Ask someone how they are and a large number will answer: busy. It is said the way people used to say fine — automatically, and with a faint note of pride.
Busy is a description of a schedule. It has become a description of a person, and worse, a kind of credential. To be unbusy is to look as though nobody needs you.
But busyness measures volume, not value. A day can be entirely full and entirely beside the point. Most of us have had weeks like that, and we know it at the time.
The harder question is not what did I get through but what was worth getting through. Those are very different lists, and only one of them is usually on the calendar.
An unhurried hour is not laziness. Sometimes it is the only part of the day that was actually yours.
