essay on busy life

To install StudyMoose App tap and then “Add to Home Screen”

Escaping the Time Trap: Embracing Life's Little Moments

Save to my list

Remove from my list

Escaping the Time Trap: Embracing Life's Little Moments. (2018, Aug 28). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/having-a-busy-life-essay

"Escaping the Time Trap: Embracing Life's Little Moments." StudyMoose , 28 Aug 2018, https://studymoose.com/having-a-busy-life-essay

StudyMoose. (2018). Escaping the Time Trap: Embracing Life's Little Moments . [Online]. Available at: https://studymoose.com/having-a-busy-life-essay [Accessed: 9 Oct. 2024]

"Escaping the Time Trap: Embracing Life's Little Moments." StudyMoose, Aug 28, 2018. Accessed October 9, 2024. https://studymoose.com/having-a-busy-life-essay

"Escaping the Time Trap: Embracing Life's Little Moments," StudyMoose , 28-Aug-2018. [Online]. Available: https://studymoose.com/having-a-busy-life-essay. [Accessed: 9-Oct-2024]

StudyMoose. (2018). Escaping the Time Trap: Embracing Life's Little Moments . [Online]. Available at: https://studymoose.com/having-a-busy-life-essay [Accessed: 9-Oct-2024]

• Escaping the Inescapable in On Seeing England For The First Time Pages: 10 (2910 words)
• Escaping the Fast Food Era: Rediscovering Life's Essence Pages: 7 (1840 words)
• Escaping The Reality In An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce Pages: 3 (694 words)
• Escaping the Truth in "A Streetcar Named Desire" Pages: 4 (1023 words)
• Escaping Violence Pages: 5 (1496 words)
• The Need for Serenity: Escaping Sound Pollution in Urban Areas. Pages: 8 (2232 words)
• Escaping the City Hustle: Finding Serenity in Nature Pages: 3 (860 words)
• The Impact of Basketball on Escaping Poverty: A Coney Island Narrative Pages: 3 (667 words)
• Trap-Ease America Pages: 4 (1048 words)
• A Ticket Trap Sprung up Around the Holland Tunnel Pages: 3 (645 words)

👋 Hi! I’m your smart assistant Amy!

Don’t know where to start? Type your requirements and I’ll connect you to an academic expert within 3 minutes.

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2024 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

How Constantly Staying Busy Affects Our Well-Being

Jodi Clarke, LPC/MHSP is a Licensed Professional Counselor in private practice. She specializes in relationships, anxiety, trauma and grief.

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

Staying busy is often seen as a badge of honor and a marker of self-worth, with a lack of leisure time viewed as a direct indication of status. However, over-scheduling ourselves to the point where we are always busy can negatively affect our physical and emotional wellness , also impacting our ability to maintain healthy relationships.

At a Glance

While staying busy may boost our self-esteem, if we are so busy that we're unable to practice self-care, spend time with loved ones, and enjoy our free time, it can have a harmful effect on our overall well-being. Disconnecting from work or unnecessary obligations and deliberately resting and taking time for ourselves can significantly boost our quality of life.

Why We Love Staying Busy

Research suggests that an individual's perceived level of busyness is heavily connected to their feelings of self-worth , as well as to how others view their status. Individuals who are always busy by choice tend to feel needed, in demand, and important, thus elevating their feelings about themselves.

Culturally, there has also been a shift in status perception in that material objects and goods are no longer the only indicator of one's social standing. Now, individuals who are busy at work, overworked, and have a lack of leisure time are perceived as having a higher status.

In addition, some people are always busy as a way to avoid or numb painful feelings and situations. By staying super busy, they are unable to focus on what may be bothering them or causing them discomfort beneath the surface.

Busy vs. Productive

Being busy and being productive can often be confused with one another. If we are busy, we may have a lot on our plate but this doesn't necessarily mean that we are being productive or using our time efficiently.

Being productive means being able to complete a task or get something done. We do not need to be busy in order to be productive.

Being busy has to do with how we spend our time, whereas productivity has more to do with what we accomplish.

Impacts of Being Always Busy

Staying busy can impact our lives in several different ways. Namely, it can affect our emotional and physical health, our relationships, and our ability to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

Emotional Health

When busyness is glorified and encouraged, we may end up overextending ourselves with varied obligations, commitments, and responsibilities. The emotional consequences of being always busy include having feelings of:

• Anxiety or depression
• Increased stress and overwhelm
• Inadequacy or incompetence
• Frustration, anger, and guilt
• Loneliness or hopelessness

If we are unable to complete tasks or uphold obligations, we may end up feeling guilty , or as if we've let ourselves or others down. If we derive our self-worth through being productive and completing tasks, feeling as if we're falling short can impact our perception of ourselves.

When being overly busy leads to an increase in stress and/or decreased self-esteem, this may trigger more serious mental health disorders. This includes anxiety disorders , depression, and substance use disorders .

Studies have also found that moderate to high levels of busyness can lead to reduced medication adherence, especially in older adults. This can be harmful to their emotional health if the medications are prescribed for mental health issues.

Physical Health

Busyness may lead to sacrificing our physical well-being for the sake of getting tasks done. This can include not prioritizing exercise as much as we'd like or not getting as much sleep as our body needs . We may also find ourselves ignoring or pushing aside any physical health concerns instead of seeing a doctor right away.

Excessive busyness can also negatively impact our physical health by triggering or exacerbating:

• Muscle tension or pain
• Restlessness or insomnia
• Inflammation
• Compromised immune function
• Changes in sex drive
• Digestive issues
• Cardiovascular disease

Press Play for Advice On Completing Tasks

This episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares how to get tasks done with a science-backed trick known as 'temptation bundling.' Click below to listen now.

Follow Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts / Amazon Music

Relationships

Demanding schedules can leave little to no time for meaningful connections with others . This can leave busy people feeling isolated and lonely. Those around them can also sometimes feel rejected or angry with the person's lack of availability.

Relationships require time and effort from all participating parties. Being pulled in multiple directions by our obligations can leave us feeling stressed and unable to engage fully with others. This makes it difficult to support and nurture healthy relationships with the people we care about most.

Our relationships with friends, family, and spouses may suffer if we have an overextended schedule.

Work-Life Balance

Constantly staying busy can lead to poor work-life balance , impacting our ability to experience healthy work and home environments in which we can thrive. While this balance will look different for each unique individual, in general, if we have it, we feel more in control of and comfortable with how our time is spent.

Conversely, if our work-life balance is thrown off, we may experience burnout and feel overworked, exhausted, and disconnected from our social and/or family life. Poor work-life balance can also lead to chronic stress , which can impact our mental and physical health.

Staying Busy Isn't Always a Bad Thing

To be fair, living a busy life isn't always associated with negative consequences. For example, some studies have found that in older age, being busier is linked with cognitive advantages such as:

• Faster cognitive processing
• Improved episodic and working memory
• Greater reasoning abilities
• Stronger knowledge crystallization

It's when staying busy negatively impacts one's life that it becomes an issue. This includes when it is harmful to our health (whether mentally or physically), when it hurts our relationships, or when it creates a work-life imbalance.

Tips to Overcome Staying Busy

Everyone will have their own idea of what being too busy means to them. If we feel overworked, overwhelmed, or burned out , it's important to prioritize our health and wellness. Although it may feel difficult to shift our priorities and our time, doing so may lead to increased mental and physical well-being, as well as more connected relationships with our loved ones.

Here are a few tips to overcome being always busy:

• Practice mindfulness . This helps us connect with ourselves, observe our thoughts without judgment, and ground ourselves. It can also help interrupt a racing mind if we're feeling overwhelmed.
• Plan a vacation or staycation , if possible. It's important to not fill this time off with activities so we can recharge.
• Spend time with loved ones . Make this a priority. Doing so can help us feel connected, loved, and energized.
• Take small moments every day to appreciate one's self . This may include offering positive affirmations or journaling about one thing we are grateful for every day.
• Set boundaries with others . It's okay to say "no." Sacrificing our well-being to overextend ourselves can have severe consequences in the long term.
• Remember that self-worth does not come from being busy . Come up with a mantra that expresses what self-worth truly means or reasons for self-love. Recite it every day.
• Set a reminder to breathe and take some solo time. This can be as simple as scheduling a phone notification or placing a post note somewhere in the home where it will be seen regularly.
• Connect with a therapist . This is especially important if acts of daily living become difficult or one's overall quality of life has decreased.
• Set appropriate expectations when it comes to how much can be comfortably taken. Keep in mind that this may change over time.
• Work to pinpoint the discomfort if busyness is being used as a tool to avoid unpleasant thoughts or feelings. If this seems too overwhelming, reach out to a therapist for support.
• Schedule work or busy time in chunks . It's important to leave time for ourselves throughout the day, even if it's just for a small break, and deliberately disconnect from our work.

We all deserve to take time for ourselves, whether that means a full vacation or mini breaks during the day. Doing so is an important reminder to ourselves that we are worthy and valuable individuals.

Waytz A. Beware a culture of busyness . Harvard Business Review.

Bellezza S, Paharia N, Keinan A. Conspicuous consumption of time: When busyness and lack of leisure time become a status symbol .  J Consum Res . 2017;44(1):118–138. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucw076

Miller C, Townsend M, Grenyar B. Understanding chronic feelings of emptiness in borderline personality disorder: a qualitative study . Borderline Personal Dis Emotion Dysregul . 2021;8:24. doi:10.1186/s40479-021-00164-8

Lua V, Majeed N, Leung A, Haranto A. A daily within-person investigation on the link between social expectancies to be busy and emotional wellbeing: the moderating role of emotional complexity acceptance . Cognit Emot . 2022;36(4):773-780. doi:10.1080/02699931

Moore G, Fardghassemi S, Joffe H. Wellbeing in the city: Young adults' sense of loneliness and social connection in deprived urban neighbourhoods . Wellbeing Space Society . 2023;5:101172. doi:10.1016/j.wss.2023.100172

Klinehinst T, Opsasnick L, Benavente J, Wolf M, O'Conor R. The roles of busyness and daily routine in medication management behaviors among older adults . J Appl Gerentol . 2022;41(12):2566-2573. doi:10.1177/07334648221120246

Stamp A, Pederson L, Ingwersen K, Sørensen D. Behavioural typologies of experienced benefit of psychomotor therapy in patients with chronic shoulder pain: A grounded theory approach . Complement Ther Clin Pract . 2018;31:229-235. doi:10.1016/j.ctcp.2018.03.001

Tadaki S, Sakata Y, Miura Y, et al. Factors limiting habitual exercise in patients with chronic heart failure: a multicenter prospective cohort study . Heart Vessels . 2020;35:655-664. doi:10.1007/s00380-019-01529-4

Borowiec A, Drygas W. Work-life balance and mental and physical health among Warsaw specialists, managers and entrepreneurs . Int J Environ Res Public Health . 2023;20(1):492. doi:10.3390/ijerph20010492

Festini SB. Busyness, mental engagement, and stress: Relationships to neurocognitive aging and behavior . Front Aging Neurosci . 2022;14:980599. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2022.980599

By Jodi Clarke, MA, LPC/MHSP Jodi Clarke, LPC/MHSP is a Licensed Professional Counselor in private practice. She specializes in relationships, anxiety, trauma and grief.

• Skip to content
• Skip to footer

| The Art of Living for Students of Life

Busyness 101: Why are we SO BUSY in Modern Life? (7 Hypotheses)

By Kyle Kowalski · 13 Comments

This is the first post in a 3-part series. You can jump to the next two posts here:

• Busyness 201: A Brief History of Work & BUSY in America
• Busyness 301: The Future of BUSY, Work & Leisure

It wasn’t too long ago that keeping up with the Joneses was all about things — the big house, sports car, and designer clothing.

Don’t get me wrong, materialism and lifestyle inflation are still all around us. But, things are being challenged by something “new” — time .

I personally lived through extreme busyness and long work hours at my last job. While I tried to diagnose the reason behind the busyness in real-time, I don’t think I ever really found the root cause. Months after leaving that job, this curiosity led me down a deep path to better understand why we are so busy today.

If you’ve spent any time on this site, you may have read the  3-part series on slow living . Consider this 3-part series on busyness a prequel to the slow living series.

After all, a how-to guide about slow living is only going to be effective if we all understand the why-to around busyness. So, as usual, I went deep into research and reading in an attempt to understand the past, present, and future of busyness and exactly why we are so busy — or at least feel  we are so busy — in the modern world today.

An Introduction to Busyness (not that you really need one…)

You may have heard of some of the following terms: time-starved, time-poor, time scarcity, time poverty, time famine, time pressure, leisure gap, cult of busyness, harried, overwork culture, and overscheduled.

We feel like we’re “pressed for time,” that there’s “not enough time in the day,” and that we are “running out of time.”

But, our amount of time hasn’t changed. We still get 24 hours each day . Many modern conveniences (e.g. washer/dryer, dishwasher, etc) have significantly shaved off hours of weekly household chores. And, as we’ll see later, the average amount of time we spend working each week hasn’t increased in decades (if you’re surprised, I was too).

So, what’s really going on? Are we actually busier than ever before? Or, do we just feel busier? Has our relationship with time changed?

I know what it’s like to be and feel busy. What I didn’t initially realize in the midst of my busy life was that there can be several factors at play to cause busyness. Based on my research, I’ve come up with seven hypotheses…

7 Hypotheses for Why we are So Busy Today

• Busyness as a badge of honor and trendy status symbol — or the glorification of busy — to show our importance, value, or self-worth in our fast-paced society
• Busyness as job security — an outward sign of productivity and company loyalty
• Busyness as FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) — spending is shifting from buying things (“have it all”) to experiences (“do it all”), packing our calendars (and social media feeds with the “highlight reel of life”)
• Busyness as a byproduct of the digital age — our 24/7 connected culture is blurring the line between life and work; promoting multitasking and never turning “off”
• Busyness as a time filler — in the age of abundance of choice, we have infinite ways to fill time (online and off) instead of leaving idle moments as restorative white space
• Busyness as necessity — working multiple jobs to make ends meet while also caring for children at home
• Busyness as escapism — from idleness and slowing down to face the tough questions in life (e.g. Maybe past emotional pain or deep questions like, “What is the meaning of life?” or “What is my purpose?”)

I believe all of these hypotheses are correct to some extent. Depending on your own unique experiences, a couple may resonate with you more than others.

My personal poison of busyness was a cocktail of #2, #4, #5, and a dash of #1. How about you? Let me know your busyness cocktail in the comments.

For me, I’ve always wanted to do my best work. And, in the past, I’ve been completely willing to sacrifice my life to do my best work. I put in crazy hours at work because I was a workaholic who was afraid to let things go and not do my best work for fear of failure or disappointment. But, at the same time, I was completely against busyness and trying to stop the madness. So, I participated in the busyness culture, but I was also a voice against it. Quite the dichotomy.

A Deeper Look into each Busyness Hypothesis

What’s really going on when you study the published research and trends over time? Are some of these hypotheses truer than others?

Reading through the research was fascinating and eye-opening. My hope is to give you the highlights so you can become aware of busyness, understand the root causes, and make changes for the better in your own life.

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” — Lily Tomlin

I’m kicking things off with this hypothesis because it’s actually backed by research that I previously summarized in the following two posts:

• Why Busyness is the Current Status Symbol, According to Research
• “Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol” (Research Summary)

The big research takeaway is: “A busy and overworked lifestyle, rather than a leisurely lifestyle, has become an aspirational status symbol in America.”

This research has been covered in some big publications with supporting context:

• “As we compete to be productive, busyness is as much a status symbol as anything else.” — Johns Hopkins¹
• “So if leisureliness was once a badge of honour among the well-off of the 19th century…then busyness—and even stressful feelings of time scarcity—has become that badge now.” — The Economist²
• “In our rush to make more money and to have the American Dream as it’s been defined to us, we ended up crowding out our opportunity to have more time. Any social system wants to maintain itself—whether it’s a religion or an economic system—and under corporate capitalism, we’re required to maintain certain beliefs. It’s important to work hard, to demonstrate success, to make money. Not only is there a lack of laws that support vacation and family leave, but there’s a continual message encouraging people to work hard and spend more. We internalize those messages, and busyness becomes a badge of honor.” — Johns Hopkins¹
• “What has changed so dramatically in one century? We think that the shift from leisure-as-status to busyness-as-status may be linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economies. In such economies, individuals who possess the human capital characteristics that employers or clients value (e.g., competence and ambition) are expected to be in high demand and short supply on the job market. Thus, by telling others that we are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status.” — Harvard Business Review³
• “Individualistic cultures, which emphasise achievement over affiliation, help cultivate this time-is-money mindset…When people see their time in terms of money, they often grow stingy with the former to maximise the latter.” — The Economist²
• “‘In America the consequences of not being at the top are so dramatic that the rat race is exacerbated,’ says Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist. ‘In a winner-takes-all society you would expect this time crunch.'” — The Economist²

When you think about it, this probably isn’t too shocking to you. But, it goes even deeper when you look at our attitude toward work in the U.S. and how it’s a big part of our perceived identity:

• “In America, we are defined by what we do. Our careers. What we produce. It’s the first question asked at parties, and often the first tidbit of information we share with strangers. The implication is that if I am not busy doing something, I am somehow less than. Not worthy. Or at least worth less than those who are producing something…So I fill my Facebook feed and my calendar with self-important busyness to avoid just being.” — Huffington Post 4
• “In modern society, people not only want to be engaged, they want to be viewed as productive, so we don’t just engage ourselves in conversations, puzzles, or hobbies, but rather in work and activities that have a goal…That cultural orientation arises from a belief that what you accomplish is a signal of your value.” — SELF 5

“Just because you’re doing a lot more doesn’t mean you’re getting a lot more done. Don’t confuse movement with progress.” — Denzel Washington

Is work today too subjective? In the case of knowledge work, I would say it is. In lieu of objective measurement, perception unfortunately becomes reality.

• “Because knowledge workers have few metrics for output, the time people spend at their desks is often seen as a sign of productivity and loyalty.” — The Economist²
• “Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.” — Cal Newport

“Life is what happens to us while we are (busy) making other plans.” — Allen Saunders

This hypothesis is probably one of the most visible and discussed — experiences vs things and trying to do everything (e.g. all the life hacks ):

• “Keynes predicted that the age of abundance would make us all relax, because it would be easier to get everything we need, like food, clothes, and entertainment. But maybe knowing that there are 10 great TV shows you should watch, nine important books to read, eight bourgeois skills your child hasn’t mastered, seven ways you’re exercising wrong, six ways you haven’t sufficiently taken advantage of the city, etc., fosters a kind of metastasized paradox of choice, a perma-FOMO. Knowing exactly what we’re missing out makes us feel guilty or anxious about the limits of our time and our capacity to use it effectively.” — The Atlantic 6

“When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.” — Gary Keller

Technology should give us time back, not waste it. People are beginning to look for solutions in  digital decluttering and digital minimalism .

• “New technologies such as e-mail and smartphones exacerbate this impatience and anxiety. E-mail etiquette often necessitates a response within 24 hours, with the general understanding that sooner is better. Managing this constant and mounting demand often involves switching tasks or multi-tasking, and the job never quite feels done…Multi-tasking is what makes us feel pressed for time.” — The Economist²
• “The idea that work begins and ends at the office is intuitively wrong. We laugh at animal pictures on our work computers, and we answer emails on our couches in front of the TV. On the one hand, flexibility is nice. On the other, blending work and leisure creates an always-on expectation that makes it hard for white-collar workers to escape the shadow of work responsibilities.” — The Atlantic 6
• “If work is your life, then how do you disconnect? If you are challenged to let go even when you ‘aren’t at work,’ perhaps it’s time to explore why.” — SmartBrief 7
• “The reasons for not disconnecting matter…Is your inability to disconnect fueled by the need for gaining the by-products of your busyness: power and control, money and social status?” — SmartBrief 7

“Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.” — Goethe

This hypothesis may be one of the most simple yet most overlooked in terms of its affects on modern life. I think it may actually be one of the biggest reasons why we always feel busy today. We’ve never lived in an age of such abundance of choice . Instead of using our leisure time in restorative ways, we do things that continue to drain our energy (mindless passive leisure):

• “We think we don’t have free time when we actually do. We’re simply frittering it away with mindless versions of passive leisure that don’t register as restorative. (According to the latest American Time Use Survey, the average adult spends nearly three hours a day watching TV.)” — Johns Hopkins¹
• “Today you will consume the equivalent of 174 newspapers worth of content (five times as much as you would have done in 1986.” — Personnel Today 8

“People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.” — Naval

This one was eye-opening for me. For most of us, there’s actually been an increase in leisure time. In comparison to history, we are living in an age of “time affluence.”

• “And while we may legitimately feel busy, Americans’ working hours have steadily decreased over the last seven decades. In 1948, when the government started keeping track, Americans worked an average of 42.8 hours a week. Today we average 38.7, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey.” — NBC 9

Research from Gallup shows that the people who are most strapped for time (the truly busy) are people working multiple jobs and caring for children at home. The wealthy are actually voluntarily trading their time for even more money, leading to feelings of busyness:

• “The more cash-rich working Americans are, the more time-poor they feel and that those working adults who report being time-poor are less satisfied with their personal lives.” — Gallup 10

I’m going to do a follow-up post after this series on the difference between being busy and feeling busy that will cover this research a bit more.

“We stay so busy that the truth of our lives can’t catch up.” — Brené Brown

With 100% certainty, I can say busyness is what caused my existential crisis . While I wasn’t intentionally running away from anything at the time, it helped me acknowledge my busyness and eventually create my purpose .

• “Busyness becomes our existential comfort pill, the refuge from existential angst.” — Thrive Global 11
• “We throw ourselves into frenetic activity and give ourselves the perfect excuse for not doing the big-thinking stuff. In being busy we get to feel productive while procrastinating!” — Personnel Today 8

Continue reading the next posts in the series:

I’ve also expanded on the busyness series with these posts you may also like:

• The Busy Spectrum (High Busyness): What You Need to Know about Workism & Hustle Porn
• The Busy Spectrum (Low Busyness): What You Need to Know about Bullshit Jobs & Performative Busyness

• https://www.johnshopkinshealthreview.com/issues/spring-summer-2016/articles/the-cult-of-busy
• https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2014/12/20/why-is-everyone-so-busy
• https://hbr.org/2016/12/research-why-americans-are-so-impressed-by-busyness
• https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-dannemiller/busy-is-a-sickness_b_6761264.html
• https://www.self.com/story/confessions-of-a-busy-holic
• https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-myth-that-americans-are-busier-than-ever/371350/
• http://www.smartbrief.com/original/2018/08/take-break-busyness
• https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/five-reasons-everyone-busy-tony-crabbe/
• https://www.nbcnews.com/better/careers/busy-trap-how-keeping-busy-became-status-symbol-n742051
• http://www.gallup.com/poll/148583/working-adults-strapped-time.aspx
• https://www.thriveglobal.com/stories/16451-on-busyness

About Kyle Kowalski

👋 Hi, I'm Kyle―the human behind Sloww . I'm an ex-marketing executive turned self-education entrepreneur after an existential crisis in 2015. In one sentence: my purpose is synthesizing lifelong learning that catalyzes deeper development . But, I’m not a professor, philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, scientist, mystic, or guru. I’m an interconnector across all those humans and many more—an "independent, inquiring, interdisciplinary integrator" (in other words, it's just me over here, asking questions, crossing disciplines, and making connections). To keep it simple, you can just call me a "synthesizer." Sloww shares the art of living with students of life . Read my story.

Sloww participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. When you purchase a book through an Amazon link, Sloww earns a small percentage at no additional cost to you. This helps fund the costs to support the site and the ad-free experience.

Reader Interactions

April 6, 2019 at 4:39 AM

Hey Kyle. Good article. Really well thought-out. Busyness as a status symbol always struck me as ridiculous. Being frantic and harried isn’t graceful or dignified. It’s a clear sign that the harried individual has no control over his own life. I just learned what FOMO meant about 17 hours ago… no joke. “FOMO” used to be called “inferiority complex”. It’s not the actual missing out they are afraid of . What they are scared of is really not being seen as equals to their peers who attended the event. took the FB selfie, got the tshirt, whatever. I am convinced social media should be strictly regulated and I’d love to see Congress take Mark Zuckerberg and jam an investigatory flashlight up his rear end and see what little secrets they find. That guy is a brainless nightmare of a human being. Him and the Twitter CEO both have a special place in Hell in my opinion. Their 2 platforms cause more pain and strife than you can shake a stick at and they just remain totally unaccountable, hiding behind “free speech” as an excuse to peddle a product that is clearly doing massive, conspicuous harm. Kids are killing themselves over FB drama. Zuck sits on his throne and could care less. That’s not what a man does. That’s what an impish little rat does: avoids, scurries, hides. It all ties into business as an impression of success.

I run a small company. I probably work 2 hours per day. That’s all. No commute. No lines at grocery stores. I visit friends at their offices and take them to lunch and feel genuine sadness when they express how harried and frantic they feel.

“So quit”, I tell them.

That’s what I did.

It’s like the Peter Gabriel song “Solsbury Hill”… I was feeling part of the scenery so I walked right out of the machinery….

If we want the busyness to end, it comes down to us to get up and walk out.

Don’t wanna feel FOMO? Don’t use social media. The FOMO feeling will vanish. Don’t wanna overwork? Then don’t.

Busyness therefore is also a form of groupthink. God forbid you be the one to work a little less in a typical corporate setting. I once, toward the end of my corporate career, told a female coworker, this young, do-gooder type, to stop telling me that “staying late on Fridays is fun!” I was visibly mad at her because I was sick of the lie she kept telling. The executives wouldnt stay late on Friday. Why the hell should we ?

Again, all of these anecdotes connect to your premise.

You’re really onto something here. We need more scathing indictments of busyness. Busyness the public health hazard? Busyness as mental illness? Busyness as morally wrong?

There is an emerging culture in this country that is rejecting busyness on its face. Productivity and busyness are NOT the same thing. I made about $3,500 this week. I spent about 8 hours working.

How did I do that? I spent time becoming really really really good at what I do.

Now, I’m in my jacuzzi by 3pm every day, having gone to the gym, cleaned the house and done my work. Time is mine to command. No one tells me when to be somewhere or can just summon me with the touch of a button. It’s a great lifestyle if you can figure it out. There’s no roadmap. Took me 8 years.

Anyways …. good luck Kyle. Keep writing. It’s good stuff.

April 28, 2019 at 2:34 PM

Thanks so much for the thorough comment. You also win best username, JediNinjaTacoPants.

Interesting point about “FOMO” previously being called “inferiority complex” and that it’s not about the missing out; it’s about not being seen as equals. I’ve learned that there are many things in life where you need to dig into that deeper layer. Reminds me of the idea (can’t remember the source) that people don’t want to be millionaires to have a million dollars in the bank; they want to experience the lifestyle that they believe a million dollars can buy.

I also agree about social media being the Wild West and needing more regulation. At the same time, individuals need to take responsibility and accountability for their own time (and therefore lives). It’s no surprise that “digital minimalism” has started as an antidote to digital addiction. To your point “the harried individual has no control over his own life,” the same could be said for digital/social addiction. If used appropriately, digital and social are powerful tools to connect the world. Aside from books, digital is the primary way I read and write. There’s a lot of good stuff out there if your “information diet” is intentional.

To your points about owning your time and doing what you want, I think it’s a modern day tragedy to be so busy and have so much lifestyle inflation that people “can’t” follow their purpose/passion. For those who fall into this camp (which I did initially), focus first on course-correcting your lifestyle (how you use your time and money). The rest follows.

It’s amazing that the dangers of busyness have been identified throughout human history, but we still have so much to learn (possibly now more than ever):

Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise. — Lin Yutang Beware the barrenness of a busy life. — Socrates Busyness is an illness of the spirit. — Eugene Peterson Being busy is a disease of our time. — Pedram Shojai He who hurries has one foot in the grave. — Moroccan saying

I’ve expanded on the busyness post series with these posts you may also like:

– The Busy Spectrum (High Busyness): What You Need to Know about Workism & Hustle Porn

– The Busy Spectrum (Low Busyness): What You Need to Know about Bullshit Jobs & Performative Busyness

July 7, 2019 at 7:16 AM

I’ll put in one word innovation.

July 16, 2019 at 11:25 AM

Thanks, Brian. Innovation and technology are definitely key factors in a few of these hypotheses. Although, I have to remind myself that innovation and technology have always been part of humanity’s history in different ways. Perhaps “digital connectivity” is a more appropriate differentiator for our era on the planet.

December 27, 2019 at 12:59 PM

Read your hypothesis and it said to me this is right for a lot of people and not all were the same situation but it relates to many.

It’s beautiful so correct I believe.

Can’t wait to see some other pieces.

Keep up the good work.

January 6, 2020 at 10:00 AM

Thanks, Tom! If you’re looking for more, be sure to check out Busyness 201 , Busyness 301 , and WHY we feel so busy today .

October 22, 2020 at 10:54 AM

Your an awesome writer. I am going to keep reading your work. I am 4, 5, and 7.

Luckily we can fix using business to fill angst.

We can control our use of technology as well. I think the first step is education so thank you for sharing yours 🙂

November 25, 2020 at 12:40 AM

Thanks, Jaemey! I agree with you that awareness and education are some of the best first steps.

February 12, 2021 at 3:38 PM

Wow! Your blog is awesome and just what I needed to find/read. I am leaving a “busy” profession and I googled “slow living” and found your amazing website just now. I am a combination of 1,2,3,4 & 6…. I am ashamed to say 🙁

I do feel (as a 8th point) working Mums tend to fall into this “busyness” for a way to “find and keep themselves” and to not be categorized as “just a mother”, to have a piece of our identity restored. I have always wanted to be a role model to my boys, but I don’t feel aligned to my values currently.

After a spiritual awakening, global pandemic and health crisis I am going to make some profound changes to my lifestyle (maybe you’d call this a midlife crisis).

Thank you so much for bringing so much valuable information together for me to absorb. I am excited

March 2, 2021 at 3:39 PM

Hey Lisa! Thanks so much for the kind words. Awareness is the first step toward change! Great addition about working mothers. Also, interesting to hear that you may be in the midst of a midlife crisis (I experienced an existential crisis at age 30). Enjoy all the Sloww content and happy learning!

November 12, 2021 at 9:50 AM

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 45/46: 10) takes on a whole another meaning in the context of busyness. I found that I was over-busy because I thought I could control outcomes with things like task lists and action items. For me, it was a combo of escapism, fear, and a lack of faith. Then finally, the realization: “you are not God, stop trying to control outcomes.”

July 29, 2022 at 10:00 PM

Thanks for sharing, Mario. I’ve also come to the realization that there is a much greater universal intelligence at play, and we are all part of that. Regarding trying to control, I often think of this quote by Michael Singer:

“If we pay attention, we will realize that every moment around us there is a world that we do not create—that’s been there for 13.8 billion years—and there are trillions of cells in your body that are doing what they’re supposed to do, all of nature, everything. And, you wake up and you realize, ‘I’m not doing any of this. I didn’t make my body, I didn’t make my mind think, I don’t make my heart beat, I don’t make my breath breathe—yet I have this notion that I have to make things happen. Yet, all throughout the universe things are happening everywhere, and I’m not doing them. So, why exactly am I the one that’s in charge of what’s unfolding in front of me?’ And, what you realize at some point, is that you’re not. That the moment in front of you that’s unfolding is no different than all the zillions of other moments that aren’t in front of you that are unfolding in accordance to the laws of nature, the laws of creation. So, you start to practice saying, ‘I don’t want to check inside of me first to see what I want and what I don’t want. I want to pay attention to what the universe is creating in front of me—just like it’s creating everywhere I’m not—and let me see how I can participate in that, be part of that, instead of interfering with it with my desires and my fears.’ That’s living from a place of surrender.”

January 19, 2023 at 6:39 PM

I came across your site through another article and find it very fascinating. The timing is very much much not coincidental and I found the article very thought provoking. I have to say that I fall under 7 and 5. Going through an existential crisis and I stay busy so I don’t think about the causes of the crisis any more than I have to. I should say have in the past, I am at the point that I have to address the reasons and am finally ready to.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Popular Posts

Join the sloww movement.

📧 10,000+ lifelong learners read the Sloww Sunday newsletter (+ free eBook "The Hierarchy of Happiness"):

🆕 Synthesizer Course

🔒 Sloww Premium

Sloww Social

Essays About Daily Life: Top 5 Essay Examples and 7 Prompts

Writing about daily routines and events can be tricky, to help you get started discover our guide with essays about daily life examples and prompts. 

Talking about what we do every day can be mundane. However, it also has many physical and mental health benefits, and writing about our everyday lives helps us gain new perspectives. The records we have in personal journals let us read back on the events that already happened to relive a memory or increase our understanding of our current situation. 

If you prefer to avoid journaling, you can start by producing an essay. Creating an essay about our daily activities helps us appreciate life more and to stop taking things for granted. You can also check out these essays about life .

5 Essay Examples

• 1. My Daily Life as a Student – Essay by Mili
• 2. Write an Essay on Your Daily Life by Darshan Kadu

3. Essay on Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Anonymous on PapersOwl.Com

• 4. My Daily Life by Ken Subedi

1. How to Write About Your Daily Life

2. why write essays about everyday life, 3. my daily life before, during, and after the pandemic, 4. the daily life of a student, 5. daily life of different age groups, 6. social media and our daily lives, 7. daily life: work-life balance.

1. My Daily Life as a Student – Essay  by Mili

“I get refreshed with the morning walk or a little exercise and then prepare myself for the study with utmost sincerity. It is against my principle to put off today’s work for tomorrow or to have any private tutor.”

Mili shares her simple life in this essay by describing everyday activities every student does, such as brushing her teeth and exercising. She mentions her classes and recess at 2 PM, where she and her friends eat snacks, play games, and chat. As a student, Mili has a busy six-day schedule but visits theaters after washing her uniforms on Sundays. You might also be interested in these essays about reflection .

2. Write an Essay on Your Daily Life  by Darshan Kadu

“Life is too precious to be idled away in lethargic existence and in useless ventures. My daily routine is jam-packed with actions and activities and keeps me and my mind busy all the time. The adventures of daily life make it interesting and an exciting journey.”

On school days, Kadu’s daily routine includes jogging, getting ready for school, and having breakfast with the whole family. After school and attending meetings, he usually plays with friends in the field. Kadu also mentions how he spends his holidays. He believes that even though he has a daily routine, it’s exciting and full of adventure.

“Ancient Egyptian’s daily life revolves around the Nile and the rich soil around it… daily lives of people have changed a lot since then.”

This essay shows how religion helped the Ancient Egyptians run their daily lives. The author discusses changes in festivals and the treatment of gods and royalty. To make an effective comparison, they use three examples: the importance of family, the Nile, and slavery.

The writer mentions that the Nile was essential in Ancient Egypt because it provided food to the people. Modern Egyptians no longer depend on the Nile river and its rich soil. As for working, people used to be enslaved by the rich and were forced to farm. Now, while farming is a work option, slavery doesn’t happen anymore. Early marriage is also forgotten, but the importance of family is still the same for all Egyptians.

4. My Daily Life  by Ken Subedi

“Sometimes I feel that I am really becoming a machine to have a strict time table. But I also believe that if we do everything on time, success will kiss us and we can lead a qualitative life.”

Subedi believes that people spend the day depending on their roles. Because he’s a student, he talks about how a typical school day goes for him, noting how he follows a strict schedule to do his homework, play with friends, and prepare for the next day. 

Subedi mentions how Saturdays and holidays distract his daily routine and shares how he feels like a machine with the readers. However, he also says that he knows it’s necessary to have a successful life. You might also be interested in these essays about New Year .

5. Long Essay on Television In Our Daily Life by Prasanna

“There are channels that beam programs 24 hours a day. Whereas this may be a boon for the people who do not have much to do anyway, it becomes a source of great distraction for children for whom the priority should be their studies.”

Technology like television is essential today but can also be a distraction to many. Prasanna refers to television as the most common form of entertainment that provides information on what’s happening worldwide. However, some shows have mature or violent elements that have adverse effects, especially on children. Additionally, those who spend too much time watching television will miss the thrill and excitement of going out and meeting other people.

7 Prompts for Essays About Daily Life

Experts say that in writing about your everyday life, you have to live with it. In writing this instructional prompt, you must first introduce and define essays about daily life. Next, give a step-by-step process for writing this topic and explain each step to the readers. Then, discuss the dos and don’ts of writing this essay, especially the information the piece needs.

For example, creating a detailed essay is good, but sometimes including too much information is boring to read. In this case, you should only incorporate relevant and exciting experiences throughout your day. 

Besides clearing the mind, producing essays about daily life improves writing skills, boosts memory retention, and more. Discuss the other benefits of writing an essay about this topic and verify the importance of each. 

This prompt encourages readers to create essays about their daily activities. To help you, read our guide explaining persuasive writing .

The coronavirus pandemic greatly affected everyone’s daily routine. To effectively share your experience and how the virus impacted your everyday life, divide your essay into three parts: before, during, and after the pandemic. 

Recount how your day started and ended for each period. Add any surprising events that occurred, if there are any. Then, include your opinion on the drastic changes you endured during the pandemic. 

A student’s life consists of waking up early, preparing for school, doing homework, and studying for hours. This prompt is perfect for you, regardless of level, if you’re a student. For this prompt, introduce your program to the readers and discuss the daily activities that make your typical day. Include the time management techniques you use and how effective they are for you as a student.

Our schedule changes depending on what we try to accomplish. For example, children are free to play, teenagers are expected to attend school, and adults are supposed to work. For this prompt, focus on each age group’s varying timetable and objectives, then compare and contrast their lives. You can interview someone from each age group to have a reliable representative.

Social media significantly changed our perception of what our daily lives should look like if we want to thrive. Many try to follow an unrealistic schedule to be as prosperous as the ones we see on our feeds.

Gather factual data on the social media users and the frequency with which they visit their accounts on each platform. Analyze these statistics and identify the positive and negative effects of being on social media multiple times a day.

Many struggles with achieving an effective work-life balance. For this prompt, research the average person’s success rate in accomplishing a good routine that strengthens their work and personal relationships. After establishing the benefits of having a functional work-life balance, list how the readers can find balance and use these tips in their daily lives.  

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Reflection: The Pause That Brings Peace and Productivity

Many of us feel time-pressured, tethered to our smartphones so we can stay on top of work and home responsibilities. It can be tough to step off the daily merry-go-round, put our phones, laptops, and to-do lists aside, and find decent chunks of quiet time to reflect on our lives.

In fact, we may not even be sure how.

Yet reflection is important; it gives us a chance to pause and figure out what really matters, especially when struggling with a difficult issue professionally or personally, says Joseph Badaracco, the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School, in his new book Step Back: How to Bring the Art of Reflection into Your Busy Life .

“We often get advice to reflect, and we often give the advice to reflect. But what is reflection?” Badaracco asks. “And how do busy people find time to reflect?”

To answer this question, Badaracco studied classic works of reflection, including Meditations by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Spiritual Exercises by Jesuit order founder Ignatius Loyola, Essays by philosopher Michel de Montaigne, as well as many diaries and journals of leaders.

“We often get advice to reflect, and we often give the advice to reflect. But what is reflection?”

In addition, Badaracco interviewed more than 100 managers, ranging from supervisors to CEOs, from 15 countries to learn how busy men and women today find time for reflection. He found that almost all of them do reflect, but they don’t necessarily rely on long periods of solitude. Instead, they practice the art of reflection “in the cracks and crevices of their everyday lives” to help them make better decisions day by day and problem by problem.

Badaracco recommends four design principles for reflection. Like design principles in art and architecture, they don’t explain precisely what to do and when. “That is your call,” he says. What the design principles provide is a template for sound reflection in a hectic world.

1: Aim for good enough

For many of the managers Badaracco interviewed, the biggest obstacle to reflecting was acute time pressure. As one manager said, “I go from commitments at home to commitments at work … I have very little me time.” Others had trouble keeping their thoughts from relentlessly zig-zagging all over the place, or felt restless taking time to sit and think. “I hate feeling idle,” one manager said. “I hate the feeling of not doing anything that I don’t think is productive.”

And some resisted reflecting, saying it was easier to focus on the here-and-now, rather than look down the road where they might be forced to grapple with the uncertainty of the future. “It can be a little frightening because, you know, this is the time when I’m supposed to sit down with a pad of paper and really think ahead, and you’d much rather be busy because it’s so easy to focus on the latest emails,” one manager said. “Some of the crazy busyness is self-imposed.”

But it doesn’t take ironclad discipline, rigid scheduling, or abandoning the laptop for a full hour to overcome these obstacles. It starts with letting go of the idea that we must reflect in a time-consuming or perfect way; instead, we should “aim for good enough,” Badaracco says. Thoughtful reflection is worth doing, even if we fall short of some ideal—and given the busy pace of our lives, “good enough” reflection is a real accomplishment, he says.

How do we aim for good enough? The answer, Badaracco says, is to find an approach that fits comfortably into your life and, even better, involves something you enjoy doing. Some of the managers took advantage of quiet periods when they were doing other things, like exercising, cooking, or commuting to work. “In the car,” one manager said, “I find it really easy to concentrate because there’s nobody talking to me, and you can watch the road, which I think you can do with about half your brain, while the other half is at work.”

About a quarter of the managers relied on occasionally writing out their thoughts, in journals and notebooks or even spreadsheets that compared the pros and cons of a problem.

And reflection doesn’t have to be a solitary act. Some managers sought out meaningful conversations with trusted others, relying on regular calls to their parents or turning to a colleague who, as one manager said, is “the kind of person you go see when you need to talk something through, so you go to their office and close the door.”

2: Downshift occasionally

The first of the three fundamental approaches to reflection has traditionally been called contemplation, or downshifting from time to time. At work, many people tend to focus on output, and their minds act like race car engines, firing on all cylinders at 200 miles an hour to exert the mental power needed to examine problems, figure out solutions, and get things done.

Many of the managers Badaracco interviewed found ways to pause and put their mental machinery into a lower gear, letting their minds unfocus, and resisting the urge to feel continuously productive or decisive. “If something is bothering you about a particular problem, sometimes you have to slow down to recognize it,” Badaracco says.

During a work meeting, rather than staying laser-focused on getting through the agenda, take time to look around the room and pay attention: Do coworkers seem interested or bored? Is the conversation heading in the right direction?

Badaracco describes a range of approaches interviewees followed and recommends people see what works well for them. One approach suggests mental meandering by letting your thoughts, feelings, and attention wander for a few minutes to see where they go. Look up from your computer screen and take a break from accomplishing task after task.

Another suggestion involves simply slowing down physically in order to slow down mentally. One busy executive who managed 1,500 people said when she had meetings away from the office, sometimes she left early to “make my way there slowly” to get a “feel for how things are going.”

Other managers turn to nature. One manager, quoting her father, a farmer, said, “The number of people who can walk outside and just look up is so small.” Hitting the beach or a nature trail in the middle of a workday may not be practical, but taking a short walk outside or even looking out the office window or at an indoor plant can help free up the mind.

And finally, many interviewees made a conscious effort to take a little time to celebrate progress or successes, rather than staying focused only on their list of to-dos. Some did this by praying and thanking God; others kept a journal of things they are grateful for. Marc Andreesen, the high-profile venture capitalist who helped create the Mosaic Web browser, keeps an “anti-to-do list,” which displays everything he has done during the day to feel a sense of accomplishment, confidence, and motivation to continue.

One manager, noting the need to escape what he called the “psychic prison of continuous improvement,” regularly set aside time to celebrate workplace achievements with his staff.

“Reflection is often viewed as a gloomy, serious enterprise, where you ask: Where have I failed, and what should I do next?” Badaracco says. “But you ought to look at the full range of things you have already done, including non-work tasks, and pat yourself on the back occasionally.”

3: Ponder your hard issues

The second fundamental approach to reflection is pondering. This means stepping back and consciously looking at a problem from a variety of perspectives.

The managers Badaracco interviewed did this in a wide range of ways. Some tried to vividly imagine the everyday consequences of choosing among two different options—such as deciding whether to take a new job or stick with a current one. Some doodled their thoughts, some tried to look at a problem from the perspective of someone they admired or someone who might be badly affected by it, and some tried to see if they had feelings or perspectives on the margins of their minds that they were uncomfortable examining.

“Without reflection, we drift.”

A few managers even acknowledged that they talked with themselves, sometimes aloud, to see an issue from a wider perspective.

“It’s about making a conscious effort to look at things from a variety of viewpoints without trying to crack the case or come up with the answer right away,” Badaracco says.

4: Pause and measure up

The third classic approach to reflection involves measuring up. This is particularly relevant when you have to make a decision and act on it. It’s critical to take a few moments to step back and ask yourself which option is best in terms of the standards that others expect you to meet and the standards you have set for yourself, Badaracco says.

The managers Badaracco interviewed took different approaches to this way of reflecting. Some imagined what their professional role models would do. Others followed personal principles or mantras that meant a good deal to them, based on earlier experiences in their lives. Some asked themselves what kind of legacy, however modest, they wanted to leave behind before deciding what to do.

Reflection promotes growth

Reflection, Badaracco says, can enhance your life and your work, if you develop a pattern or mosaic of reflection that meshes with your life and if you occasionally step back further to reflect more deeply.

About the Author

Dina Gerdeman is a senior writer at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

[Image: PeopleImages ]

Does reflection help you?

Share your insights below.

Book Excerpt

Mosaic reflection.

By Joseph Badaracco

The CEO was sending two messages, and we all need to hear them. First, reflection is extremely important. In fact, it may be more important now than ever. As our world becomes more complex, fluid, time-pressured, and data-saturated, we need to think deeply about situations, problems, and decisions—at work and throughout the rest of life. The second lesson is that the world today makes it very hard to find time for reflection and might even be eroding our capacity to reflect.

What is reflection? The standard answer appears in familiar images. One is Rodin’s famous sculpture, “The Thinker.” Another is a Buddhist monk, sitting motionless in meditation. Another may be a solitary figure looking into a starry night sky or a woman with her head bowed in quiet prayer. Thousands of pages have been written about this solitary, deliberate, tranquil approach to reflection. But what is its relevance for people who work and live in a vortex of tasks, meetings, decisions, and serious responsibilities?

Four years ago, I set out to answer that question. I interviewed more than one hundred managers. They ranged from supervisors to CEOs and came from fifteen countries. Most worked in businesses, but the group also included a police chief, heads of several religious organizations, the coach of a major professional sports team, and university administrators. I also carefully studied classic works, like the Medita¬tions of Marcus Aurelius and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, as well as a wide range of diaries and journals.

In the end, I concluded that busy, responsible men and women do make time to reflect—but not during extended periods of solitude. They rely instead on what I came to call “mosaic” reflection. A mosaic, of course, is artwork made from small pieces of stone or glass. It also describes what I learned in the interviews: busy, successful men and women do reflect, but they practice the art of reflection in the cracks and crevices of their everyday lives.

Why do they squeeze time for reflection into their already crowded lives? In one interview, a senior manager sketched the basic answer. For several weeks, he had been struggling with the question of whether to change career paths. At one point, he put his decision in a larger context:

Life is surfing a wave. It carries you forward. You spend most of your time adjusting and trying to stay on the wave and riding it. It may not be the right wave or the right wave anymore, and it may be headed for the rocks. Reflection is thinking about these questions.

This statement points to the basic two reasons why the managers I interviewed tried hard to find time for reflection.

One reason is practical. Reflection is a valuable tool for making better decisions, at work and in the rest of life. It is useful day by day, task by task, and problem by problem. As the senior executive put it, reflection can help you with “adjusting and trying to stay on the wave.” As another manager put it, “I always have lingering doubts that I’m not reflecting enough as I handle meeting after meeting.”

The other basic reason to reflect is profound. Reflection is a way of grappling with the enduring human questions of how to live, what to really care about, and what counts as a good life. In other words, are you riding “the right wave?” This kind of reflection can make all the difference. In one interview, a former CEO said wistfully, “I wish someone had asked me twenty-five, thirty years ago, ‘Are you being true to yourself? Are you giving yourself enough time to reflect?’”

Reflection is stepping back to grasp what really matters—about what you are experiencing, trying to understand, or doing. This is why reflection is remark- ably valuable, in so many practical and profound ways. It is crucial to understand what really matters—whether you are running an entire company, leading a task force, navigating the health-care system for an elderly relative, juggling the daily tasks of most households, or struggling with any hard issue.

Throughout this book, you will read, in their own words, how men and women tried, sometimes failed, and often succeeded in finding ways to reflect—on everyday problems, on their careers and families, and on the great, enduring questions of life. As you listen to these men and women, you can respond personally. You can ask yourself questions like these: Is this an obstacle to reflection I often face? Is this an approach to reflection I should try? Am I already doing something along these lines that I could do better?

By answering these questions for yourself, you can develop practical, everyday ways of reflecting that help you work better and live better. This is the aim Marcus Aurelius pursued in writing Meditations: “to live in complete consciousness and lucidity; to give each of our instants full intensity; and to give meaning to our entire life.” 1

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Adapted from Step Back: How to Bring the Art of Reflection into Your Busy Life by Joseph Badaracco. Copyright 2020 Joseph Badaracco. All rights reserved.

Note 1. Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 313.

Click to watch.

• 25 Jun 2024
• Research & Ideas

Rapport: The Hidden Advantage That Women Managers Bring to Teams

• 11 Jun 2024
• In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2024

How transparency sped innovation in a $13 billion wireless sector.

• 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

• 27 Jun 2016

These Management Practices, Like Certain Technologies, Boost Company Performance

• Personal Development and Career
• Leadership Development

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Socrates: 'Beware the barrenness of a busy life.'

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

In the bustling world we live in today, it often feels like there is never enough time in a day to accomplish everything on our to-do lists. Our lives have become increasingly consumed by busy schedules, constant stimulation, and an incessant need to be productive. But have we ever stopped to consider the wisdom behind Socrates' timeless quote, "Beware the barrenness of a busy life"? What does it really mean, and why is it important to reflect upon it in our own lives?At its core, Socrates' quote urges us to be cautious of the emptiness that can accompany a life filled with constant busyness. It reminds us to pause and question whether the endless pursuit of productivity truly brings fulfillment and purpose. In today's society, there is often a glorification of busyness, as if it is a measure of success or importance. However, this mindset can lead to a barrenness within our souls, where our pursuits become shallow, devoid of meaning, and disconnected from our deeper desires and values.There is an interesting philosophical concept that sheds light on this dilemma – the concept of "narrative identity." Narratives are the stories we construct about ourselves, which shape our sense of self and give meaning to our lives. When we are caught up in the busyness of life, constantly rushing from one task to another, we risk losing sight of our personal narratives. We become detached from the narratives that give us a sense of purpose, authenticity, and coherence in our own lives.By contrasting the barrenness of a busy life with the concept of narrative identity, we can deepen our understanding of Socrates' quote. When we prioritize busyness above all else, we risk becoming disconnected from the stories we are living, and our lives can become hollow and unfulfilling. In our pursuit of productivity, we may neglect the very narratives that define us, leaving us feeling lost, dissatisfied, and ultimately barren.To avoid this barrenness, we must find a balance between being productive and taking the time to reflect on our personal narratives. It is crucial to pause, to slow down, and to evaluate whether our busyness aligns with our deeper values and aspirations. We must ask ourselves if we are merely being swept along by the demands of a fast-paced society or if we are actively shaping our own narratives.Instead of filling our lives with constant busyness, we should aim to cultivate moments of stillness and reflection. These moments allow us to reconnect with our narratives, to ensure that our daily actions are in harmony with our long-term goals and meaningful pursuits. By embracing moments of quiet contemplation, we can escape the allure of a barren yet busy existence and instead forge a path toward a rich and purposeful life.In conclusion, Socrates' quote, "Beware the barrenness of a busy life," serves as a reminder for us all to examine our priorities and reflect on the narratives that give our lives meaning. It urges us to reclaim agency over our time and to question whether our busyness is truly fulfilling or if it is merely leaving us feeling empty. By integrating the concept of narrative identity into our understanding of this quote, we realize the importance of finding balance and purpose in our lives. Let us break free from the barrenness of a busy life and instead create narratives that truly enrich our existence.

Socrates: 'An honest man is always a child.'

Socrates: 'once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.'.

The New York Times

Opinionator | the ‘busy’ trap.

The ‘Busy’ Trap

Anxiety: We worry. A gallery of contributors count the ways.

If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “ So busy.” “ Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”

It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this; it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs  who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet . It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence. Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s  make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications. I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another’s eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. Not long ago I  Skyped with a friend who was driven out of the city by high rent and now has an artist’s residency in a small town in the south of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn’t consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college — she has a big circle of friends who all go out to the cafe together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone’s too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”) What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious and sad — turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

Our frantic days are really just a hedge against emptiness.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.

I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?

But just in the last few months, I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy. For the first time I was able to tell people, with a straight face, that I was “too busy” to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint; it makes you feel important, sought-after and put-upon. Except that I hate actually being busy. Every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve. It got more and more intolerable until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I’m writing this.

Here I am largely unmolested by obligations. There is no TV. To check e-mail I have to drive to the library. I go a week at a time without seeing anyone I know. I’ve remembered about buttercups, stink bugs and the stars. I read. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.

More From Anxiety

Read previous contributions to this series.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays. The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.

Perhaps the world would soon slide to ruin if everyone behaved as I do. But I would suggest that an ideal human life lies somewhere between my own defiant indolence and the rest of the world’s endless frenetic hustle. My role is just to be a bad influence, the kid standing outside the classroom window making faces at you at your desk, urging you to just this once make some excuse and get out of there, come outside and play. My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.

( Anxiety welcomes submissions at [email protected] . )

Tim Kreider is the author of “ We Learn Nothing ,” a collection of essays and cartoons. His cartoon, “The Pain — When Will It End?” has been collected in three books by Fantagraphics.

What's Next

AOs write the “What do you do for fun?” essay by Jeremy W.

Ever wondered what admissions officers do when they're not reading applications?

July 9, 2021

• in Admissions ,
• Best from staff

We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do for the pleasure of it. (250 words maximum)

If you are familiar with the MIT application, you’ve likely encountered our short answer essay questions , including the one written above. Rather than asking applicants to write a long “personal statement,” we prefer asking a few short essay questions intentionally designed to help us get to know the student as a real person.

But this isn’t a blog about how to write a college essay. If you’re looking for that, we have plenty of great essay advice on our site already. Instead, this post is to help you get to know the Enigmatic Admissions Officers of MIT™ who are responsible for reading your applications. We get to learn so much about all of you, so I thought it was our turn to share a bit about ourselves.

While we share many of the same values, our admissions officers are remarkably different from one another. Our staff includes trained engineers, educators, performing artists, philosophers, writers, researchers, and more. Some of us listen to Bartók while others prefer BTS; some of us cultivate rare orchids while many of us desperately attempt to keep our succulents alive. And as you’ll see, some of us write carefully crafted prose, while others take a much more casual approach to writing.

We know from reading your applications each year that asking people what they like to do for fun is a fantastic window into their world. It’s a rare and wonderful thing to get to read about the joys of others—and best of all, there are no right or wrong answers. ⁠ 01 I regularly think about an applicant from years ago who wrote about his deep obsession with King's Hawaiian Rolls. I hope he's doing okay.

Every summer I receive a visit from a person I’ve never met, a person who technically doesn’t exist. Let me explain. When I took AP Literature (many moons ago) I encountered Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for the first time. I fell in love with Adichie’s detailed, perceptive prose, her humor, and most of all, Ifemelu—the confident, witty, blog-writing main character. The story follows Ifemelu as she grows up in Lagos, Nigeria and immigrates to the United States for university, eventually becoming a successful writer and moving back to Nigeria to rediscover home. It’s a coming-of-age tale, a love story, and a record of how we all evolve based on social context and age. I reread this book every June, and each time, something new resonates with me—the nerve-wracking freedom of moving to a new city, the overwhelming rush of first love, the difficulty of reconciling one’s childhood self with an emerging adult self. Rereading the book has become a means to measure how I’ve grown as a person—similar to how I marked my height in pencil on my doorframe each year as a kid. By now Ifemelu feels like a friend, and the week I spend with her each summer feels like a highly-anticipated visit during which I remember all the reasons I connected to her in the first place and discover new axes of connection (and new parts of myself). Back to reading now—Ifemelu’s only here for a few more days (246 more pages).

One word. Dance. I will dance anywhere at any time. Whether it’s at a party, a supermarket in line, my room at 3am, or even at work during selection committee (ask Kellen, he’ll vouch this), I absolutely love dancing. It’s one of the purest, most authentic ways for me to express my emotions. There’s just something about finding the rhythm in a song, and absolutely crushing the beat with movement that’s insatiable. Hip hop, afro beats, soca, bachata, dembow, kizomba, swing, I love so many different styles of dance. I come from a family of dancers, so I suppose it’s a bit of a hereditary trait. Regardless, I can guarantee you that if you see me on campus, at some point you will catch me subtly hitting a woah, woo walking across the street, or dougie-ing in line at Dunkin Donuts. Dance and pleasure go hand in hand for me, and it’s what I go to most often for fun.

I glide out on the ice in the 10-degree Vermont winter morning. I can see my breath and my fingers are already starting to go numb, but I have the biggest smile on my face. It’s the best weekend of the year—the Vermont Pond Hockey Championship. I’ve been playing hockey since I was about 4 years old; one of the very few skaters with a pony-tail sticking out of their helmet. Since then, I’ve developed friendships that have lasted well into my adult life, created memories I’ll never forget, and learned a lot about what it means to be a part of a team. This annual weekend in Vermont is the culmination of that—a chance to hang out with my best friends playing a sport that has given me so much. The joy isn’t always calculated by our win/loss record (like the year we went 0-4…ouch) but by the laughs we have and the minutes spent together. Being on the ice is an escape for me: there’s no school work, work, or personal commitments on my mind. It’s just me and the game, and the only thing on my mind is what the optimal position is to defend the net. Every time I’m on the ice I try to skate to my best ability, knowing that my hard work benefits everyone on the team and even if we lose, we’ve done our best. But I’ll be honest…it definitely feels better to win!

As I’ve grown older my interests have evolved and changed with every new fad and craze. I am what you call a “marketer’s dream”, who buys trinkets at the check-out line. From pop music, anime, cargo shorts, bowl cuts, and playing basketball at my local park, to scholarly research, work, and trying to fit a workout into my daily routine, one thing has remained constant since my childhood. While I still jam out to the top songs of the 1990s and 2000s on a weekly basis, I have never been able to say bye, bye, bye to that mouse-like critter with yellow fur, pointy ears, and red circular spots. From collecting cards, watching Ash Ketchum continually lose in big tournaments, and spending thousands of hours on their video games, Pokémon has always managed to keep my interest in one way or another since its 1996 debut. These days, you can find me out on runs and long walks while playing Pokémon Go on my way to catching them all, or on my Nintendo Switch trying to become the next Pokémon master. Now in my 30s, I get to share my love for Pokémon with my nieces who have jumped on the poke-express with open arms. At least they know what to expect to get for their birthdays and Christmas. It’s amazing to see how Pokémon has been able to captivate audiences of all ages for so many years, which is perfect for someone who is a kid at heart.

When I was recruited to do this post my first thought was, what is fun? Everyone characterizes it differently. A great example of this is SpongeBob’s idea of fun vs. Plankton’s idea of fun.*

*I mean, SpongeBob is iconic and if you haven’t applied SOME lesson from SpongeBob to your life—you’re doing it wrong.

Aside from learning life lessons through watching episodes of SpongeBob, having fun means to reach complete serenity. Activities that take my mind away from work, the news, media, etc. are things I have fun doing.

If I had to choose one that I’m loving at the moment…I’d choose walking on trails. In the Boston area, there are plenty of trails and parks to walk through on a nice day. Now, I’m not a hiker—I don’t do this on a consistent basis but it’s the perfect getaway for me.

One of my favorite trails overlooks the Neponset River. You can find people roller skating, biking, skateboarding, running or walking and taking in the scenery. I actually found this trail through one of our colleagues, Bintou (thanks Bintou!). It’s been a go-to spot whenever I need a breath of fresh air.

149 West Market St in Newark, New Jersey holds a secret gem. While Google will tell you this is the home of the local T-Mobile, I knew this as the best place to buy jewelry. In front of T-Mobile was a local vendor who sold the best fashion jewelry I know. Even when I moved out of state and went back to visit family, I always made sure I had time to find his stand. However, when I needed him most he vanished. I tried to find alternate earring vendors but they were more costly and not as stylishly captivating. Naturally, I would lose an earring here and there, so my collection continued to dwindle. At this point, I had no choice but to start learning how to make my own earrings. Part of the fun in learning to make my own earrings is that I get to express myself and my passions. One passion that I have is in sustainability. For one project, I decided to use a couple of old ripped jeans. With these jeans I made a large flower-esque pair of earrings. When I look around, all I see is inspiration for my next earring creation. So far, I have made earrings using Christmas ornaments, the book-bind of an old journal, extra braiding hair, and I even used the faux-fur pom-pom that attaches to purses. Being able to enhance my expressive style through my own earring creations has been one of my favorite pastimes.

All right, so let me set the scene. It’s like 3 am on some random Saturday during my junior year of college and I just bought two cheeseburgers from a local gas station called Sheetz (it was a thing that we did, no further questions). I came back to my dorm room, sat on the couch, and turned the TV to Cartoon Network. An episode of a show called Lupin the 3rd had just started, and everything just seemed to fall into place. I don’t think I’ve ever been that content in my life. Needless to say, I was hooked. Now, this wasn’t the first time I watched anime by any means. I grew up on Dragon Ball Z and watched a decent amount of Toonami in middle and high school. But, that was probably the moment I realized that this was my wave. From there, Adult Swim’s anime block became my nightly ritual. From Fullmetal Alchemist to Samurai Champloo , to Cowboy Bebop and Paranoia Agent , the time I would have normally dedicated to sleeping or homework, transitioned to strictly anime and homework (rip sleep). As time went on and graduation passed by, my friends all grew out of their anime phase, but I didn’t. I even wrote a blog about how binging Naruto at a nursing home got me through what could have been a really depressing part of my life. So, yea. Anime. That’s a thing I like. Now excuse me while I catch up on Tokyo Revengers .

I applied to only one college my senior year of high school. It was an art school and I wanted to go there because someone told me once that if I just focused on what I liked to do for fun, I’d always be able to find a job. I liked making art. I took oil painting lessons and painted a still life that still hangs in my grandparent’s house. I taught myself how to draw with charcoal and colored pencils. That summer, in order to put together a portfolio that would serve as my application, I would lug a big pad of paper and sit on top of the cars in the junk yard and draw them. I drew boulders in the quarry in my town with colored pencil. I opened the door of my closet and drew all the shoes on the floor. I drew the edge of my unmade bed. Once I got accepted, it turned out I didn’t like drawing or painting much anymore. Instead, I made super 8 films and wrote poems. But my friends and I had the most fun hosting dinner parties in our Brighton apartment. We’d make big trays of chicken enchiladas and homemade guacamole, we’d decorate and light candles, and pick out the perfect music soundtracks. Because we were art-school kids, these parties were visual and creative. To this day, I still have the most fun using my artistic skills to entertain friends and family, to garden, and to cook.

Still life painting by Kris Guay

In the heart of the Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota you will find a winding gravel road full of potholes that, if you’re not careful, will take the front end off your car. Cell phone reception drops immediately leaving you completely unplugged from the modern world.

A secret place awaits you there. A place where you step back in time to when people lived quieter, slower-paced lives. There, nestled back against Aspen and Pine trees sits a small, green cabin with a tin roof, an outhouse, a screened-in porch, and a babbling creek directly across the road. Electricity and running water don’t exist here. Oil lanterns and a big pot belly stove are your only sources of light and warmth. Water comes from hauling buckets from the creek and cooking is done on an original wood burning cookstove with cast iron skillets. When it rains, the water’s percussion against the tin roof instantly puts you to sleep. The swing on the porch invites voracious readers. We play board games, hike, go swimming, and sit on the porch listening to coyotes as the sun sets over the canyon.

This is my paradise, my favorite place on earth. This is where I unplug from the stresses of life and briefly forget my adulting responsibilities. The little green cabin in the middle of the forest is where I recharge, reset, and get back to the core of who I am and who I want to be.

I like to lift heavy things. For about 8 years now, I’ve been following a powerlifting program roughly similar to the publicly available StrongLifts 5×5 . What I like about lifting heavy things is that it is a combination of technical and creative, intense and enduring, and that it is both emotionally and physically exhausting. I feel more calmer, focused, and more levelheaded after lifting. I like that there is measurable progression: if you can lift more weight, or the same weight at more sets/reps, and even if I’m stalled in other parts of my personal or professional life, here I can (usually) move forward. As the essayist Alyssa Keiko wrote , “it never gets easier, you just get stronger.” Plus, I can easily pick up my mom and swing her around like a baby now, and she smiles and laughs, and that makes me happy.

I slowly make my way through the metal doors, moving slowly, as to not draw too much attention. Taking a deep breath, I remind myself of my goal—one that will involve patience and determination. With each step, I make my way toward the future and the past:

• Stonewashed denim, with frayed hems that catch in the breeze
• A sequined gown straight out of Studio 54… that would also make a splash in Dua Lipa’s latest music video
• Military inspired jackets with gleaming epaulets
• Battered concert tees of my favorite 80s bands

Suddenly, without any warning, my attention is drawn elsewhere—Italian loafers, chunky bangles, vibrant leather bags, with just a hint of irregular stitching. Then, out of nowhere, I spot her: hiding in an overstocked rolling rack, between a faux pas and my future self—the perfect dress. 50% off. In the cart she goes. Bargain shopping is not for the faint of heart, but for those willing to take the risk… the possibilities are endless.

Ever since Riley, now a 75-pound Golden Retriever puppy (see photo), arrived home on May 15, 2020, it has been full-fledged “Life with Riley” for my family and me. I am most focused on playing, training, and walking/jogging with her around Cambridge. On any morning, you can see us around Harvard Yard, Fresh Pond, or even occasionally MIT (~8 mile round trip walk). My immediate goal is to be able to get Riley to ride the Red Line and behave in the new MIT Admissions Office. Another goal is to have her certified as an MIT Puppy Lab dog.

Training Riley has not been easy as she normally has full freedom to roam in the house and yard. I have enough bite/scratch marks to prove it. I have witnessed her chase a wild turkey up Littauer Center’s roof (can provide video upon request). Some of Riley’s acquaintances almost got Riley into trouble. Cooper (a 90-pound Golden) stole a big juicy bagel sandwich from a surprised guy up the pedestal on Widener Library. Luckily Riley was too slow to follow the full operation.

While I have been training Riley (she understands “pre-flight check”, “get off me”, “sit” and “crate”), she has also been training me. I understand when she needs to go, when she is hungry, and when she doesn’t want to return home. An unexpected side effect of training Riley has been that she gained 10 extra pounds from all the rewards that I have to give her.

Note: while participants were required to adhere to the same word limit as the MIT application, I allowed them to submit photos along with their responses. On the actual MIT application, images cannot be included with short essay responses.

• I regularly think about an applicant from years ago who wrote about his deep obsession with King's Hawaiian Rolls. I hope he's doing okay. ⁠ back to text ↑

Share this post

• Share on Twitter
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Facebook
• Share by Email
• Subscribe to the RSS Feed