Ah, that sublime lament of “I’m overwhelmed, I don’t have time“… The global hit of the year, performed with such conviction by virtuosos of excuses that we wonder why they haven’t yet received an Oscar for best dramatic performance in the “Imaginary Victims of Overwork” category. Their interpretation is so poignant, so authentic, that we might almost shed a tear – if we weren’t busy spotting them, two hours later, deep in meditation in front of kitten videos.
Enough of this laughable comedy! We see you, you know. Do you honestly think you’re convincing us that your existence is a perpetual tornado of appointments on which the very survival of humanity depends? That your calendar rivals that of a president in the midst of a diplomatic crisis? Seriously? You have time, let’s not kid ourselves.
Yes, I’m talking to YOU. YOU who just sacrificed twenty precious minutes of your supposedly “minute-by-minute” life contemplating a parrot butchering Celine Dion on TikTok, or scrolling through your Instagram screen with the frenzy of an archaeologist convinced that the secret to immortality lies between two advertisements for revolutionary socks.
You know what? You’re not overwhelmed. You’re just an artist in the Olympic discipline of perverse procrastination. Congratulations, you deserve a gold medal!
NO! You don’t lack time. You’re simply a tactical genius of selective priority management. It’s fascinating how your schedule, supposedly impenetrable, miraculously knows how to clear up for “just one episode” of Netflix that transforms into an entire season… but remains hermetically sealed against that report that’s been rotting in your inbox for a month.
You’re the gold medalist of work dilution, perfectly applying the famous Parkinson’s Law, that diabolical principle which stipulates that a task will expand precisely to fill all the time you allocate to it. You have two hours to respond to a simple email? Bravo, you will indeed devote two full hours to it… composed of 2% reflection and 98% perfectly justifiable distractions: checking the weather three times, monitoring the minute-by-minute evolution of traffic jams you won’t be taking, and of course, responding to messages completely unrelated to your work but of “ca-pi-tal urgency.”
Procrastinating, for some, isn’t simple laziness, it’s just a sophisticated existential strategy. Because by continually postponing the inevitable, there’s always that tiny possibility that a miracle will occur: that the task becomes obsolete, that an alien invasion opportunely renders it all insignificant, or more likely that an exasperated-to-the-bone colleague takes care of it in your place. It’s true, why hurry when waiting itself can be your ally?
And then, the height of absurdity, there’s this impressive arsenal of justifications you deploy. “I’m underwater“, “my brain refuses to cooperate today“, “I suffer from a rare and undiagnosed neurological condition that specifically prevents me from starting this task“… All this circus to mask the obvious truth: you are capable of superhuman concentration when it comes to finding the flaw in a stranger’s theory on Reddit, watching fifty TikTok videos in a row to learn a choreography you’ll never use, conducting a CIA-worthy investigation into a colleague’s vacation photos on Facebook, or hunting down the best deal on that gadget you absolutely don’t need.
Come on, let’s stop the hypocrisy for two minutes. Are you really overwhelmed… or simply perfecting the subtle art of lying to yourself? The next time you hear coming out of your own mouth this syllabic “I-am-o-ver-whelmed”, ask yourself this disturbing question (without spending three hours on it either): Is it really the truth… or just a comfortable excuse you’ve repeated until you believe it yourself?
IMPORTANT NOTE: let’s acknowledge the existence of GENUINELY overwhelmed people. They’re easy to spot: they’re the ones drowning under their own responsibilities AND those of the professional procrastinators orbiting around them. These modern saints mechanically nod to the famous “Can you handle this? I’m underwater!” thrown out by colleagues who, strangely, always find time to talk about their workload over an interminable coffee. Ultimate paradox: these authentically overloaded individuals miraculously free up time to help others, as if their days secretly contained more hours. Meanwhile, our champions of avoidance, allegedly “overwhelmed,” remain remarkably unavailable to anyone who might request their help. They deserve a monument to the glory of the delicate art of having others carry their burdens while cultivating an unshakeable inaccessibility.