Apathy's A Tragedy And Boredom Is A Crime

How organizations tend to work.

So as not to belabor the point, first off, the quote in the title is from a Bo Burnham song off his last special (which is good). As for the “boredom is a crime” part, he’s describing the Internet in the song he sings, but it could just as easily be about offices, where busy is a form of currency and the most common response to “How are you?” or “How are things?” is “Slammed!”

This is all paradoxical as hell, of course, because businesses are supposed to be about productivity, innovation, and returns, right? In reality businesses are mostly about cost containment, quests for relevance, self-flagellation, and the like, but let’s ignore that for now. Busy has never meant productive. We all know that. It’s just a question of how much we can admit it.

Most people honestly aren’t that busy, but they hide behind it for a variety of different reasons.