Complex Numbers

Risky Busy-ness

Because I feel like it... "JAFBG"  [XGC]

Many of us lead busy lives. Without apologising for them, what are your priorities?

Our economic system utterly depends on growth.

Bear with me here; this is relevant to the prompt. Somehow.

It is not enough for a company to make a profit. The company has to increase its profits year over year, or its value plummets and the people in charge get voted out and replaced with people the shareholders feel will increase profits year over year.

In business, as in one's personal life, there's only two basic ways to increase profits:

1) Acquire more money;
2) Spend less money.

I mean, sure, there's a lot of nuance in exactly how one does either of these things, but that's beyond my scope here. Especially the first one. The second one is more relevant to today's discussion.

So you're working for Wedgie Corp, and have been for five years. Corporate culture is okay, and you're making ends meet, but you dream of a different job. Still, it pays the bills and you're only working 40 hours a week. Well, 40 hours plus sometimes you have to come in early or stay late to meet deadlines imposed by middle management. Call it 50, then. And since we're talking about personal busy-ness, you need to add your commuting time to "time spent for work" even if you do manage to listen to motivational and productivity affirmations during the trip. Let's be generous and say you have a 30 minute commute each way, an additional five hours a week claimed by your company and not your own leisure time. 55 hours a week total.

One day, Bartholomew (never Bart, or Mew), the CEO of Wedgie Corp., announces that their profits are down 0.5% from last year. This is a corporate crisis, and Something Has To Be Done.

"I'm going to need you guys to self-actualize your prioritization of company resources," he says, or words to that effect. "Oh, and we need to save money by having employees bring in their own coffee."

You have no idea what the first bit means, but the second one leaves you with a sinking feeling in your abdomen. This, you realize, is the beginning of the end.

But it soon becomes apparent what the first bit means: your efforts are about to be channeled into increasing your personal productivity. It's your problem now, not the company's. If you fail, you'll be laid off.

Like Chester, who never did learn corpspeak. He kept on taking five-minute breaks every hour as suggested by ergonomic specialists, and so his productivity stayed at the same level while everyone else's increased by 10%.

Chester gets laid off (that's "made redundant" for my British readers) and his workload is divided up among the remaining employees, including you.

Did I mention you're on salary? You're on salary. So you now have three options: a) keep working at your current level and fall behind; b) work longer hours for no increase in pay; or c) use those motivational recordings to figure out how to optimize your time utilization.

The net result is, the company is spending less money, and the responsibility falls squarely upon you. Long story short, this sort of thing continues, and you find yourself maximizing your productivity and work hours, additionally spending more and more of your "free time" (more on this later) learning how to further manage your time.

This all comes to a head one day when Bartholomew announces that, as a cost-cutting measure, he's moving the corporate offices to the other side of town, increasing your commute to 1 hour each way.

You sit back and do the math. There are 24 hours in a day. It is recommended by health experts that you get eight hours of sleep per day. You need an hour at the gym. You need 15 minutes for breakfast, a half-hour for lunch, and an hour for dinner; call it 2 hours total because it's never that tidy. In the morning, it takes a half an hour to get showered and dressed, and you need a half hour in the evening to get ready for bed: that's one more hour. I've already mentioned that your commute is about to become 2 hours a day. Actual working time has stretched to 11 hours a day because it's cheaper to have you do the work than to hire someone to replace Chester, and also Caitlyn who also couldn't handle the extra productivity targets. So. 8+1+2+1+2+11=25. Out of 24. You're done; there is literally no room for anything else in your life, except maybe on weekends.

Bad enough if you're single. If you're married, not for long. If you have kids, gods help you.

Oh, sure, you can maybe double up. You're already listening to time-management life hacks on your commute; maybe you can watch an entertainment video at the gym. But that doesn't increase your productivity, so instead you catch up on the latest progress in the wedgie field. You could skimp on sleep, at the expense of your health (I did this for years, myself). You could order takeout for dinner, also potentially at the expense of health. Skip breakfast. I mean, why not? You already don't have time to go grocery shopping.

In short, you're leading a busy life. And you realize that Wedgie Corp. is only going to continue to make more and more demands on your time and energy. Result? You're about to burn out. You look for another job, but behold, every other company has made the same profit calculations, and either they're not hiring, or they're paying shit wages.

The only way to win, as the line from the old movie goes, is not to play.

Personally, I found it rewarding to run my own business, even though that entailed even more demands on my time, but not everyone's in a position to do so. As soon as I could, I got out. Well, there was a recession and the housing market crashed and my dad died and a whole bunch of things cascaded from that, but, as is usual in life, I got lucky and landed on my feet. I make no apologies for that, and I'm not gloating; I genuinely wish everyone could do it.

But the reality is: they can't.

The bottom line is, I don't lead a busy life, and I like it that way. Being busy seems to confer some social cred, these days. "I can't do that, I'm soooooo busy." Not me. Generally I keep it to myself, because the busy people, as proud as they are of being so goddamned productive, tell me I'm gloating and avoid me thereafter.

This corporate situation, by the way, is unsustainable, and I think right now more people are starting to realize that. We're finally close to being in a position where employees, not employers, call the shots. Power to the people, yeah! But we're not there yet.

So to get back to more directly addressing the prompt, my priorities, in no particular order:

Sleeping as long as I fucking want to.
Food.
Learning a different language.
Having time to travel occasionally.
Writing daily (blog entries count).
My cats.
Gaining and maintaining friendships.
Health.
Managing finances.
Beer (and other sources of alcohol).

Some of those might seem contradictory, but don't we all live contradictory lives? Even if some are busier than others.