Why are we so damn busy?

I'm so glad I had that extra 6 minutes...

Recently I was meeting with a colleague and due to disruption in tubes and trains, I was running exactly 6 minutes late, according to Citymapper. So being the diligent meeting attendees that I am, I sent a WhatsApp message to my colleague to let them know I will be six minutes late. When I arrived at the coffee shop, more like five minutes late, as I always tend to walk slightly faster than the predicted time of arrival, my colleague wasn't there. However, at six minutes past our time on the nose, my colleague turned up and said to me. "I'm so glad you messaged me. I managed to get six more minutes of work done.”

Look I get it. First of all kudos, clearly a very efficient manager and that six minutes of work might have meant leaving work on time. Plus they had taken time out to meet with me. However I'm also aware from my own observations over the last 26 years, just how busy we have all become. I used to think it was due to being in a busy environment and it was the challenging and demanding nature of that particular vertical I was working in. However, as I changed vertical or business the busyness persisted. 

The truth I came to realise, perhaps halfway through one of the first startups that I joined, is that the busyness was in me, it's always been in me. 

Call it a drive to succeed. Diligence and not wanting to let clients or colleagues down. The necessary pressures to win in business in competitive markets or perhaps a popular insecurity based on the need to be seen, to be recognised as a valued manager maintaining that image of the productive warrior. What drives busyness for you?

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How much of our time is spent in this state of busyness?

Well we can start by including most of our working life which has been widely cited as 90,000 hours or broadly a third of our lifetime. This stat is credited to Andrew Naber an industrial and organisational psychologist. You can see how this breaks down in a working day in this fascinating chart below from Our World in Data. Keep an eye on South Korea, for when we get to the next chart.

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Paid work represents the largest single block of our 24 hours outside of sleep. Nothing I hope we didn't all recognise but doesn't it just bring it home when you look at it in a graph like that. How important to our life is that time that we spend in paid work, how much of it is spend in that state of busyness?

Before we tackle that, I have to draw your attention to this fascinating chart from Our World in Data. Showing annual working hours versus GDP per capita from 1950 to 2019. Have a go at pulling the slider (Watch South Korea and Norway in particular) and look at some of the incredible journeys and efforts that countries and their workers have put into the development of their countries GDP. At such a high level it's very hard to comprehend the amount of individuals and the amount of busyness that each of those communities of workers took on to progress their countries development. What the numbers will never show is the millions of disagreements, the misunderstandings and fractured relationships that happened in those paid work hours across those years and how they impacted lives. That story remains quietly submerged by the numbers and data in this graph.

While it’s encouraging to see the annual working hours in particular in Europe that have broadly dropped as GDP has still increased, taking many countries to that well-balanced target area of less work and more efficient creation of GDP in the bottom right of the graph. In fact we have been reducing working hours steadily for 100’s of years although according to data from Clockify, see below, it would appear that the last few years have seen a reverse in this trend? perhaps a post-pandemic fascination with hybrid productivity. What do you think?

The disproportional effect of Interpersonal relationships

Part of my fascination with Rituals and my new venture is the power and disproportionate effect that our interpersonal relations have on how we feel about life at work and outside of work.

Work will always fill the time you have, the to-do list will never be completed - for most managers in our communities, being busy is a given. While we can work on strategies and productivity, it is the quality of the connected interpersonal relationships that can make this busyness not just tolerable, but achievable, fulfilling and enjoyable.

If on the other hand the interpersonal relationship challenges persist or worsen, that same amount of busyness can feel like hell. Managers can feel isolated, walking barefoot on broken glass. Holding their breath to the end of the working day, if it ever comes, as it then bleeds into and widens the cracks in the interpersonal challenges of relationships outside work. 

It is the maintenance of these Interpersonal relationships cultivating them through intentional behaviours both at work and outside of work that is my mission with Rituals for Performance.

Do you know a busy manager? Share the love.

I intend to provide science, stories and practical toolkits for managers to help them through the use of Rituals to bring some calm into the chaos of their busy working lives.

If you know a friend or colleagues who happens to be a busy manager at work and outside of work. Share this article with them so they can benefit from joining this journey with us.

Thanks, Nick

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Photo by Chris Jones on Unsplash