A reason to be busy

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

Jerome K. Jerome
British humor writer (1859 - 1927)


I find this statement so true. When are you most apt to start piddling during the day? Obviously not until you have a shitload of work to do. We have conditioned ourselves to multitask at every opportunity that even when we are "relaxing" we still have other things on our plate we need to accomplish (wash clothes, clean house, fix a meal, study SOX, write a post for the blog, Wi-Fi from the pool, read through the posts of other bloggers).

So much to do, so little time. How many times have you walked into someone's office with this great idea you've been working on to find a person on their computer playing solitaire. Or you have been told that information is urgently needed and when you deliver the completed information on time, you find your manager on the phone having a personal conversation. Or attend a conference and look at how many people are on their cell phones - not checking email but actually playing a game.

The flip side is when we are actually given "free time" we find ourselves bored. It is as if free time isn't fun or appealing unless it is "stolen" from the other activities you have to accomplish. For me, I know that when I do all my work I actually have more free time and I can enjoy that down time as such.