Busyness

Can busyness be learned? I don't mean the act of being busy but the feeling of being busy. Over the months, I have found myself increasingly describing myself as busy. I have exemplars such as the administrator in my graduate school who took almost two weeks to write a two-line letter for me pretending, the whole while, to be as busy as a brain surgeon. Which makes me wonder--how do people in hectic and high-pressure professions such as neuro-surgery function? Is there an innate personality difference between them and people who keep moaning about how busy they are? Or maybe busyness, like many other things in society,  is socially constructed. I feel there are people who can reject claims on their time by claiming to be too busy, such as my grad school administrator, and those who cant, such as low-paid workers. Busyness is very much a white-collar concept.  Could slaves or serfs ever get away claiming to be busy?