Time Lords vs. The Poors: Why The "I'm Just Too Busy" Flex Needs to Die Already
Look, I get it. You’re a Very Important Person. You have back-to-back meetings about synergy, you’re optimizing your gut biome with a $14k carnivore diet, and you somehow found the bandwidth to curate a three-hour playlist for your morning "bio-hacking" routine. You are, in your own words, “so slammed” that you can barely breathe. And you know what? I don’t give a single, solitary shit.
We need to have a national intervention about the modern obsession with "busyness." It’s the new flex. It’s the social currency of the upper-middle class. You’re not busy. You’re just bad at saying "no" and you’re addicted to the dopamine hit of performative exhaustion. It’s the 2024 equivalent of wearing a corset so tight you pass out—except instead of a tiny waist, you’re showing off your overpriced calendar app and your inability to respond to a text within three business days.
The entire discourse around "time" has been hijacked by people who have so much of it that they have to manufacture scarcity to feel important. Let’s call it what it is: **Time-Flexing.**
You see it everywhere. It’s the "Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been so crazy busy" text that takes three seconds to type. It’s the LinkedIn post about "hustle culture" written by someone who hasn't touched a mop in a decade. It’s your friend who RSVPs "maybe" to your birthday party because they have to "see how their calendar looks," as if they’re the Secretary of State negotiating a peace treaty instead of deciding between tacos or a frozen pizza on a Tuesday night.
Newsflash, Karen: Being "busy" is not a personality trait. It’s a choice, a privilege, and often, a lie.
Let’s break down the hierarchy of this nonsense. There are three distinct types of "Time Lords" in our society, and they all need a reality check.
**Type 1: The Performative Over-Scheduler**
This is the person who treats their Google Calendar like a flex tape. They have "deep work" blocks, "power naps," and "ideation sessions." They talk about "time blocking" like they discovered fire. Meanwhile, they’re spending 45 minutes a day deleting "urgent" emails from their boss that are just "Are you free for a 5-minute chat?" They are drowning in a puddle of their own making. They are the main character of a melodrama where the villain is a 30-minute meeting that could have been an email. Buddy, you are not a CEO of a Fortune 500. You are a middle manager who spent an hour reorganizing your Notion board. Calm down.
**Type 2: The "Messy" Time Aristocrat**
This one is more insidious. This is the person who is "always running late" and uses it as a power move. They stroll into the coffee shop 20 minutes late, apologizing with a "Traffic was a nightmare" while sipping a latte they clearly had time to buy elsewhere. They are the ones who say "Time is just a construct, man" while you’ve been waiting for them for 45 minutes. No, time is not a construct. Time is the 15 minutes of my lunch break I’ll never get back because you wanted to "be spontaneous." You’re not chaotic and free-spirited. You’re just an asshole with no respect for other people’s schedules. The cosmic joke is that these people usually have the least amount of actual responsibility. They are the worst.
**Type 3: The "I’m So Fucking Busy" CEO of Nothing**
This is the crown jewel of the time-flexing pyramid. This is the person who acts like they are running a multi-national corporation when they are, in fact, running a small Etsy shop selling resin ashtrays. They will reply to a simple question with, "I’m in the middle of a massive pivot right now, let me circle back on that." Sir, you are in your childhood bedroom trying to decide between two shades of glitter. You are not pivoting. You are procrastinating. Your time is not more valuable than mine because you’ve read two books on "Atomic Habits." You have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé, and she’s not using them to text "I’ll get back to you next quarter."
The real kicker? The people who are *actually* time-poor—the single parent working two jobs, the nurse pulling 16-hour shifts, the gig worker driving for DoorDash at 2 AM—they don’t talk about being busy. They are just tired. They don’t have the luxury of curating a busy aesthetic. They are living the reality. The rest of you are just cosplaying as overworked.
And don't even get me started on the "Time Debt" people throw around. "I need to pay myself first." "I’m setting boundaries." Cool story. I’m setting a boundary with you right now. It’s called leaving your text on read for three days because I’m "so busy" dealing with your nonsense.
The worst part? We all play along. We all nod when someone says they "can’t find 5 minutes for a coffee" while simultaneously watching them post 14 Instagram stories about their "self-care Sunday." You have time. You just don’t have time for *me*. And that’s fine. But don’t dress it up as some noble struggle against the tyranny of the clock. You’re just rude.
So here’s my proposal: A moratorium on complaining about being busy. A full ban. You want to talk about your schedule? Fine. Show me your bank account. Show me your actual output. Show me the evidence that you are doing something more important than doom-scrolling and avoiding your family.
Otherwise, shut up, put your phone down, and realize
Final Thoughts
After decades of chasing deadlines and measuring my life in increments of minutes, I’ve come to see time less as a finite resource to be managed and more as a strange, elastic medium—one that expands with wonder and contracts under boredom. The true journalistic crime, I believe, isn’t running out of time, but mistaking its passage for its value. In the end, what we call "time" is just the shadow our actions cast on the future, and the best story we can tell is the one that makes that shadow worth falling.