of rotating a little more slowly.”

“Maybe you are right, Doc. Not only are we CIOs constantly occupied, but we, as a class of technology junkies, are also getting notorious for not knowing how to be unoccupied—or, as you put it so neatly—knowing how to keep the Busy Demon away.”

“Voila, you comprehend! The trick is to notice the Demon. Then you have a fighting chance to lock him out with your mindful laziness. Let the world go by without you for a while.”