Being busy is a state of mind, not a state of affairs

Being busy is a state of mind, not a state of affairs

Busy day? Either ahead of or behind you, depending on what time you're reading this. Or maybe it's currently going on around you, in which case I suggest the answer to my first question is "no".

I only ask because I have myself had a busy morning and it came as something of a surprise. I am not often busy. I sometimes work hard, but that's different. You can be hard at work on a poem or conducting experimental brain surgery, but you wouldn't call that busy. Beethoven never strolled to the dinner table at the end of a long day saying, "I tell you what, I've been incredibly busy writing my piano sonata No 14 in C sharp minor today. All those notes!"

Hard work is hard, obviously, and absorbing and engrossing but, as long as it's just the one thing that you're doing and people will just leave you alone to get on with doing it, it doesn't make you feel like it might benefit you to grow an extra brain and a couple of extra hands in order to get it all done.

It's that feeling of being scattered about that I don't enjoy. What am I doing? Am I answering this email? Or taking this call? Or finishing that report? Am I working on task A? Or B? Or none of the above? Could someone please, for the love of God, just take all this stuff away from me and give it back, one piece at a time? Is that so much to bloody ask?

Of course, there's the other definition of busy; that is to say "occupied". A lot of people use it as the great defence against - well, pretty.....continued below

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much anything. More work, a new project, a social event, a weekend away, marriage ... "I wonder, would you like to ...?" "Can't, sorry, I'm busy." And unless you are, in fact, the busy person's boss, asking them what they're so busy doing is like saying, "I don't believe you! What are you doing then? Come on, show me!" That isn't really on - so you just have to leave them, smugly pretending to be busy.

I rarely say I am busy just in case I am about to be offered the chance to do something much more fun than whatever it is I am currently working on. But, of course, only a blithering idiot would yelp an eager "No!" if someone asks them if they're busy. So I have developed on Oscar-worthy routine for when someone asks me if I am busy, which goes: "Oh! Well, er ... [hopeless look at desk to indicate the inhuman amount of work I actually do have on] yes, I am quite. But, I don't know ... [assume hopeful expression to indicate that, gosh, yes, I really do want to be helpful. And aren't I rather brave even considering taking on more work at a time like this?] maybe I've got a bit of time later on. Why don't you tell me what it is?"

Then, if they say, "I wondered if you could reorganise the seventh-floor filing system?" I can suck air through my teeth, shake my head and point to my (as we have already established, absolutely sagging) desk. If, on the other hand, they are offering a two-week trip to the Maldives to research five-star hotels, I could probably squeeze that in, just as a special favour. It can pay not to be busy.