It's not Busyness but Bandwidth

Oliver Burkeman asks if our problem with busyness is not that we don't have the time - but rather we literally do not have the head space.

There's a ritual of the modern workplace - one you've heard and most likely indulged in yourself.

It's the call and response we go through when you ask a workmate how they're doing:

"Busy!" "So busy." "mentally busy."

It is pretty obviously a boast disguised as a complaint.

And our simultaneously grim and half chuckled reply comes as a kind of congratulation:

"Ha, better than the opposite." When did we start doing that?

Producer: Peter McManus

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2016.

Show less