Now, if we were one of those leadership podcasts, we’d go down the rabbit hole of how, as a senior leader in a team, you need more time to sit and think, so you can plan the next year’s growth strategy or whatever.
But you’re you and I’m me and ain’t neither of us blocking off our calendar for “deep ideation”, so is there anything this 94 year-old business mogul can teach us? Well yeah, I mean, he kinda said the most important thing already.
But this is a Undo, and you deserve more than a glib 30-second soundbite. So, how can we be a bit less busy, so that when we’re older, our lasting memories are of something other than our desktop wallpaper?
Meet Dr Rachel Morris
Rachel is the host of the You Are Not a Frog podcast, a former GP who now helps professionals in high stakes, high stress jobs like doctors beat burnout and work happier.
And she knows from busy. In her own words:
My lovely son, he’s in the middle of A-levels at the moment. Bless him. But it means he’s around in the house during the day. And just two days ago, so this just shows how much I need to learn to practice what I preach.
Two days ago, I had back-to-back meetings. Literally from 9.30, I started one in the car. I made sure I got to my tennis lesson, so I got my self-care. But as of driving home, it was on a hands-free call. And then I literally had back-to-back meetings that overran until 5 o’clock that day. purely my own fault. But so I’d had lunch and I’d left all my stuff out after lunch because no one had emptied the dishwasher and there was loads of stuff out.
And he hasn’t let me forget it. He’s like, well, whenever I say to him, can you just empty the dishwasher for me? He goes, well, mom, you let all your lunch stuff out on Tuesday. I said, yeah, but I was back to back all day. I just had all these meetings. He went, mom, who’s in charge of your diary? I’m an 18 year old.
So many of us seem to glorify busy, and wear it as a badge of honour. How many times have you asked someone if they’re busy, and expected them to answer “yeah, really busy” like it’s a good thing?
One of our heroes from previous episodes, Merlin Mann, makes a distinction between busy and time-constrained which is pretty smart, but as Rachel pointed out here, often we’re not busy per se, we’re just over-scheduled.
But where does this fetishisation of busy come from and, more importantly, how can we rid ourselves of it?
There’s nothing more a New Yorker loves than New York. They’ll tell you it’s the greatest city in the world, and ol’ blue eyes will of course tell you if you can’t make it there, you’re buggered.
According to a psychological study from 2013, the east cost of the States is characterised by high neuroticism, hustle culture, and a tight coupling of work to personal worth. There, what you do is a proxy for who you are.
Of course these are generalisations and I’m painting with a very broad brush, but if you want to check out the study, you’ll find it on the website, at undo.fm/buffett (that’s Buffett with a T; otherwise it’d be “buffet”).
As we travel over to the west coast, work is more a reflection of your personal values and your creativity. There it’s more about fitting work into your life, rather than letting life fill the spaces in-between shifts.
Speaking of, I don’t know how many people filled in this study but I doubt there were many waiters or supermarket shelf-stackers taking one of their 15-minute breaks to fill in a survey.
I suspect cultures that have a strong tall-poppy vibe – much like the UK – are more heads-down, get-on-with-it, in their thinking. Tall poppy syndrome, if you’re unfamiliar, is the idea that you don’t want to raise your head too high above the parapet, lest someone shoot it off. Australia, New Zealand, and the UK have it pretty bad… whereas in Ireland, they call it “having notions”.
So whether you cleave to the idea of the humble grafter, the no-nonsense skilled craftsperson, or the driven go-getting dreamer, many of us have a tendency to glorify not just work, but the easiest-to-measure unit of that work: your busyness. Here’s Rachel again:
But also if someone says they’re busy, then actually the response should be, oh, no. Do you need some help managing your diary? And that’s why trying to say over scheduled because it puts the onus on me…
And isn’t that the tricky part? Not giving in to the narrative that you’re a slave to the calendar?
Now, one of the things Rachel talks about in her podcast – which I may have stolen for episode one – is that you can essentially say no to anything. And before you throw your device into the sea in rage at my unchecked privilege, we’re not saying there won’t be consequences if you say no to something… you’ve just got to figure out if those are consequences you can bear.
As someone occupying a space on the spectrum but awaiting the paperwork, I’m pretty good at saying no, especially to people who aren’t used to it. It’s quite fun to watch a private-school former RAF pilot go all red in the face because you refused to do something that would likely result in a civil case being brought against him… that’s a story for another time.
It’s less fun to tell a struggling artist you can’t help on their project because you’re overcommitted yourself.
Saying yes is easy, because we’re pack animals and it temporarily raises our status within the pack. But at some point, you’re going to end up saying yes to too many things, you’re going to drop a ball (because you’re human), and someone’s going to be disappointed, and likely a lot more disappointed than they would’ve been if you’d said no from the jump.
To quote Mr Warren Buffett:
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
Now, I’m as likely to take advice from a billionaire as I am to separate a vegan from his lunch. That’s not ‘cos I’m a vegan hater; it’s just that I was at a conference last week and I know from my friends how annoying it is when meat eaters nick vegetarian people’s lunches. If you think that cheese and bean burrito is so nice why don’t you swear off beef burgers, Jason?
Anyway, look. What I’m saying is, I’m not out here advocating for the Buffets or the Bezoses of the world. I think they have as much to teach us about living real lives as career politicians. Buuuuuuut, that doesn’t invalidate some of the things they say.
We’ve already looked at our attitudes to work and our tendency to fetishise or glorify what we view as “hard work”. And as Rachel says, it can go deeper than work alone.
We don’t just glorify busy. We glorify self-sacrifice. And I think this is a really big problem, and particularly in the caring professions as well. But we see it everywhere. Parents that are caring at home, particularly mums have to sacrifice them for their themselves, for their children. Doctors, nurses sacrifice themselves for patient care.
And we love it in our society. We love these self-sacrificial people… Let’s bang some pots but not give anyone a pay rise and then abuse them when we can’t get appointments ‘cause they’re so overworked.
And where does it get you? That’s my question. All this worry about work, about how it connects with who you are or what it says about you…
Now, I’m not saying not to worry about putting food on the table. But we don’t live in a system where the people best suited to do a particular job get to do it, or where the job uses every part of your purpose as a human being.
So the job can just be the job. As long as you’ve got someone to come home to or something to give; something that, to once again quote another billionaire – albeit a dead one – something that can “make a dent in the universe”.
Hopefully you’re hearing this of your own free will, not because you’re in the back seat of your friends’ car and one of them just said “do you mind if I put on a podcast?”
Assuming you’re here on purpose, you’re probably here and have stuck around because there is something you want to do outside of work. It might not be a big thing; it might not be something that changes the fundamental fabric of spacetime, but maybe something someone will look back on and remember in a few years.
And I’m at a crossroads with this, so I’m going to make a pretty shitty guide. This is episode 20 and yet there are 21 full episodes on the Undo feed. That’s ‘cos last week I put out something different, as I was at a memorial service for someone who did a lot for his local community, and who coincidentally enough, was an early adopter of podcasting in the UK.
I can tell you that you shouldn’t be pressured, that you shouldn’t give in to hustle culture and try and make use of every grain of sand that falls through the hour glass. I can tell you to go at your own pace, that you’re young and you’ve got time.
But I can also tell you that sudden, unexpected things happen. God farts and far off in the distance someone’s world collapses.
So you know what? Maybe “busy” isn’t the problem. Maybe stretching yourself a little is OK. It’s who you do it for that’s the question.
If you’re knackered after a full day of work, you’re scraping yourself thin to make someone else richer. But if you’re conscious about spending your time and making the odd sacrifice to make your life a little better, that’s a different thing entirely.
And believe me I know there are plenty of us who don’t have that luxury… who have to sweat it at work and come home and sweat it again, looking after kids that don’t appreciate them or elderly parents who don’t fully remember them.
This is nuanced, and it’s not always fun, which is why this podcast is what it is – a meandering journey rather than a set of “actionable takeaways”.
But if you are in a situation where you’re overworked both at the office and at home, there is always some form of help available, however small. It might mean going out of your comfort zone and asking for it; it might mean spending a bit of money. It also might just mean speaking to someone and at least unburdening yourself just a little bit.
And, listen, if life’s going pretty great for you right now, that’s amazing; keep doing what you’re doing. Just watch out for anyone who might need a boost. Sorry to get all preachy on you, but how else am I supposed to get more one-star reviews for this podcast?
So, hustle. The thing about these billionaires, right, is they don’t half seem to go on about hard work. The intergalactic time travelling slug wearing a skin suit called Elon Musk talks about putting in 80 to 100 hour weeks, as if merely grinding on something is the answer.
Thing is, you can do dead lifts and crunches at the gym all day, but if your form’s wrong, you won’t see any difference; you’ll just spend time in the gym, probably hating it, going home and doing it all again tomorrow.
But if you’re working the right muscles in the right way, the hard work starts to take effect. Take it from a guy who knows. I’ve cancelled more gym memberships than I’ve had hot dinners, and my doctor says if I have any more I’ll need to start buying clothes at the Big ‘n Wide.
And the best way to know if your form is off is to ask for help. Some types of grind lead to gradually better results… we call this practice. We saw in episode 3 how putting in the hours pays off, even – or especially – when it’s difficult or boring.
But some kinds of grind never seem to yield positive results, no matter how long you stick at them. It’s all well and good putting on a monthly comedy night at your local pub and flyering for it every chance you get, but if you’re flyering the wrong houses or there’s a misprint with the web address, you’ll never see results.
When we talked about Atomic Habits a few weeks back, we looked at how most of us are not geared up for long-term thinking; that we seek immediate gratification and we can easily lose focus if we don’t see the number we want to see go up.
And maybe that’s what separates the Buffets of the world from us; it’s their ability to think long-term, to sacrifice short-term comfort for long-term success.
So what do we do with all of this? Honestly, it’s to drop all the meta shit that surrounds it. All the guilt, all the shame, all the shoulds, and all the judgement, and maybe even what the Buddhists call the attachment. Here’s Rachel, recounting the story of one of her guests.
She got to a point where she was really burnt out and had to go off sick. And her internal values were, I am the strong one. I’m always there for people and I help people. So when she had to say she was going off sick, that went directly against her internal values of I’m strong, I help people and I don’t inconvenience other people. ‘Cause she knew this was gonna cause problems for other people.
And then she didn’t just feel guilty – ‘cause a lot of us can feel guilty about stuff – she felt shame on all sorts of levels. Yeah, the why can’t I cope? I’m not good enough, but I’m not helping people. I’m not being selfless anymore. And frankly, why would we ever do anything that causes us shame? We’ll do anything to avoid shame. And so even saying to someone, I can’t get to that task on the to-do list that you’ve asked me to do today, that’s the mini shame there because it means, well I’m not, I’m not good enough. I haven’t got everything done.
And it’s a short hop from “I’m not good enough” to “I’m not enough”.
So if you want my opinion, it’s this. Do busy if busy works for you. Even, do busy if there is no other option right now. But don’t do busy to make someone else’s life easier if that person wouldn’t do the same for you, and don’t attach yourself to the identity of being busy or productive or lazy or distractable.
Keep an eye on yourself, and if you can, ask for someone else to keep an eye on you too. Check in with yourself every now and again to make sure you’re running smoothly, and try your best to achieve a balance between living a long life, doing work that matters, and regretting nothing.