“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” — Socrates

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” — Lao Tzu

“Working hard for a long time without checking what the better things to be working on are is a hidden form of laziness. A laziness that disguises itself as something to be proud of.” — Julian Shapiro

“Busyness is no different from laziness when it doesn’t lead you to accomplish anything.” — (Bailey 2016)

“I’m about to make a wild, extreme and severe relationship rule: the word busy is a load of crap and is most often used by assholes. The word “busy” is the relationship Weapon of Mass Destruction. Remember: men are never too busy to get what they want.” — Greg Behrendt, He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Perpetual Busyness: We’re in the midst of a global busyness crisis

Overworking does not mean productive.

• The Busy Trap = The Rat Race — A treadmill to nowhere

  = 瞎忙 = 窮忙 = 假勤奮 = 偽生產力 ¹

• Often, we found there was a lot of movement, but no forward progress (like a “Rocking Horse” — always moving, but never going anywhere). ²

• 有時候，我們會覺得自己很忙，好像做了很多事，卻根本沒做出什麼明顯的成績。有行動，卻沒有成果。辛苦了老半天，結果卻回到原點，開始時和結束時的狀態都差不多，沒什麼進展。這正是 「效率 (Efficient) 」與「效能 (Effective) 」 的關鍵區別。兩者看似相近，實則大不相同 — 如果方向錯了，即使做得再好，也只是徒勞無功。

• Action: Break the busyness cycle. Don’t fall into “The Efficiency Trap.”

The Red Queen Effect

“Being In Motion vs Taking Action” by James Clear

“Never mistake activity for achievement.” — John Wooden

• You gain clarity through motion, but don’t mistake motion with action. Beware of false progress.

Most hard work is a form of laziness. The real hard work is in finding a way to make it easy. It’s easy to work hard, but hard to make the work easy.

Don’t confuse being busy with being productive.

I work harder, but you’re busier.

• Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
• Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.

The most invisible form of wasted time is doing a good job on an unimportant task

It probably doesn’t look like lying in bed doing nothing for thirty years. It looks like a normal life: you wake up, answer messages, go to work, scroll for a bit, deal with whatever feels urgent, tell yourself you’ll start that thing when life gets less hectic, and go to sleep. Repeat that often enough and five years can disappear without a single memorable catastrophe. That’s what scares me. A wasted life doesn’t feel wasted while you’re living it. It can feel productive, responsible, even successful. You can spend decades efficiently doing things that never mattered much to you. Maybe the question isn’t whether you’re doing enough with your life. Maybe it’s whether the things keeping you so busy deserve this much of you.

Rule: Boredom > Busyness

Scarcity creates a mindset that perpetuates scarcity

What you work on is far more important than how productively you work