Preventing Busywork (LOL)

Is it possible? And will it keep you ahead of the layoff curve?

Busywork — or “shallow work” — is very common in first-world, white-collar enterprise companies. If we’re being completely honest, some research has shown 7 in 10 employees have no idea what to do all day. Other research has shown 21.4 million middle managers add no economic value back to their companies, and still more has shown $15.5 million in lost productivity annually from mid-size companies because of this. If you’ve ever had a big corporate job, you’re probably familiar. There is definitely a lot of “hurry up and wait” in those roles, and also a lot of thumb-twiddling.

Makes sense, of course: many people are hired from a rushed headcount process that was ultimately designed to fill an immediate need with no regard for six-eight months hence. On top of that, the hiring process itself sucked — probably alienated, rather than drew in, the best candidates — and the job role made no sense. In such a contextual process, busywork is born.

Now, busywork isn’t necessarily a bad thing at the individual level. People, especially Americans, love to be busy. (One reason is because it makes them feel high.)

The problem, however, is that “busy” doesn’t mean the same thing as “productive.” The goal of most organizations is productivity, not busywork. (Well, you’d hope.) So how can we buck this cycle and prevent busywork?

Busywork and priority

This is the first step to understand. Most organizations are very bad at priority management. That creates a lot of busywork — and “sense of urgency” projects that burn people out. So at the organizational level, you have a lack of priority. Now scale down to the individual level. Most people use their time very poorly. Most enterprise employees I’ve ever worked with would be fine spending 9am — 7pm just emailing and answering emails. That’s a ludicrous waste of time, but to many people it would feel super productive. “Got a lot done today, Jane!” At the intersection of “organizational lack of priority” and “individual wasting of time,” you find a lot of busywork.

How do we eliminate busywork, then?