I’ve been as guilty of these loaded responses as anyone. My "busy” replies to my boyfriend’s inquiries about how I am have gradually begun to irritate him. "Busy,” he claims, is an impolite and improper response to a polite and proper question that leaves the inquirer in a conversational cul-de-sac.

Perhaps he’s right. But no one, it seems, is immune. The other day I interviewed an A-list actress. After we’d sat down, we exchanged niceties. I expect you can guess how she was when I asked her.

Indeed, from FTSE 100 CEOs to students, stay-at-home mothers and young professionals, a proclamation of busyness is an almost universal reply to the question, "How are you?” So why have we all joined the cult of busy?

"Between work, ferrying my children about, sorting out things in the house and organising my husband, I really do feel I am very busy, even though I don’t work in an office,” explains my friend Emma, 38, who has two children aged eight and 10 and runs a small business from home. "Five years ago I had the same amount of responsibility but didn’t feel like this. Part of me blames social media. Checking it has started to feel like an essential part of my day, when it’s really not.

"Weekends make me more tired than the week. I force myself to go to the gym as that’s what you’re supposed to do. I try to make supper from a recipe that uses 10 ingredients I have to source from outer space. There are plays you’re meant to see, books you must read. Then there’s the maintenance you’re meant to do: leg waxing, hair colouring. Sometimes I feel just looking presentable is a full-time job.”

As a mother with her own business, perhaps it’s not surprising Emma feels busy. But Coralie, 32, another friend who is single and works in advertising, feels the same. "I really do feel as if I am flat out,” she says, "even though I don’t have to work particularly ridiculous hours.”

Her industry is highly pressurised, so as well as spending her daily commute catching up with emails, Coralie also checks them at least twice after work. If she wakes up in the night she’ll check them then too. Then there’s social media. She Tweets while watching television and says she’s "constantly” on Instagram, leaving her little time to decompress.

Even formerly fun pursuits are chalked up in the "chore” category. "I treat dating a bit like a job,” she adds. "Tinder is a 24/7 pursuit. Then there’s replying to emails from friends. I sometimes have horrendous guilt that I haven’t replied. I constantly feel there are things I need to be on top of that I’m not.”

Contrary to what we may feel, Britons are not working longer hours than ever. Figures released in 2011 by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed Britain was about middle in the European league table: full-time employees clock up an average of 36.3 hours per week (Greeks and Austrians, at the top of the table, work an average of 43.7 hours). And we’re working fewer hours than we did a generation ago: in 1995 Britons put in an average of 38.2 hours per week.

Perhaps the reason we feel so busy is the way we apportion our time. A recent study by the communications regulator Ofcom found that over a typical 24-hour period we spend more time on media devices than we do asleep (eight hours and 41 minutes versus eight hours and 21 minutes). It also found the average Briton spends four hours a day watching television. Working parents have more "quality” time with their children than 40 years ago: fathers spend 35 minutes daily (up from five minutes in 1974), mothers an hour (up from 15 minutes).

But where a big disparity arises is in the division of labour in the home. While it’s down from the 44 hours per week women spent cleaning the home in the 1960s, we still spend an average of 11.5 hours doing housework each week, while men put in six, according to a recent study commissioned by Woman’s Hour. That survey revealed women’s key tasks are cooking, changing sheets and cleaning the loo – chores that aren’t really aided by the technical revolution that promised to free us from such tyranny.

"Many of us are genuinely time-poor in modern life,” says Amanda Hills, a London-based psychologist and lecturer, who says "financial pressures and the growing cost of living” are to blame. "Many of us have to work incredibly hard just to keep our heads above water. But there are plenty of other people out there whose so-called busyness involves spending a lot of time on social media, on texting, emailing, Googling, online shopping… activities that are not only not a priority but also not really related to work. Twenty years ago, people didn’t phone their partners at work unless it was an emergency. Now we’re connected 24 hours a day, and there’s this idea that it is acceptable to disturb others all the time.”

The Channel 4 presenter and freelance journalist Rebecca Seal can identify with this. She and her partner, Steve, a photographer, also run a consultancy business from their home. She says they suffered from the "work-creep” that began to dominate their lives.

"There is a status of sorts that comes with describing yourself as ‘super busy’ and, for a while, I was one of those people,” she says. "I felt I should try to fit as much into my life as possible and, as I was freelance, I believed I should work like a demon. The effects were startling. I compromised so much – not seeing friends or making time for family. It was as if I looked up from my desk and six months had passed. Steve working from home too meant that on the rare occasions one of us wasn’t toiling away, we’d talk about work. Then I realised I’d had enough. It was ridiculous. At 10pm, no one expects you to answer emails – nothing is really that urgent. So Steve and I decided to restructure our approach to work, like not talking about work before breakfast or after 8pm. Sounds simple, but our relationship has benefited massively.”

But for some, constantly telling others how busy they are is more about competitiveness than genuine time-starvation. "The ‘I’m really busy I can’t stop’ attitude is, for lots of people, a way of keeping up the appearance of being successful and in demand,” says Hills. "It’s also something of a mask. Making out you’re too busy to interact properly, even for a cursory conversation, prevents that person from having to engage with another in a meaningful way, which could be the desired effect.”

A constant need to emphasise a packed schedule, says Hills, is also related to insecurity. Just as we perceive kudos and popularity in being busy, we read the opposite into an empty diary: an absence of work meetings or plans must mean we’re failures in our careers. An empty social diary only serves to propagate the whole Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) epidemic so prevalent in modern culture. Instead of seeing empty evenings as a reprieve from the pace of modern life, for the insecure person an absence of plans serves to fuel suspicions around their unpopularity: no one wants to hang out with them; they’re somehow worthless.

Of course, these assumptions aren’t true. Indeed, while the average person may think their company would prefer them to work all hours, in some quarters the opposite idea is taking hold. If you email someone at the Daimler car company while they’re on holiday, for instance, you’ll receive a reply saying your message will be deleted so the employee doesn’t return to a full in-box. Volkswagen’s email servers are turned off during non-work hours, while many French workers are told to ignore emails that arrive when they aren’t in the office.

There is much to be said for such stress-busting tactics. The brain reacts to stress by releasing the hormone cortisol, too much of which is detrimental to health. But Ashley Grossman, professor of endocrinology at the University of Oxford, cautions that being busy – a state we choose – is not the same as being stressed by events outside our control, and only the latter has an effect on cortisol levels.

"The stress that elevates cortisol is when you feel you cannot cope and there is nothing you can do about it,” he says. "For example, one could say the high-earning chief executive of a large company who is constantly fielding calls on their mobile is busy, while the single mother living at the top of a tower block who’s had her benefits cut is stressed… When you’re in a stressful situation for a short period – say, you’re up against a deadline – your cortisol level will go up, but when that event is over it will come back down. But ongoing stress can cause cortisol levels to become chronically elevated. This leads to weight gain, especially around the tummy, it will raise blood pressure and increase cholesterol – the elements that contribute to a condition we call metabolic syndrome. If left unchecked, eventually conditions can lead to heart disease or diabetes.”

(telegraph.co.uk)

ANN.Az