So how busy are you, really?In this age of always on, nonstop notifications and interconnected connectivity, it's easy to presume that we are busier than ever. It feels safe to presume that day to day life and work in offices of long ago were analog islands of lesser productivity.I'm old enough to remember the end of the age of inter-office memos and the wonders of thermal paper fax machines. But from what I recall, we were just as busy then as we are now. There was just a bit more chatter in the hallways.In our homes, cable TV and remotes were a thing, but phones were on walls and tables. The analog to Siri and Alexa back then was an old edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.There are days when this app based, SAAS oriented world seems less seamless and more prone to error. If your ISP goes down, so do you. If your system gets a bug, so do you. If that new update is required, you'll wait until it's done optimizing. Change over to a new system? When has that ever been fun?And none of that goes away when you get home, either. Hulu glitches. Your wifi goes down. You go to order tickets for a vacation to discover your app wants you to update, then log in again and re-enter everything.For all of these reasons, last Friday's opening comments in writer Ann Friedman's weekly newsletter really spoke to me. In her opening comments she discusses the efforts involved in life "admin" and says:"The system is designed to get us to internalize its failures and bog us down in the details so we lose sight of what's possible. The stuff of life-admin is often unjust. We should get a simple bill from the government. We should have health care that isn't tied to employment. We should have time to convalesce when we're sick... And we are allowed to be grumpy about the fact that we do not."It's Tuesday, so go ahead and be grumpy. And if you have a moment, check out the wonderful writing of Ann Friedman.