You gotta read this: The “Busy” Trap
A few short excerpts:
Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy.
The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.
Tim Kreider brings up some incredible points about the importance of idleness—that it’s actually essential to any kind of innovation.