An Experiment in Busyness

By Logan Richardson

Shortly after beginning my fellows year, I developed a suspicion of the astounding efficiency of the professional NoVa/DC lifestyle.

Lunch is short, often used for extra work or a meeting. Schedules are rigid. Events start when they say they're going to start. Car rides are for making important phone calls. A meetup with an old friend is also a crucial networking opportunity. It seems many people have a second workday that begins after dinner time, when the tasks switch to a personal project or a further education.

I grew up in a sleepy lakeside town in Upstate New York. Dinners were long and the actual eating of food made up only the first quarter of meal time. In my family, work was important and we did it well, but it always seemed to serve more as something to schedule our real lives around: campfires and boating in the summer, snowy hikes and ski trips in the winter.

College brought an increased burden of work, but not much of an increase in efficiency. As a result, I forfeited emotional stability and any chance of a full night of sleep. This seems to be a somewhat universal college experience.

But when I moved to Northern Virginia and began fellows, things changed. I've met countless very busy people who seem to be quite content. Their calendars are full, but elegantly optimized. They don't share the dreary-eyed, longsuffering expression I became so used to seeing in the faces of my fellow college students. They are optimistic and highly engaged in their work.

The stark dichotomy in my head between the busy and the happy began to blur a bit. No doubt I've met some folks who are truly burnt out and are in deep need of a change of lifestyle, as well as some who are content to take it slow as the rest of the city rushes past them, but even more than those types, I've met people with an astonishing amount on their plates who seem to have worked out a way to thrive with it.

So, my suspicion of the DMV busyness waned a bit, and I decided to undertake an experiment. For a time, I would assimilate to my surroundings, making a metaphorical merge into the express lane. Would it be worth the fee?

I began rigorous personal studies to learn new skills for my job in the evenings after work and during spare time on the weekends. I got rid of the night-before habit I had carried with me from college, and began my seminary assignments weeks in advance. I upped my weekly running mileage by 30%. I even limited myself to a single snooze each morning (a goal my high school self would have laughed at as utopic).

Here is what I discovered: I began to enjoy more of the benefits of existing as a machine, and missed out on some of the joys of being a human. The language of machine may sound like criticism, but I don't entirely mean it as such. It turns out machines don't panic because they're stressed. I discovered the paradoxical fact that I could actually do more and be less anxious, if I kept myself to a more strict schedule. I felt the dread of procrastination float away, while accomplishing more than I ever had before. I began to measure the success of a day, not by how good I felt throughout it, but by whether I was able to take care of the responsibilities that were on my to-do list that morning. I slept well at night, knowing I had done everything I needed to do in a day. I stopped relying on the fear of failure to motivate me to work harder, and simply rested in the fact that, as long as I stuck to my schedule and checked all the boxes, I'd be in a good place.

Other things changed as well. I stopped cooking. Protein shakes and takeout earned a growing portion of my diet. I almost entirely stopped writing poetry (a form my procrastination often takes). Any chance I had to go for a walk or a hike was replaced with a run, otherwise I'd never hit my target mileage. More days than not, my guitar, a primary device of distraction, sat lonely in the corner of my room. I found myself ending each day with a steady sense of either mild disappointment at not hitting all my goals, or more often, a general satisfaction in my productivity—a far cry from the bliss or agony that seemed to arrive almost every night of college.

I'm tempted to end with an oversimplified conclusion that sounds like "Well, I guess that means we just need balance in life." But doing that would suggest that I'm satisfied with that conclusion, and I am not. So my experiment continues. I'm not firing at quite the speed I was two months ago, but overall, I am accomplishing a lot more and feeling and expressing a lot less than I have in the past. For now, I'll conclude by saying that there seems to be an inherent tension between efficiency and the little joys that spring up in the margins of an inefficient life. A pristine sidewalk doesn't have any cracks for flowers to sprout up out of.

Logan Richardson is a member of the Capital Fellows class of 2024-25. He is from Jamestown, NY, and is a graduate of Grove City College. This year, he is working at Everfox in Herndon, VA.

Pictures From The Week

Remote workers' meetup in the Folger Shakespeare Library

Chefs labor over the formidable "Mashed Potato and Dino-nugget Volcano"

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About Capital Fellows. Capital Fellows is an advanced leadership and discipleship program for recent college graduates. Through graduate courses, a paid internship, one-on-one mentoring, and many leadership and community service opportunities, fellows develop and apply their gifts in real-world situations while learning to integrate a Christian worldview into all areas of life. Capital Fellows is a unique opportunity to live and work in the Washington DC area and to be an active member of a supportive community that seeks to serve the city with the love of Christ. It is also a unique opportunity to get hands-on experience in the workplace while deeply exploring God’s design for us as workers and contributors to human flourishing.

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The Capital Fellows are digging into deep aspects of story in this season in Dr. Bill Clark’s class. Questions like: Who am I? Where am I from? How do I make sense of my story in the larger story of the Gospel and the world? These can be hard things to process. Please pray that the Fellows will sense God's deep, deep love for them as they venture into these tender areas. Please pray that the Fellows would serve and support each other well as they explore these things together. Ultimately, may they find themselves deeply rooted in Christ and in the community of His people, the Church.

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