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Busyness leads to bad decisions

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Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#21

Post by twoquestions »

Can personally confirm.

A while ago my car died, so I suddenly needed transport right now. I was considering renting a car, but my family loaned me an extra vehicle they had on hand that they keep around for just these emergencies. EDIT: No, there is absolutely no public transport out here. People who can't drive for whatever reason have a very hard time of it.

I would have made a much worse decision if I had to pay for every day I took to make it. Given the luxury of time, I made a much better buying decision for the new-to-me vehicle.

One of the many ways it's expensive to be poor.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#22

Post by saiya-jin »

brianmcc wrote: post #17
birdyrooster wrote: post #2

"And humans enjoy feeling busy and productive." I have never enjoyed feeling busy.

Most people would surely agree that neither under- nor over-stimulation is ideal on any kind of long term basis. A 2 week project crunch can be exhilarating, but 6 months? No thanks! Similarly a few weeks of beach vacation can be wonderfully relaxing, but months, years of "doing nothing" will soon become boring.

That's why you don't go to isolated places like Maldives (unless you are utterly addicted to diving and surfing) but rather Indonesia... you can spend years travelling around discovering places, culture, people, food etc.

Met plenty of people stuck in travelling mode for years, but yeah they don't just lie around the beach (most of the time).

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#23

Post by DarwinMailApp »

I could not agree more. For years I was just doing things for the sake of being busy.. crossing tasks off my todo list on a daily basis. I felt so accomplished, however, I was not really getting a lot of useful work done!

--------------------------

What did I do?

- I started thinking about the tasks I needed to do, assessing if they were actually important to begin with.

- I often found that they were not adding value to my product (DarwinMail[1]) and so I discarded them.

- I also quickly completed any task that would take 5 minutes or less to complete.

--------------------------

What was the result?

- About a year on and I have a successful product (well, success in my head is a product which has thousands of users of which at least hundreds love the product and could not live without it).

- I feel more successful, more fulfilled and a greater sense of accomplishment.

[1] https://www.darwinmail.app

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#24

Post by afarrell »

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #23

I could not agree more. For years I was just doing things for the sake of being busy.. crossing tasks off my todo list on a daily basis. I felt so accomplished, however, I was not really getting a lot of useful work done! -------------------------- What did I do? - I started thinking about the tasks I needed to do, assessing if they were actually important to begin with. - I often found that they were not adding valu…

> assessing if they were actually important to begin with.

I've found answering "Is this important?" very hard. I find it much easier to answer "What is the impact if I do this?"

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#25

Post by ThalesX »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #19
whitebread wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every American feels like it isn’t okay to be idle and bored. I guess you haven’t been following the real noise about moving to a four day workweek in America. Can we leave the sweeping, judgmental comments on the drawing room floor?

Yet the reality is Americans do work long hours. https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/12/americas-white-collar-w... You might not realise it but this stuff gets exported to the rest of the world. I frequently see American lobbyists on British TV pushing a low regulation agenda with the intention to weaken workers rights.

I was working for a project with a small company in Scandinavia. For those unaware, Scandinavia as a region in Europe is very much pro socialist policies and pro work-life balance.

We got two consultants from the US of A and that was a hell of a month, constantly pushing us to overwork our employees, saying that we need to show them the carrot on the stick. Their idea was that people will work for 80 hours per week out of their own initiative because life is all about money made and time saved.

Whenever we would argue anything, they would start almost chanting Wolf of Wall Street style: "Time & money!". I've never felt more relieved to have someone leave as when they got back to the US. It took us almost half a year to get back on track after that whole shebang and the CEO still has nightmares of how much was payed for them to come there and bro up the place.

I was intending to write a short message but it turned into a little rant. What I mean to say is that yes, I believe you are correct and this American way of doing business is pushed around the world in what I think is a real bad direction for work-life balance.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#26

Post by AstralStorm »

ssivark wrote: post #5
AstralStorm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid. It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Some people do not perceive this, they're either workaholics or aboulics. Tiredness and boredom are good things evolved to prevent damaging ourselves. If you ignore these you get burnout on one end, but no idea what is the opposite called.

> The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid [...] It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Nope, there's a hidden axis you're implicitly ignoring. It's possible to be active and "in flow" doing something without feeling "busy". So it's not just a 1-dimensional spectrum of whether one is idle or doing things, but also the psyche/atti…

Flow state can be a trap.

You can accomplish a lot of task checkboxes that are irrelevant. This is exactly what the article talks about. You must ask questions on whether what you're doing has any value - ultimately for you or someone/something you value. And while in flow state you cannot ask such questions as they're not directly related to what you're doing.

Company values are at least a few degrees removed from this ultimate value.

If you spend all the time in the flow state, you're likely are achieving nothing for your own goals, because you're not setting any. (Or worse, the goals are not thought out.)

Flow is the same as hyperfocus physically, and overdoing will ultimately harm you physically, if not psychologically or socially first. It's also related to meditation. Like meditation it is not always beneficial, especially in excess.

If this author has some other definition of flow, be careful, there might be a tautology or "no true Scotsman" involved.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#27

Post by P_I_Staker »

AstralStorm wrote: post #3
birdyrooster wrote: post #2

"And humans enjoy feeling busy and productive." I have never enjoyed feeling busy.

The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid. It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Some people do not perceive this, they're either workaholics or aboulics. Tiredness and boredom are good things evolved to prevent damaging ourselves. If you ignore these you get burnout on one end, but no idea what is the opposite called.

You're making assumptions that aren't necessarily true. For instance, I'll avoid play in order to enjoy some idleness. I've figured out why I think; because I don't want to lose track of time, then have to go to work. The same reason I can sleep fine before my day off, but not before a work day.

I don't even think I hate my job that much. I'm not really even working crazy hours; yet it still seems like there's no free time, and I don't want the little time available to fly by.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#28

Post by DarwinMailApp »

afarrell wrote: post #24
DarwinMailApp wrote: post #23

I could not agree more. For years I was just doing things for the sake of being busy.. crossing tasks off my todo list on a daily basis. I felt so accomplished, however, I was not really getting a lot of useful work done! -------------------------- What did I do? - I started thinking about the tasks I needed to do, assessing if they were actually important to begin with. - I often found that they were not adding valu…

> assessing if they were actually important to begin with. I've found answering "Is this important?" very hard. I find it much easier to answer "What is the impact if I do this?"

You and me both buddy!

I like your style.. and sometimes I ask myself other questions like will it matter to me in 10 hours, 10 days or 10 weeks?

The longer into the future it matters to me, the more important it is to get done IMO :)

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#29

Post by EGreg »

leggomylibro wrote: post #20
birdyrooster wrote: post #2

"And humans enjoy feeling busy and productive." I have never enjoyed feeling busy.

How about feeling idle with nothing to do but consider your own mortality? Not many people enjoy that, and Pascal wrote an interesting paper about it: http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/pascal-diversion.html Personally, my main takeaway can be summarized by this passage: >And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, sca…

What if you realize that distracting yourself from major things is foolish and your thoughts return to the topic every few hours a day?

Have you figured anything out? Perhaps this can give you some practice every day:

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#30

Post by automatoney »

So the article mentions "that one study found people preferred giving themselves electric shocks rather than have nothing to do" which sounded like an interesting study. The link provided was to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20548057 , and after searching I found this https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/christopher.hsee/vita/Paper... which strangely doesn't mention electric shocks at all.
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