Moaning about one's schedule has become, for some, a mark of social status. We're not speaking here about the kind of busyness associated with scraping by near the poverty line, of course, but rather the kind associated with lives of material privilege. For instance, when you ask a colleague for assistance, he/she may reply like this:"I would like to help but cannot. I am desperately trying to finish a screenplay and a talk I need to give in Milan." Let's call this phenomenon 'busy-bragging'.
The interesting but thorny thing about busy-bragging is that most of us who engage in it aren't doing it consciously to impress others. Those busy feelings are absolutely real. That's why it is also known as busyness epidemic.
Data on leisure time suggests we’re not much busier than we were, yet we feel busier, partly because – for “knowledge workers”, anyway – there’s no limit to the number of emails we can get, the demands that can be made of us, or the hours of the day we can be in touch with the office. Work feels infinite, but our capacities are finite, therefore overwhelm is inevitable.