In Defense of Being 'Busy': A Response to “The ‘Busy’ Trap”

I’m going to go on a rant and say a lot of things that I might not totally mean if I thought about it harder. But I feel like I need to say it, especially before I leave Harvard. And maybe I’m biased, but I’ve worked in other countries, so here it is: Americans don’t know how to take a break. And when they do, they’re still on the clock, plugged into emails so nobody misses anything or gets fired (or whatever). People are so scared to take days off that they end up retiring with a year of paid leave. I’ve heard it’s something about Weber and some Protestant Ethic or Spirit of Capitalism (or something). At least Europeans know how to take a proper holiday and even sick days when they’re, you know…sick. And the Spanish! They get a full rest in the middle of every single day.

“The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment,” decries Tim Kreider in his New York Times article on “The ‘Busy’ Trap.” He further laments the fact that so many people today almost indulge in their busyness, claiming that it is often a self-inflicted woe and even, for some, a point of pride. While I generally assumed work was so that we, as humans, could stay alive and perpetuate our species, I understand Kreider’s sentiments. He argues that idleness is not simply a vacation, vice, or indulgence, but that it is necessary to the brain for things like dreaming, creativity, and innovation, for a chance to step back from hectic life to get perspective on said life.

But, that said, the fact that so many people feel the need to be busy all the time is something with which I can relate.

Kreider brings up a more subtle point in his article, and it is this point that I want to get into: “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.” If you were to take a proper break from everything—all external stimuli, including work, television, and even the internet— and sat alone in your room for an extended period of time, imagine what would happen. Personally, I tend to think about things that have happened recently, not so recently, things that might happen, and then I eventually tend to gravitate toward the existential if left alone long enough. I end up pondering the absurd state and decidedly brief nature of my existence. This used to bother me. I couldn’t explain it and I couldn’t understand it; therefore, I did not like to think about it.

Blaise Pascal, the mathematician and physicist, was also a dabbling philosophe. In “Pensées,” he notes, “Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.”

Idleness can lead to self-reflection, and self-knowledge leads to insight, which, says Pascal, exposes the wretchedness within one’s self—in other words, a revelation of the fact that you don’t really know why you exist, which is man’s curse as the thoughtful animal. “That,” Pascal says, “is why prison is such a fearful punishment.” To be trapped up with one’s mind in a cage and no diversion would be to wallow in one’s own wretchedness, to stare into Nietzsche’s famed abyss.

That is why, Pascal purports, people prefer the hunt to the capture. Once you’ve got the thing you’re after, then what? Rest? What about when the dreaded question of the meaning of your existence and the immanence of your death seeps into your consciousness? Then, rest would become much less restful and much more full of angst. In response to the leisure-loving sentiments put forth by Kreider, Pascal (and I) would argue, “[people] think they genuinely want rest when all they really want is activity…they would do anything to be disturbed.”

Sometimes, though, being “disturbed” simply isn’t enough. One needs excitement along with entertainment. Some reward or prize is necessary to fully capture one’s attention from the pervasive ennui of existential dread. Gambling with no money, running without chasing something—these are not enough to fully divert the thoughtful. For a true diversion, Pascal argues, “He must create some target for his passions and then arouse his desire, anger, fear, for this object he has created.” Although Kreider would argue that this is giving into what he calls the “‘busy’ trap,” I see no problem with this—if you realize what you’re doing.

Like Kreider, I think people should be aware of the “‘busy’ trap,” and I advocate the necessity of idleness, but I am also defending being unnecessarily busy if it makes you feel good and if you know the reasons you try to stay busy. Once you reckon with your unobstructed mind, if you then prefer diversion to your thoughts, mindfully choosing to make yourself busy can be a wonderful process that has unlimited potential for making peace with the absurdity of your existence.

—Columnist Megan E. McKenzie can be reached at mckenzie@fas.harvard.edu.