How busy your life is?

It was 8am and I was on a train to London with my daughter. We were going to visit a dear friend for a couple of days. We were both excited, happy and enjoying our holidays. 

I was on the zen mood, even though we had just missed the first train for purely distraction. I was replying messages on my WhatsApp and didn’t realise the train was departing. I know, it is incredibly stupid, but it happened and after a couple minutes of stress, my daughter and I just laughed about it. 

She was listening to music and I was reading a book when I noticed that something was pulling me out of my reading every now and then. It was the sound of the keyboard from the computer in front of me.

The gentleman in front of me was typing on his laptop furiously with his two fingers. At this point I am paying close attention to him. He must be on his 50s, was dressed up and had all his stuff spread on the table as if he was in the office. 

I get it. I’ve been there. When I was relocating from London to Birmingham, four years ago, I was on train every week and also did some work on the road. It was actually an extra job I was doing that time. A video editing for a friend. He wanted to surprise his best friend who was getting married and asked me if I could put some videos and pictures together in a nice short editing. I couldn’t say no, so I used my 90 minutes on the train to do it. 

Did I have to do it this way? Was I so busy that I couldn’t accommodate this extra task in my normal hours, let’s say in the evening? I could have probably had it done during my spear time and just enjoyed the trip to listen some music, meditate or take a nap. But, no... We are conditioned to believe that if we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time, we are not being productive, and productive people are always busy, right?. Wrong again. Productive people have routine and manage their time efficiently.

Those who think that doing extra hours is being productive should review their priorities. Being snowed of work all the time usually indicates that you are not managing your time correctly.

I have no idea what was going on in this man’s life for him to think that typing that report or responding emails during the train trip was a good idea. He might have had a horrible day before, someone died or is seriously ill, or he wasn’t expected to be on the train today. I don’t know and it’s none of my business after all. 

There are several reasons why people do what they do, but I hope it is not because he feels that he cannot have the luxury of doing nothing for a couple hours. This would be sad and a real waste of a valuable time. Time to reflect, time to relax, time to read a book, time to just be with himself. 

I hope he is fine.