The re-emergence has begun. Some people are preparing for post-pandemic life, while others are quickly embracing the transition. It will, no doubt, look different for everyone, but seems to be one thing we all agree on: that busyness is overrated.

Especially what Vice calls the “tyranny of busyness.” It’s not just about packing each day with as much as possible, but also the value placed on doing so: Being busy made people feel good about themselves, and they used that lack of free time to signal their worth to others.

The pandemic offered a rare moment for some people to break away from that inertia and reassess priorities while discovering new hobbies. They had time to reflect on how they used busyness to define themselves—and how it led to stress (PDF) and the conflation of productivity and self-worth.

Of course, gaining this time and these insights reflects a certain amount of privilege—but that’s kind of the point. Research has found that busyness is most often assumed as a status symbol for higher-paid workers. For hourly or gig workers, being too busy is less a symbol of success and more a byproduct of a lack of autonomy and social safety nets.

Similarly, a lot of us have experienced burnout, and its adjacent phenomenon, languishing, during the pandemic. Naomi Osaka—who withdrew from another tournament over mental health concerns—has given a public face to a growing, and long overdue, revolt to over-ambition, according to a fascinating op-ed in the New York Times.

Suddenly, few of us are eager to get back to the frantic and frenetic pace that was so normal before COVID. Just thinking of it gives me a busyness hangover. Will free time be the new status symbol? This should be discussed over a long, leisurely lunch.