U3 Busy, Busy, Busy By Margaret Wente 1 Not long ago, I phoned up an old friend of mine, a high-powered career woman who is usually on the road two or three days a week. 2 “How about lunch? “ I said. “How does your calendar look for June?” 3 “How about today?” she said. “I’m totally free.” 4 I was shocked. Nobody I know is free for lunch today. A person of average busyness is sometimes free the week after next. If you’re trying to book a higher-status person, four to six weeks is normal, by which time you will be lucky to remember what it is you wanted to have lunch about anyway. This lunch will probably be rearranged a few times by various executive assistants, who will spend more time talking to each other, coordinating your respective calendars, than you will spend talking to your lunch guest. If you are of a higher status (i.e. busier) than the other person, you will be allowed to reschedule at least twice. 5 That is, if you still do lunch. Busy people don’t, and when they do, they tell you, “I really don’t do lunch anymore,” implying that you ought to be immensely honoured that they have broken the rule for you. And you’d better eat in a hurry. An hour and ten minutes is the most anyone spends on a business lunch now. 6 Whenever I run into someone I haven’t seen for a while and ask how they are, they always say the same thing, “I’m really busy.” 7 Want to get together for dinner some Saturday with another busy couple? Two months, minimum, before you can fit it in. 8 And when you do get together, you’ll all brag about how much email you get. “It’s horrible,” someone will say. “I took three days off and when I had 47 voice mails.” 9 The truly busy person, of course, will have answered all these voice mails and emails on vacation so that she can get right back down to work. 10 Then comes the discussion about how early people get up in the morning. If you sleep in after 5:30 on a weekday, your best strategy is to lie about it so your friends don’t think you’re a slacker. 11 Recently, I took a few days off from work between assignments. It was pleasant to spend all day reading the papers at my kitchen table, with the sun streaming in, no places to go, no people to see. Pleasant — for about five minutes. Then I started to get nervous. What if they had forgotten all about me? So I got on the phone and called a few friends. The first person I called had to take a call on his cellphone while he was speaking to me. The second and third persons were in meetings and would call me back just as soon as they were free. 12 Everyone was so busy! I recalled that just the day before I had been that busy too, and in a few days’ time I would be that busy again. Meantime, I had the odd sensation that I was fading away. I quickly invented a ridiculously complicated project that involved a great deal of Internet searching and faxing things overseas at all hours of the day and night, and immediately felt much better. 13 How did we get so busy? That's not too hard to figure out. The work world has become a far more Darwinian place in the past decade. Plenty of middle managers with middling incomes are obligated to put in 60 or 70 hours a week on the job. Workaholism? It's a condition of employment. Job flexibility? Puh-lease. New technology? Fabulous. It lets us work all the time. To be is to do. And the more there is on your to-do list, the more reassured you are that you must count for something.? 14 Of course, you don’t get work overload without work stress, and everyone I know has plenty of that. But people who suddenly aren’t busy have more.? 15 One man told me what happened to him after he had accepted a gigantic buyout. He took his bag of money and set up a little office to figure out what to do next. He showed up on Monday morning at eight. His appointment book was blank. The phone didn't ring. Nobody needed him. He says it was the worst moment of his life. 16 When I met my friend for lunch, I asked her what had happened to her ultra-busy schedule. She told me that she had put herself on a strict new regimen. She was turning down at least three assignments a week. She was practicing being a slacker. She had sworn off multitasking and was trying unitasking, though she confessed it was incredibly difficult. Then she invited me to go to the garden centre with her after lunch.? 17 It would have been fun, I said. But I really had to get back to work.?