I’m old enough to remember a time when I could phone my best friend and ask her to meet up the next evening, and odds were, she’d be free. These days, if I don’t remember to make plans two weeks in advance, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell anyone will have time. People are working, exercising, attending book clubs, yoga, social obligations.

None of these are bad things, right? It’s just, there seems to be a lot of it going on. Even when someone sets out with the intention to slow down a little, they often don’t manage or end up postponing it indefinitely to “in a month or two”.

In this article, I’d like to explore what exactly is keeping us so busy.

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We ought to have more time, not less

Let’s dial back a little and think about life, say, 120 years ago. People didn’t have modern conveniences such as washing machines. There was a lot less convenience food, never mind food processors and other electric kitchen helpers. Lawn mowers? Nah. Cars, fast trains – planes to get around in record time? None of it.

If people wanted to talk to someone, they had to physically meet them. If they wanted to see a play, a concert, or later on, a movie, they had to physically go to the event – there was no TV and definitely no internet. These things took up more time than sitting on the sofa and clicking a YouTube or Netflix link.

Logically, we should have loads of free time. So why don’t we?

Why people are rushed off their feet

If we’re being honest, we not only should, but could have more time. If we went home from work on time every day and did nothing but the necessary upkeep of our homes and ourselves, we would have time.

• Sleep: 8 hours

• Work: 8 hours, plus 2 for getting ready/commuting

• Housework: 2 hours

We’ll leave out the extra time it costs to look after small children, because that’s a temporary stage in a life. Also, most of my clients are either childless or at an age where children are grown and have moved out.

This would leave a whopping four hours every single day, in which to meet friends and/or pursue our passions. And yet, show me someone who has four hours (or even two) a day at their disposal. I’ll wait here.

The uncomfortable truth is, what’s keeping us busy is… ourselves. And there is a solid reason why we do this, both in our work lives and in the time that should be free or “leisure”. That reason is stress addiction.

I’ve spoken and written about stress addiction before. To sum it up, adrenaline makes us “high” and we get so used to this feeling that we crave it even while we exhaust ourselves and long for peace. Basically, everyone’s rushed off their feet because on some level, they choose to be.

So far, so good. If you’ve followed my work for a while, you’ve heard variations of the above before. What’s new though is that I did some in-depth research of academic articles and studies, to answer the question why we became addicted to stress in the first place.  

The reason why we’re junkies

It turns out that behind most addiction is deep trauma. Trauma can come from personal experiences, but it can also be passed on from our ancestors.

Yes, you read that correctly. There is fairly extensive proof by now that trauma can be inherited from our parents and grandparents, not just passed on through “the victim becoming the perpetrator”, no, but also through our genes.

There are many forms of collective trauma that we have inherited: War trauma, political upheaval, famine, pandemics (think the Plague rather than Covid, since we’re talking about history here) … the list goes on. One type of collective trauma that is fairly universal is related to work.

It turns out that our idea of the hardworking medieval farmers was a little one-dimensional. Many scholars such as the German economist Holger Heide have collected evidence from all over the world, proving the people used to work a lot less and in a much less structured way than we do today. Farmers were busy during harvest time, but even then they took extensive breaks during the day. Craftspeople in the cities often had Sundays and Mondays off (one saying was “Sundays are for family, Mondays are for friends”) and up to 100 holidays a year.

Then, industrialisation required people to increasingly work away from their homes and according to strict schedules. This was so against human nature that it had to be pushed through with fairly drastic measures, including substantial threats and violence. Scholars have shown how this has left deep scars in our collective psyche and significantly shaped our world to this day.

Effects of this collective trauma

For many generations now, we have lived with and internalised this collective trauma. Its effects are everywhere, but because we don’t know anything else, we think these things are normal. Here are a few examples.

• The “working hard” myth. I will argue that nobody is completely immune to this. We worship hard work, and it’s incredibly difficult to admit it if you do anything else. I still feel guilty and as though people will look at me like a lazy slacker. Which brings me to…

• Feeling lazy when we’re not busy. We have this crazy need to fill every minute of every day with activity. This is not human, not healthy, and frankly, it’s killing us. It only feels so normal because we’re traumatised!

• Our inability to rest. Lots of people nowadays feel guilty for taking breaks or resting. They’ll show up at work if they’re sick (and are expected to). They make sure that their “leisure” time is filled with activities, too. Sitting still and doing nothing is akin to torture because at some point in our history, idleness might have meant beatings, starvation, even death.

• Mental health breakdown. Obviously, mental health problems can have a myriad of different causes, but one reason why they’re so particularly prevalent in our modern society – even in the absence of physical threat such as famine, war etc. – is this collective trauma.

• Addiction. Substance abuse and compulsive behaviours are rampant in our society. Stress addiction is just one more. Heide actually speaks of ‘work addiction’, and it’s expressed in people saying things like: “If I didn’t work, I’d be bored”, people voluntarily working excessive overtime hours, and the fact that retirees often die fairly quickly because they no longer feel useful.

The way out

In fact, this last point was addressed in a TED Ideas article that made me absolutely furious. Or rather, the suggestion in the article is correct: If people didn’t retire, they wouldn’t have to deal with the decline that tends to follow the retreat from income-producing work.

However, I have a different suggestion. How about we base our self-worth and sense of self on something other than earning money? How about we create a life of passion and purpose outside of our jobs? We won’t have to fear retirement if we have a fulfilled life and are excited about having even more time to do all the things we love.

Maybe this’ll show you why my work is much more than “making time for hobbies”. This shift is life-saving. We need to heal from our collective trauma and offer real alternatives to stress and work addiction; otherwise, we’ll remain in its grip forever, unhappy, burnt out, and unable to shake the nagging feeling that life ought to be about something more.