My old life is very different from the one I lead now. In my old life, from the moment my day started until well after my family finished dinner, my calendar was color-coded non-stop with calls and meetings. I was often late to calls because I didn’t have time to go to the bathroom in between one call and the next one. And if I wasn’t on calls or in meetings, I was responding to hundreds of emails. During the week I was usually up until well after midnight trying to get my inbox (my to-do list) down to a single page, a signal I used to tell myself meant that I had it all under control.

Weekends were not my own either. Neither were vacations. I checked email obsessively no matter what I was doing, and it was the last thing I did before going to sleep. People called me every day of the week, at any hour. While I’d occasionally get “sorry to bother you during family time,” such comments were usually perfunctory.

I remember how deeply disappointed I was when airlines installed WiFi on their planes—because, before that happened, flying had been my only escape from email (and calls). Even though it stunk to land and have 300 emails with the subject line “plz call me,” it was worth it to have those 2-4 hours of peace. Taking a deposition or going to court had similar advantages: at least no one would be expecting me to check my phone.

These days, my life is no longer like that. I won’t let it. I think about being busy differently than I used to.

Our Culture of Busyness

I was hardly alone in my work experience. Our culture glorifies “the hustle,” and busyness is a status symbol. And let’s face it, it just feels good to get things done. In her book Corporate Rehab Jennie Blumenthal talks about how getting things done—and the attagirls that come with getting things done—is a type of addiction. I absolutely found that to be true.

By now most of us know that being “busy” at work is not the same as being productive. In fact, being busy will drain you of energy necessary to do work that requires more creativity—work that is more likely to get you recognized and promoted. And we know that, contrary to what women believed for years, we can’t truly multitask.

But even if we know these things, our workplaces are rarely built around this type of awareness. In many legal workplaces, being “busy” is part of the culture. Even if you have no desire to answer non-urgent calls on the weekend, you’re likely going to do it if those at the top do it. Many years ago a partner circulated Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, a great book that gets into many of the issues surrounding the conflict between busyness and creativity. I loved reading it, but our workplace culture was not designed to implement its recommendations. You can’t do “deep work” when you’re expected to be on-call twenty-four hours a day. As Adam Waytz explains in the Harvard Business Review:

If short, if you work at a place that values busyness, it can be costly—to the organization and to you.

How Busyness Serves—and Doesn’t Serve—Women Lawyers

All of the above being said, I think busyness serves women lawyers in additional ways, good and bad. Staying busy at work can take your mind off things that are bothering you. You get a sense of accomplishment from crossing off things on your to-do list, and you feel like you have things under control.

However, while we can use busyness to protect ourselves, it also keeps us from looking at things we might not otherwise want to see. Saying you’re “busy” is socially acceptable way of excusing yourself from more difficult conversations. It’s far easier to say you’re too busy than it is to say that you’ve overworked, understaffed, or otherwise on the verge of burnout. And it’s far easier to say you’re busy than to set boundaries with those around you. Sometimes I said I was busy rather than communicating that I didn’t think it was a productive use of my time to have yet another long call about a subject that had been beaten to death. I didn’t set out to consciously deceive anyone: it was just easier to say I was “busy” than deal with a difficult subject.

While busyness undoubtedly has a place in the workplace by protecting us from feeling out of control or uncomfortable emotions, being busy rarely serves our ultimate goals. While it may have made me feel productive at the end of a single day, it didn’t allow me to gain actual control over my life. Even worse, being busy permitted me to avoid things I should have confronted.

How sad is it that I welcomed a cross country flight to avoid email? Wouldn’t it have been better if I could have asked people who sent me too many emails to limit the number I received during the day? I could have asked not to be copied on drafts or CYA emails, or I could have set up a call when the replies to all threatened to overtake my inbox. In short, there were so many better ways to deal with issues than a dismissive—and unhelpful—”I’m busy.”

If you’re finding yourself saying you’re busy a lot, ask yourself how that’s serving you. It’s okay to use it to get a temporary retrieve—all of us do—but it’s probably not fixing bigger problems.

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