HBR's 10 Must Reads on Building a Great Culture, Updated and Expanded (featuring "What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety" by Amy C. Edmondson and Michaela J. Kerrissey)

9

Beware a Culture of Busyness

by Adam Waytz

In my 2019 book, The Power of Human, I recount an anecdote about a man who immigrated to the United States and soon came to believe that the word “busy” meant “good” because when he asked people, “How are you doing?” they often responded, “Busy.” Nora Rosendahl, the chief operating officer of the performance coaching firm Hintsa, discovered the same thing when she conducted a small social experiment by documenting answers to the question “How are you?” over the course of a week. By her count, nearly eight out of 10 people said, “Busy.”

Academic research suggests that our days are becoming increasingly jam-packed. One analysis of holiday letters indicates that references to “crazy schedules” have ...