Sorry, Too Busy!

Imagine you’re an ostrich. You’re checking on your eggs under the sand, rotating them to keep them heated. Nearby zebra and antelope sound warning calls and scatter left and right. But all this passes you by, because you’re busy burying your head in the sand.

These ostriches don’t survive. The ones that do, hear the lion first and warn surrounding zebra and antelope by getting out of the way. They’re not “too busy” to ignore changes in their surroundings and readjust their priorities as a result.

That’s the problem with being too busy. Whilst the working professional’s version of the ostrich story has less dire consequences, burying our heads in the sand with the task at hand means we’re too busy to see bigger, more important opportunities.

I recently wrote about the pareto principle at work, and how 80% of our career is spent doing the work, but 80% of the value we create comes from the other 20% of our time: relationship building.

Whether it’s relationship building or reacting to circumstances that change throughout the day, our most important tasks are not always the ones we’re busiest cracking on with. And when we’re too busy getting the busy work done, we miss the good stuff.

Our Busy Beginnings

How did so many of us inherit the “busyness mindset”? 

School, from a young age, promotes spending time on one focused task at a time and punishes us when we prioritise something else — especially relationship-building, which in kid speak is: “hanging out with friends”.

When I was twelve, one teacher told me: “great that you’re getting all your homework done in such a short time, but you should be spending longer on it.” 

If that didn’t encourage me to internalise busyness for busyness’ sake, I’m not sure what would have done. You may have similar memories where a diligent process was rewarded over and above the output.

Today’s AI-led efficiency drive means there is more talk than ever about shortcutting processes so we’re less busy, yet this talk fails to recognise that there is much more to controlling our busyness than automating mundane tasks.

Eliminating busywork requires a mindset shift. And to do that, we first need to get clear on what busywork looks like as well as how to replace it with higher value tasks.

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Busywork

Leadership trainer Randy Clarke defines busywork as “something that doesn’t have a purpose”. Specifically, “it doesn’t lead towards reaching any goals, it doesn’t improve the person, the operation or the culture.”

This is the extreme end of the spectrum: the ostrich rotating their eggs when they don’t need to be turned, just to give their head a moment’s respite from the hot sun. It’s an unnecessary risk, taking up precious time that could be spent resting or looking for food.

The trouble is, not all busywork instantly reveals itself as purposeless. Yes, in some cases, we hold onto tasks because we find them comforting, despite knowing the little value they create. 

Someone might find Marie Condo-esque satisfaction in a tidy inbox, whilst being aware that filing every email as it comes in is a time-suck that fails to deliver any measurable value.

In other cases, busywork might not be so clear-cut:

As an intern, my team and I paused all work to spend 2 days (and nights!) compiling 3 years of communications records as an urgent request for an advertising client, only to find she never downloaded the file. 

I was furious — late nights in the office for nothing?! Looking back, I wonder if it’s less clear cut. Perhaps our regular day-to-day tasks were the busywork, and this was a moment of opportunity to step up and prove to the client that she could trust us.

It’s up to us to navigate our lengthy to-do lists and identify which remain “the real work” and which are busywork — whether it’s blatant busywork or busywork in disguise.

Identify your busywork

For each of the items on your to-do list, ask yourself: “If I didn’t do this 1) today 2) this week 3) at all, would it matter?”

Regroup your tasks. All your “3) it would not matter at all” tasks are blatant busywork. If you can’t eliminate them because they’ve been delegated to you, find out what value the task owner wanted from the task, and seek a more efficient and effective way to deliver it.

For the tasks where it would not matter if you did it 1) today or 2) this week, it’s time to prioritise. Next week’s priority is today’s busywork if it takes precedence over something more critical.

It takes courage not to be busy

Busywork is comforting. Banish it and you’re suddenly left with a whole lot of time you’ve promised yourself you will use in a more meaningful way.

This daunting feeling is usually rooted in one of two circumstances:

1. Finding the real work: You have been busy for so long, you don’t know what “real work” will deliver most value

2. Facing the real work: You know exactly what the “real work” looks like, but it’s super uncomfortable and if you’re honest, you’d rather not do it

Finding the real work

Imagine you’re a chronic email-checker (professionals check their emails on average 11 times an hour) and you’ve now resolved to eliminate unnecessary busywork by shutting down your desktop notifications and checking just twice a day.

Part of your work identity was bound up in this busywork, and now you need to find somewhere to fill the gap. It will require a slow, deliberate rewiring of the brain, as well as some exploration. “How can I use this time to add new value? What is it that people value in me? And most importantly, what would I enjoy doing more of?”

Facing the real work

Imagine your twice-a-day email-checking wasn’t working, so you’ve set up an AI assistant to help you tame the inbox monster, take control of scheduling and chase people who haven’t replied to you. You’re excited that you’ll get hours of time back each day.

Then what? You realise the real work is now diving into the details of your team’s deliverables, or meeting more cold prospects for sales conversations. Suddenly, cosy calendar scheduling activities seem to hold much more appeal.

Pinpoint the part that makes you most nervous: meeting people or finding people to meet with? Grappling with the team deliverable details or giving feedback? Find the trigger and take just one or two steps in the right direction to slowly adjust, putting some achievable targets in place to get the ball rolling.

What can you do to replace just 10 minutes of this week’s busywork with something more valuable?

Busywork is a complicated beast, but the least we can do is start to recognise it when it rears its head. That way, like the ostriches, we no longer bury our own heads in the sand and can clearly see the bigger opportunities on the horizon.

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