Volume 2 · The Discipline of Hours · Essay 42

Busyness Bias

Nobody wakes up and chooses a bias. Busyness Bias simply moves in, like a relative who never formally arrived.

You cannot delete a bias, any more than you can delete hunger. What you can do is build a small checkpoint — a pause, a question, a second opinion — at the exact place where the bias usually collects its toll.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Watch the Mumbai local at 8:47 a.m. Nobody in that compartment is lazy. Yet by evening, half the day's resolve has leaked out through small negotiations: one more chai, one more scroll, one more tomorrow.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. That is all. A small tool, honestly kept, beats a large one admired.