Is there ever a point where you can be too busy? In Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay The Cult of Busyness, she writes around her experiences she has with an acquaintance of hers that was busy from sun up to sun down. Throughout the essay, Barbara tends to have a sarcastic, this is evidenced when she says, “... and whose schedule doesn’t allow for a sexual encounter lasting more than 12 minutes.” As I read this essay I found that I could connect a bunch of what she was saying to my life and the world we live in today. The whole cosmos today is centered around the here and now. We thirst for everything to be done hastily so we can continue with our day. As a repercussion of that we tend to strategize our days in advance with activities to occupy
us throughout that day. This “busyness” as evident back in 1985 when Barbara Ehrenreich wrote her essay, The cult of Busyness, and it is still prevalent today. Countless people today will consider you unproductive and lazy if you do not stay busy. Personally, I believe we all need to take the advice of Mrs. Ehrenreich sometime. She states, “The secret of the truly successful, I perceive, is that they learned exceedingly early in life how not to be busy.” The reason why successful people are successful from learning how not to be busy is a result from them learning how to prioritise what is necessary and what is not. Next, you can start specializing in what you accomplish the most and maybe you can produce it into a career. Currently I am a student-athlete in high school and the philosophies of this essay can be used in my own life . One is being “not busy”. I have learned over the years that when you are extremely busy, those are the times that seem the utmost stressful. An example would be finals week during the first semester. Studying, sports, and long nights are a tremendous formula for being strained out of your mind. Now, since I have experienced what is equivalent to being extremely busy, I can plan accordingly to create the best result while being as stress free as I can. The world was “busy” in 1985 and now in 2015 it is even busier. We live in a world that never stops working. Therefore is there ever a time where you can be too busy? Society says no, however, if you glimpse at all the successful people in the world they tend to find a way to maintain their schedule’s to a minimum. I believe we can all acquire a page out of Barbara Ehrenreich’s, The Cult of Busyness.
As human beings, it is becoming more of a second nature to us to multi-task. As the world is technologically advancing more and more every day, there are becoming more distractions. Social-media is flourishing, reality TV show ratings are going up, and humans even unintentionally check their phones every two minutes. In this day of age, multi-tasking is proving to promote inefficiency rather than productivity.
In the light of the day certain objects seem different, we don’t take notice of the simple things and rush to accomplish are every day tasks.
In the article, “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend centralizes around the negative effects of multitasking. She shows that often with multitasking, people tend to lose focus, lack work quality, have an increase in stress, and in the end she gives a solution to all these problems. Tugend conveys her points by using understandable language, a clear division of subjects, and many reliable sources, making her article cogent.
The pace of life correlates with our endeavor to achieve success and upward social mobility. Every day we put up a fight against the clock as we try to fulfill our daily responsibilities and effectively run all our errands. Rushing to complete an irrational
Time allocation, or time management, is a trait that everyone is capable of. However, there are people who tend to manage their time better than others. People often find themselves wasting time on unimportant activities. The time wasted can depend on the type of person they are, though. Say there is a successful businessman. That man is less likely to waste his time doing something unimportant than a teenager who doesn’t have their priorities straight. In the story, ‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket”, Tom Benecke struggles with balancing the time spent on his work and time spent with his wife. In our generation, technology is all around us. Whether it be phones, computers, or video games, people are wasting away their lives doing activities
This is in total disregard of the normal system of conformity that requires people to follow the set rules and regulations. The world has therefore turned into a Totalitarian community that is run by the “Tick tock Man,” and his clock (Ellison 877). The emergency need for punctuality in the future clearly creates an obsession that jeopardizes the need for freedom in conducting the day to day activities as well as one’s personal space. This in itself is an ironical situation because there is an unexpected switching of roles between man and time. Prior this obsession of time consciousness, man used to control time management but now, time is managing all the important aspects of
Welfare reform caused many families surviving with the help of the government to go out and look for jobs despite their need for childcare that they could not afford. Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist with a PhD, decided to find out how life would be like living on minimum wage labor. During her journey, we see that labor has not changed majorly because laborers are not paid fairly and they are declined their rightfully owned rights. Although women are allowed in the workplace, an eight hour work day is established, and we have a minimum wage, many are still struggling to make it because the system simply does not work unless you are running the show.
Kreider has made some bold conclusions or outcomes with little evidence to support other than his opinion. I think he is stereotyping groups of people and sharing his opinion of their definition of busy and others who read this article may feel the same way. A example of him committing this fallacy is when he he says “Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extra-curricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown ups” (Krieder, 983). This commits the hasty generalization fallacy because thats his point of view and only his. Also, what he said about the children being busy all the time makes me wonder where is he getting that information from and why doesn’t he provide any outside information supporting what he said. An opportunity could be to change some of the words on his opinion to ensure that it is allowing others to think about this population who think they are too busy and allow the reader to think about his own life to determine if they are victim to this scenario. I don’t think it allows others to think about it when it reads as if Kreider is an experts and what he is saying is the
Stop and ask yourself how many times have you missed out on family things, and or plans with friends? Chances are that number is very high. Busyness is becoming very common in many people’s lives, whether that means school, work, extracurricular activities, sports, and much more. But are we all really too busy to do what we want, or is that just an excuse? For example according to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches up to 28 hours a week of television (Norman Herr). That’s almost a part time job, managing your time accordingly could be all that is needed for a perfect gateway to more time spent with family, friends, or doing things you enjoy. In Tim Kreider’s essay, “The Busy Trap” he notably argues that busyness is taking over
This exercise is designed to cultivate a heightened awareness and appreciation of simple daily tasks and the results they achieve. Think of something that happens every day more than once; something you take for granted, like opening a door, for example. At the very moment you touch the doorknob to open the door, stop for a moment and be mindful of where you are, how you feel in that moment and where the door will lead you. Similarly, the moment you open your computer to
Most peoples lives are scheduled in a way that keeps them active. Nobody likes to just have nothing planed because we wouldn't know what to do with all the time. While staying active and having places to be isn't bad, there is a point where busyness can take over your life and become a problem.
We so desperately don’t want to waste time even though we live in a modern culture that is constantly on our phones instead of living in the moment. I feel like we are starting to look more and more like a zombie apocalypse because as we surf the web or check social media for the millionth time, we become tainted by the mindless zombie epidemic. This egocentric and media-centered mindset that we have adopted shields us from what is truly important. The obsession of constantly checking our phones or binge watching TV shows doesn’t seem like a big deal. But as we do the exact same activities every single day, we can easily be compared to zombies as we begin to do things without thinking.
Being busy is better than being bored. Or that’s what it seems like to every American living in the 21st century. Conversations remain in endless small-talk, thoughts and actions become controlled by electronic notifications and ring tones, and life simply feels like checking tasks off of jam-packed agendas. Everyone’s inner drill sergeant seems to be hastening to conquer his or her overcommitted schedules. To many individuals, no matter how many ways they divide their time and attention, no matter how many duties they try and multi-task, there never seems to be enough time in a day to ever catch up. The default response to how one has been doing becomes “Busy!” “Crazy Busy.” “No time.” But the most absurd news is that such a lifestyle is perceived to be a kind of congratulation or boast, rather than a grievance. People want to be busy, as exhausting as it can get.
I agree with Kreider’s overall view on how people use the word busy too often. The type of people who say they are busy may or may not have it as bad as some people do. What I do not agree with is Tim’s personal view on how “life is too short to be busy”. With the accomplishments Kreider has made over his years he led a life that got him where he is today and he can now take in his free time that he has earned. I feel Kreider’s personal view on how life is too short to be busy could put the wrong impression on the younger generation who has not yet experience the adult work field. As a student I feel I am not obligated to make that decision as I am trying to build a path so I can reach my future career. My days are busy, consumed with school, homework, and a job. I do choose to be busy so that I will be able to support myself no matter where life takes me. Kreider explains how he wants to be able to spend time with the people he loves, how can Kreider do that if he was never busy doing school work or attending college to get a degree for
In the novel, Count Down by Steve Olson, the kids that are on the team competing in the world’s toughest math competitions have to train for incredible amounts of time and go to great extents in order to reach the final round of this competition. They have to dedicate their life to this Olympiad if they want to be the best of the best. Another example of sacrificing time to reach your goals is shown in the article titled “The First State Fair” by Clay Coppedge. In the article, Henry Kinney was planning to build the first state fair in Texas. As you can imagine, this took years to plan and prepare Kinney had to drop a lot of time out of his life in order have the fair perfected. Sacrificing time in order to do something is not what most people these days are willing to do. They are indolent and mostly “do not have any time.” Because of this, many people are not pleased with their lives and do not seem to be satisfied with anything that takes up time. Dedicating time into reaching your goals is very crucial in reaching them.