The buzz around busy-ness

How are you doing?
Too much work man..!

How are you?
Surviving..

How is life?
Do not ask..

How does the day look?
Just too busy..

How was the day..?
Mad-hectic!

Where are you going?
Just running to wind something up

Have you seen this film?
Who has the time..!


Almost everybody is busy; everybody at any given point in time seems to be the most important person in his work area. The whole world (at least India and China) seems to be working very had, keeping super-busy ..or is it really?
Increasingly as I meet people talk to them and observe them doing their day to day work I get a feeling that more than being really busy people find if ‘fashionable’ ‘cool’ ‘appropriate’ to say that they are busy.
Only people who are not heading anywhere, ‘pop phrase for this group is ‘losers’, have all the time under the sun. In other words if you are busy you are successful and if you have time for yourself, may be you are drifting. This is true especially for the younger to middle management cadre. As one gets more experienced one begins to talk of work life balance etc. but at the bottom and in the middle of the pyramid – balance is not a virtue yet.
Humans are a strange set of people when we do not have as much work, we create a perception of work and when we really have a lot of it to do we talk to ‘work-life balance’!
Many young people even sit at work for long hours because the infrastructure is far superior at the place of work than home. From air-conditioning to broadband, gym/health club, coffee, TV/ Massage Chair, food and the works (Google is a pro at making office so much home that you visit home and live at work!).
Add to this, the heightened sense of busy-ness arguably has a High Hedonistic Impact on Purchase and Consumption behaviour. Since we are constantly telling ourselves and the world around us, how busy and occupied we are – we at some level are constantly gearing our self for rewards that are precluded by beliefs like ‘life starts after work’ or ‘I deserve to gift this to myself’ or ‘I have earned this indulgence’ let me do it for myself.
Self gifting is going to be a big market in these two otherwise high guilt societies.

I do not know if increased ‘perceptual busy-ness’ always translates into better ‘business’ but this behaviour/attitude is definitely helping grow the market for some of the products/services viz. eating/ drinking or hanging out, fashion, personal products to name a few ..
For now being busy looks like being successful and marketers are not complaining!