Better Boundaries

When I was an undergraduate student, I overfilled my days with work and activities; science classes, several jobs, academic research, emails, club event organizing, homework, events, textbook reading, church commitments, running a business from my dorm room, and on and on and on.

I picked up projects as though my energy was an infinite resource. Being young, passionate, and on campus for only sixteen weeks at a time, I was able to tough out the exhaustion and commit to a ridiculous number of draining endeavors. During my final year in undergraduate studies, I became suddenly and chronically ill. I no longer had the physical or mental capacity to even pretend like I could handle it all. Going from an energetic wildfire which could conquer anything to a sloth that crawled out of bed for an hour of lecture and then crawled back was not a graceful process.

I read tens of books about time management and effective work techniques. If I didn’t have as much energy as before, I thought perhaps I could compensate by leveraging what little energy I had. Some books proclaimed, “Life is busy. Time is short. Optimize work efficacy to get it all done”. Other books said, “Life is short. Too short to be busy. Learn to say ‘no’”. Both perspectives are essential, but at the time I despised the idea of saying ‘no’ to desirable and worthy undertakings. I clung to the hope that shaving off a few minutes and calories from each task would enable the continuation of my busy life. However, a year and a half of illness revealed to me in the most undeniable language that busyness is not the innocuous state of being that we often perceive it to be. An inability to say ‘no’, even to good things, can destroy delight in work, distract from core purpose, prevent high accomplishment, and make the body sick.

I began to ask myself – if I am what I repeatedly do, then do I want to be a person who is simply; busy?

Being busy is not simply something that we do, but who we are. Consider an athlete. Going on a run is a mere action, but after a person goes on enough runs, at some point we begin to call him a runner. This is a term of deeper character identification, and though the runner probably didn’t set out to change his character the first time he put on his track shoes, it happened all the same. The word “identity” comes from the latin root meaning “repeated beingness”, so it should not be shocking to consider that habits are essentially the practice of becoming someone [1, p 24]. The repeated action of a habit can be viewed as accumulating proof [1, p 37]. The more proof a habit provides to support an identity, the more firmly that identity will be held [1, p 37]. Unfortunately, most people spend most of their days without paying proper attention to what they are doing [2, p 222]. Mindlessly coasting through the day stifles awareness of how much time activities absorb, how shallow they are, and, inevitably, what identity they form. Living in a state of ambiguity allows us to naturally fill our time with what is easiest, which is why so many of us become unreasonably busy [1, p. 222].

By these metrics, my identity was more fundamentally a ‘busy person’ than it was a student, friend, or even Christian. When standards for completed work are ambiguous, or the work has value that is difficult to define, it is understandable that many people turn to completing a lot of visible (but perhaps unnecessary) tasks [2, p 64]. The feeling of accomplishment is an essential need, but it is vital that genuine accomplishment is not replaced by a vapid surrogate. Cal Newport calls these easy (but less meaningful) tasks ‘shallow work’, and argues that becoming aware provides the impetus to move away from excessive shallow work and into more meaningful endeavors [2, p 222]. Time management techniques may have a snowballing effect, saving minutes through faster task completion, but nothing frees up more time than simply not doing a task.

My last cry for the value of busyness was the idea that being busy today meant I didn’t need to be busy tomorrow. With the coming and going of deadlines, in the short term this argument seemed sound. However, a new deadline was always waiting. By agreeing to every task I could possibly manage, I ensured that the care-free tomorrow never came. Humans present an interesting dichotomy; sometimes we are incapable of delaying gratification, and other times we delay what does not necessarily appreciate over time [1, p 26]. Happiness is often delayed until the accomplishment of a goal. Since today’s happiness is nontransferable to tomorrow’s, this can lead to an overall reduction in experienced happiness, or worse, perpetual delays and complete lack of happiness altogether [1, p 26].

Though the typical narrative claims that accomplishment is earned on the back of incessant busyness, I now firmly believe that there is no real virtue in the mere characteristic of ‘being busy’. Of course, I do not mean to imply that idleness is irreproachable, but rather that being habitually busy does not make me a kinder, gentler, or more patient person. It makes me peevish, indelicate, and unkind. I don’t necessarily produce more or better work by being busy. Often my exhaustion decreases the quality of work I produce, and stretches out the amount of time I require to finish the same task. Most demoralizing, however, is that delaying happiness, rest, and self care on account of being busy does not mean I am bound for a fat check of freedom, serenity, and satisfaction in the future.

Declining work requests, personal favors, and social events can be awkward and takes courage. There are four primary “task filters” I consider when presented with a project or request:

1. Does this task actually need to get done?

   
   

2. Does this task align with my core values and purpose in life?

   
   

3. Does this task require my personal expertise (ie, could someone else do it)?

   
   

4. If I have the time to do this task, is this task more important than rest?

   
   

Answering ‘no’ to any one of these questions indicates that the task is probably better done by someone else, if at all. Agreeing to complete this task would sign away time and energy from other more important and fulfilling labors.

I do a lot of work these days, but I am not too busy to rest or do what is important. I have time to sit and think. I have time to eat meals with my family. I can offer spontaneous help in precise areas of expertise because I’m not over exhausted from busy nothings. I am now considerably less busy, achieve far more in areas of my life that I deeply care about, and consequently am considerably more happy. I would encourage anyone who feels overworked to reflect, and I would challenge them to consider saying ‘no’ to one thing today.

References:

[1] Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits an Easy & proven way to build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. New York, NY: Avery, an imprint of the Penguin Random House LLC.

[2] Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. New York: Grand Central Publishing.