No, You’re Not Too Busy: At Skoll with Professor Paul Farmer

I'm busy. You're busy. All social entrepreneurs (and, for that matter everyone) is busy. Often, we let this get the best of us, and fail to quickly respond to emails, or return calls, or give the folks around us the attention they deserve. Spending just a little time with Dr. Paul Farmer yesterday was a good reminder that no matter what, we're not too busy to do a better job relating to others.

Among the rockstars of the social entrepreneurship scene, few are more in demand than Dr. Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health. Farmer's ability to combine a deep structural critique of the modern global health enterprise with models of a more systemic, community driven approach has made him one of the leading inspirations for young changemakers in particular. Because of this (and his public email address) he's one of the most in-demand people around.

Yesterday, I had a fascinating experience. I was waiting to talk with Dr. Farmer for the blog when I ran into a friend, Chas, who I hadn't seen since studying abroad in Cairo in 2004. Chas is just finishing up his Masters in Medical Anthropology thesis at Oxford and had been corresponding with Dr. Farmer for a week or two. He had invited Chas to talk about it a little bit that afternoon. So far, nothing remarkable, although it's pretty cool that at the Mecca of Social Entrepreneurship, he was still interested in making time for a student.

What was remarkable was when the three of us sat down, Dr. Farmer immediately started asking Chas questions about the particular parts of his thesis. It wasn't just that he had seen the file, he had actually engaged with it. He complimented Chas on a section where he had applied the thinking of a philosopher to a health concept, and questioned another section where he thought the thesis tried to strongly to valorize local knowledge.

The point was that here is a guy who has projects around the world that are literally saving lives and trying to rebuild health systems, who has to jog around the planet giving speeches and raising money, and who probably receives one trillion emails per day, and he still found time to help a young guy sort through his own thoughts.

Why does it matter? It matters because by spending a few minutes of his time consciously engaged in someone else's life, Dr. Farmer probably just gave a future health leader inspiration to run on for months. He validated his work while pushing him to think differently and the ripple effects of that are inestimable.