“So many people work so hard and achieve so little.”
The Busy Trap
I heard this quote on a podcast delivered by George Mack and it stuck with me.
We are all trying to make ourselves busy.
And I don’t know about you,
But I put certain celebrities on a pedestal who seem like they have mastered being busy,
They are actually productive.
People like Mark Wahlberg who famously went viral for posting his daily routine which included waking up at 2:30am and having every half hour of the day mapped out,
Even including a designated slot to spend time with his kids,
Are often looked at with superhuman awe.
Perhaps we wouldn’t want that life for ourselves,
But I do think there is a sense of deference that we apply to these masterfully busy people.
Their superhuman work ethic is why they are rich and successful and my comparative laziness is why I am not.
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Effectiveness Vs Efficiency
Whilst hard work and conscientiousness are commendable qualities,
They are next to pointless without the work being effective.
This relates to the common confusion between effectiveness and efficiency.
Which I wrote about previously in a newsletter (https://joelfreedman.substack.com/p/what-you-do-is-greater-than-how-you).
In a sentence,
Efficiency is doing whatever you are doing well whereas effectiveness is doing the right thing.
I don’t want your teenager to read this and think that they do not need to work hard.
Working hard is a skill that is absolutely worth developing.
But in all honesty I sympathise with why it is so hard to start,
And equally hard to keep going with revision or anything for that matter,
If you know that what you are doing is ineffective.
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The quote “so many people work so hard and achieve so little,” scares me a little bit.
It feels like a wake up call.
Where I need to be more intentional with my choices.
You can work super hard and feel like you are making lots of progress,
But if you are misaligned,
Then what you are doing might not have any meaning outside of the work itself.
On the other hand,
This quote makes me feel a bit more comfortable in my sometimes busy, sometimes lazy life.
I personally would prefer to work hard on the things that I feel l want to,
Largely when I want to,
(Of course, you sometimes have to do things that you don’t want to do, like revision),
Then work so hard and lose sight of where I want to go.
This quote makes me feel like watching Netflix is okay,
Which it is!
As long as when you are working on something that matters to you,
(Like your GCSEs),
You are effective.
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To conclude I will add one final quote from Tim Kreider:
“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.”
Again, this quote makes me feel calmer.
Regardless of if you are Mark Wahlberg or a GCSE student trying your best to stick to a revision timetable,
One life doesn’t intrinsically have more meaning than the other,
Working hard for the purpose of not wanting to sit with yourself when you are not working hard seems like an unenviable problem to have.
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My apologies for the overly philosophical newsletter today,
If it is not what you like reading and you just want some straight revision tips I will be sure to satisfy your desire in the coming weeks.
But my hope is some teenagers who feel a bit lost can take the insights from people far more intelligent than me,
And feel less worthless because they are not always working hard.
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I hope you all have a great week ahead,
Best wishes,
Joel