When employees are on the clock, most managers expect them to keep busy throughout the workday. This may mean either completing tasks within their remits or finding ways to make sure their hands are in some work-related project. Even when workflows deliver some downtime, the message from management is generally clear: find a way to keep working.  Managers step in with ‘busywork’ to keep their employees occupied. Busywork is something that doesn't have a purpose. It doesn't lead towards reaching any goals, it doesn't improve the person, the operation or the culture.

The Management And Downtime: Keeping Workers Busy For No Reason

The Busywork might include compiling a pointless report, colour-coding a spreadsheet or proofreading a presentation that has already been checked. One 2016 study of 600 knowledge workers showed they spent just <a href="https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/new-study-your-employees-are-probably-spending-less-and-less-time-doing-their-ac.html">39% of their workdays</a> doing their actual jobs, with the rest dedicated to meetings, emails and busywork such as writing status reports for managers.

Busywork

Part of the busywork problem is some managers equate busyness with productivity. The perception is not just that a busy worker is engaged and making an effort, but even that their industriousness gives them a higher moral value than their less busy colleagues. This sets up a dynamic in which two office workers completing identical tasks can be judged on their busyness, rather than their results. Who appears to be more engaged: the busy worker who skips lunch to get things finished, or the efficient worker who finishes early and uses the time saved to buy groceries online?

Controlling The Worker Bees

The Busywork problem is heightened in organisations where work culture dictates that managers operate in a more traditional, authoritative style, discouraging autonomy among employees. In these organisations, managers may also feel under pressure from their own superiors to prove that their team is busy and productive. Managers are saying, ‘I need my employees to keep generating work so that I know they’re earning their salary, because somebody is watching me to make sure that I'm managing them well'.

The Problem With Old School Organizations 

Remote work has, in some cases, exacerbated this pressure. When employees first switched to remote work, many managers found the inability to visually monitor their employees unsettling. In the immediacy of Covid, bosses felt that if they couldn’t see employees working, then they weren’t working. They didn’t think employees were being productive, even if they were still delivering results.A 2020 study showed that 41% of managers questioned their employees’ motivation, and almost a third doubted that their employees had the right knowledge or essential skills to make remote work successful.

Remote Work And The Eroding Of Trust

When higher-ups doubt employees’ work ethic, one solution is to micromanage their time with an endless list of tasks to keep them chained to their desks – even if some of those tasks are pointless. Managers may not even know if an employee has finished their core work, but they are giving additional busywork to ensure that they don't finish for the day. This is to ensure that employees are working, so the manager has a sense that they are still in control.

Giving Work To Maintain Control

It is not just managers who equate industriousness with good performance, however. One study showed knowledge workers spend an average of 41% of their time at work on self-assigned busywork that could be delegated to others, in order to appear busier and more important at work.Online, the pressure to look busy remains, even if that means adding extra tasks to the workday, like sending messages to prove we are logged on. And even though many workers are able to complete their work in less time in remote-work environments, many still feel the pressure to assign themselves busywork.

Employees Know They Have To Look Busy

Some managers report lulls in work during remote set-ups have made employees uneasy. These managers start to assign busywork just to ensure that workers don't feel a void, and remain occupied.But assigning too much busywork to mitigate guilt might mean swapping one set of negative feelings for another. A 2018 study showed 42% of workers were spending half of their time on busywork, and 71% said that doing too much busywork made them feel as though their lives were being wasted.

Managing The Lull

In the long-term, frequently assigning tasks designed primarily to keep workers occupied can damage the relationship between managers and their workers. It can be very demotivating to the remote employee. It's a sign of lack of trust and lack of care. The real tragedy of busywork is in the opportunity that is lost. There’s so much that could be done within that time that would be beneficial to both the employee and the firm.

Wasting Countless Hours

Some alternatives for busywork: Assigning the worker meaningful tasks or opportunities for growth that often gets put on the back burner, such as training. A great way is to let employees take a breather. Numerous studies have proven the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2165079916653416">benefits of taking regular breaks</a> during the workday. Among them are reduced stress and <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110208131529.htm">improved focus</a>, creativity and productivity – all positives for employees and their organisations.

Taking A Break Is Good

When remote workers are putting in increasingly long hours, piling on endless busywork will have the opposite effect. The primary risk is that employees burn out and their mental wellness is impacted. This Great Resignation is the result, in part, of exhausted people who are not managed effectively in their remote work because it wasn't flexible enough.

Busywork Leads To Burnout

Apart from giving meaningful work, another approach is to give teams autonomy, which is motivating and creates a virtuous cycle, where people want to do a good job.Managers need to think harder about the kind of tasks they are handing out. The idea is to keep employees busy during work hours, but avoid busywork. Instead, they should plan for slow periods, and look for tasks they can give that will add value.

Breaking The Cycle

Ultimately, managers who feel caught in a cycle of assigning busywork should take a step back and think more broadly about what their managers want from them – rather than scrambling to keep people busy. They're probably looking for you to generate good results and, hopefully, retain people who are happy working for you.If the flexible schedules now in demand swap work hours for outcomes, they could take busywork with them, and leave healthier, happier workers in their wake.

The Bottom Line

Stop giving superficial and useless work to employees just to keep them busy.

Many managers fill up employees’ plates with inane tasks, just to keep them working. Why are higher-ups so afraid of downtime?

Stashed ideas

The managerial obsession with 'busywork'

Research has definitively shown that overwork isn’t good for employees or their companies. In practice, it can be hard to overcome unhealthy work habits and reach a more sustainable work-life balance.
To achieve lasting change, you must view this process not as a one-time activity, but as a cycle in which you constantly re-evaluate your evolving feelings and priorities, and adjust your work and life choices accordingly.

The Pursuit Of Work-Life Balance

At a high level, research showed that achieving better balance between professional and personal priorities boils down to a combination of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00187267030568004">reflexivity</a> — or questioning assumptions to increase self-awareness — and intentional role redefinition. 
Importantly, research suggests that this is not a one-time fix, but rather, a cycle that we must engage in continuously as our circumstances and priorities evolve. This cycle is made up of five distinct steps

Striking The Impossible Balance

Take a step back and ask yourself: What is currently causing me stress, unbalance, or dissatisfaction? How are these circumstances affecting how I perform and engage with my job? How are they impacting my personal life? What am I prioritizing? What am I sacrificing? What is getting lost? 
Only after you take a mental pause and acknowledge these factors can you begin to tackle them.

Pause And Denormalize

A rational understanding of the decisions and priorities driving your life is important, but equally important is emotional reflexivity — that is, the capacity to recognize how a situation is making you feel.
Awareness of your emotional state is essential in order to determine the changes you want to make in your work and in your life.

Pay Attention To Your Emotions

Our priorities often shift faster than our day-to-day time allocation habits. The interviewees that described a more positive work-life balance intentionally reprioritized how they spent their time in a way that lined up with their true priorities. 
One participant described how he still saw himself as a professional, but redefined that professional role to be more inclusive of other valued roles, such as being a parent.

Reprioritize

Before jumping into solutions, first, reflect on the aspects of your work and life that could be different in order to better align with your priorities. 
Are there components of your job that you would like to see changed? How much time would you like to spend with your family, or on hobbies?

Consider Your Alternatives

Both public and private changes can be effective strategies, as long as they’re implemented in a sustainable manner. For private changes, that might mean self-imposing boundaries or turning down demands typically associated with your role. 
For public changes, rather than simply telling your supervisor that you want more time off or more flexible hours, securing support from key mentors, partners, and coworkers — or even better, formally applying for a new internal position or a flexible working scheme — is likely to result in more lasting change.

Implement Changes

A five-step approach to identify and overcome unhealthy work habits.

Work-Life Balance Is a Cycle, Not an Achievement

The "jobs to be done" approach defines a business from the perspective of what brings value to a customer. A job can be a problem to solve ("repair my car") or a goal ("get into college"). When there is a job to be done, people are motivated to find products, services, or experiences to perform those jobs. For example, Twitter is using this strategy by focusing on its three core jobs: news, discussion, and helping people get paid.

The "jobs to be done" approach

How an organisation defines its business will impact everything it does - what customers it serves, how it serves them, who are its competitors, what it considers as external forces, what strategies it uses, and how it innovates. However, companies often define themselves by the products they sell or by an inward-looking characteristic such as its business model or capability. They answer the question of what business they are in in a myopic way that obscures the realities around them, leading to missing emerging threats and opportunities.

How companies define themselves

A company should recognise the full set of jobs they are hired for. This information can be collected by gathering insights from customer interviews, observations of how people engage with your company, and data gathered from website usage. The list of specific jobs can be separated into higher-level jobs to consider for strategic prioritisation.

Understand the full set of jobs

Once the jobs to focus on has been prioritised, the results are communicated throughout the company. It can provide a mechanism for allocating resources. For example, when Twitter identified the strategic jobs, all product groups and teams reviewed their current product roadmaps and assessed how they connected to one of the priority jobs. If it didn't connect, the product was removed from the roadmap.

Communicate results and allocate resources

<ul><li>Expanding strategic options and innovation. Jobs viewed from a customer's perspective allows for strategic development, reveals the real competition, and opens up growth opportunities.</li><li>Investing in what matters most. When employees understand what jobs they should solve, they are empowered to make better decisions.</li><li>Aligning and inspiring the organisation. Employees gain a better understanding of the organisation's value and purpose.</li></ul>

Benefits of the jobs-to-be done approach

Asking what really matters to customers helped focus the company’s priorities.

How Twitter Applied the “Jobs to Be Done” Approach to Strategy

Having a sustainable productivity system is like a holy grail for us who aren't natural doers, but sometimes many of us after a couple of days, falter and forget to check on the interconnected lists and folders we are trying to maintain, but why?
Here are two reasons why we believe we falter on maintaining a productivity system:
<ol>
<li>Productivity books have too many moving parts and they have a superfluous system that we couldn't be bothered to track; and</li>
<li>Productivity books are always gargantuan projects that depend entirely on the time output of one self-starting person.</li>
</ol>

Struggling to be productive

A standard "how-to" book or productivity book contains many new ideas and concepts that are difficult for a human brain to take on board all at once, it's overwhelming.
This goes to show that productivity books should be packaged with the pivotal concepts and the steps needed. If we have the simpler tools, we'd be able to maintain productivity, in a much different way, but nonetheless increases productivity dramatically.

The bandwidth problem

Some people seem to be natural doers. When there’s something that needs doing – a table to be cleared, or a flowerbed to be weeded — they get uncomfortable and start doing it. Natural doers are mysterious creatures to me, […]

Time Management

How to Get Things Done When You Have Trouble Getting Things Done

Procrastination is when we avoid the tasks in our list, feeling the pressure to complete them and going through various emotions like blame, anger, frustration and anxiety. The reason we procrastinate is because we value the now and instinctively prefer to procure and enjoy our rewards sooner rather than later.
It is easier and rewarding to relax, grab a beer and watch an episode of our favourite show rather than tackling a work assignment, which would not give any rewards in the now.

Procrastination: Why It Happens

“Don’t let the fear of striking out, keep you from playing the game.”

Procrastination boils down to how motivated we are to complete a task. The motivation to complete a certain task consists of four elements: Expectancy, Value, Impulsiveness and Delay.
<ol>
<li>Expectancy: If we expect to succeed in the task, it would motivate us.</li>
<li>Value: We sometimes constantly avoid work-related tasks as it sucks our energy and does not provide any value to us or the organization.</li>
<li>Impulsiveness: When we act on temporary emotions, we often make impulsive decisions we regret later. We need to develop awareness to focus on the key tasks that help us in the future.</li>
<li>Delay: A long gap between completing a task and getting rewarded for it makes us highly demotivated to complete the same. Mindfulness can help us stay grounded and patient, relishing the experience of waiting.</li>
</ol>

The Procrastination Equation

<ol>
<li>Prioritize rest and manage your energy levels by taking naps when required.</li>
<li>Remove clutter and create clear work zones, helping you stabilize your focus.</li>
<li>Combine boring tasks with something you enjoy doing, like listening to your favourite Spotify playlist while doing laundry.</li>
<li>Do the hard stuff early on so that it does not get pushed up to the next day.</li>
</ol>

Hack Your Procrastination Cycle

Can’t Stop Procrastinating? Here’s How to Break the Cycle - Mindful

<ul><li>Don't be lazy. Spend your time being productive.</li><li>Don't just take the default path. Don't go with the mainstream, make your own flow.</li><li>Don't wait for the perfect time, it is what's waiting for you.</li><li>Don’t judge before you know.  </li><li>Don't make everything seem like it's a chore, focus on every endline.</li><li>Don't try to conquer everything in a single leap. Everything is a process, be patient.</li><li>Don't try to hold on everything. When it starts to weigh you down, learn to let go.</li><li>Don't always be right. Sometimes, the right thing to do, is do nothing.</li><li>Don’t hide your humanness. Sometimes you have to deal with issues and show others your awkward, uncomfortable side. </li><li>Don’t think about what could have been. </li><li>Don’t neglect your present joys. </li><li>Don’t neglect your close friendships. </li></ul>

Things that Belong on Every Don't-do List

Written by Marc Chernoff // Your greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding in life at all the wrong things. This morning as Angel and I were driving to meet a coaching client, another driver a few cars in front of us tossed a large disposable cup out the window.

20 Things that Belong On Everyone's TO-DON'T List

20% of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. For them, procrastination is a lifestyle, albeit a maladaptive one. It cuts across all domains of their lives. They don't pay bills on time. They miss opportunities for buying tickets to concerts.

Procrastination is a lifestyle

Procrastination represents a profound problem of self-regulation. There may be more of it in the U.S. than in other countries because we are so nice; we don't call people on their excuses ("my grandmother died last week") even when we don't believe them.

Not taking procrastination seriously

Procrastinators are not different in their ability to estimate time, although they are more optimistic than others. Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up.

Not a planning problem

It is one response to an authoritarian parenting style. Having a harsh, controlling father keeps children from developing the ability to regulate themselves.

Procrastinators are made, not born

It is a manifestation of generalized problems in self-regulation. That is over and above the effect of avoidant coping styles that underlie procrastination and lead to disengagement via substance abuse.

Procrastinators drink more

<ul><li>"I'll feel more like doing this tomorrow." Or "I work best under pressure." They do not get the urge the next day or work best under pressure. </li><li>Another big lie is that time pressure makes them more creative. Unfortunately, they do not turn out to be more creative; they only feel that way. </li></ul>They squander their resources avoiding.

 Lies procrastinators tell

Procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don't take a lot of commitment on their part. Checking e-mail is almost perfect for this purpose. They distract themselves as a way of regulating their emotions such as <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/fear">fear</a> of failure.

Looking for distractions

<ul><li>Arousal types, or thrill-seekers, who wait until the last minute for the euphoric rush.</li> <li>Avoiders, who may be avoiding the fear of failure or even fear of success; they would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.</li> <li>Decisional procrastinators, who cannot make a decision. Not making a decision absolves procrastinators of responsibility for the outcome of events.</li> </ul>

Types of procrastinators

<ul><li>Health. Just over the course of a single academic term, procrastinating college students had such evidence of compromised immune systems as more colds and flu, more gastrointestinal problems. And they had insomnia. </li><li>Procrastination has a high cost to others as well as oneself; it shifts the burden of responsibilities onto others, who become resentful. Procrastination destroys teamwork in the workplace and private relationships.</li></ul>

Procrastination costs you

Procrastinators can change their behavior. It doesn't necessarily mean one feels transformed internally. It can be done with highly structured cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Changing behaviors

There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination. Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance. Why would people do that?

Why We Procrastinate

There is no rule stating that every email reply must be sent immediately after being written unless it's urgent. Many email programs support a delayed delivery system where you can schedule when your reply or email will be sent. 
If you're fond of clearing out emails on a Friday afternoon, delaying email responses until Monday will lessen stress on both yourself and your coworkers and you can both enjoy your weekends.

Learn how to set delayed email deliveries

We tend to receive tons of emails from old newsletters we've signed up for, but are now just taking up space. To resolve this, you can just unsubscribe to the ones you no longer find useful or set up a black hole program where you won't be able to hear from that specific sender ever again.
Managing unwanted emails take time, but it's worthwhile.

Eliminate unwanted messages

Do you open an email just to read it and close it afterward to send a reply a little bit later? It's actually a huge waste of your time if you habitually recheck your emails.
Learn how to tag your emails into categories in order for you to prioritize what is needed that day and what you can handle on different days. Allocating time to tag emails correctly will help organize your emails and lessen the time you use for email checking.

Use tags the right way

Scheduling office hours will allow messages to be received and be responded to on a schedule. By asking the other party to wait, you are giving them the chance to come up with an answer on their own, because if it's actually difficult, it's better handled in person than over email in order to avoid misunderstandings.
Asking people to discuss complex matters during regular office hours leads to better communication and fewer emails.

Set up "office hours"

Inbox overflowing? Take 4 simple steps to radically improve email management and tame the beast. By author and behavioral design expert Nir Eyal.

The 4 Brutal Rules of Email Management - Nir & Far

It’s about achieving maximum output, getting shit done, and not wasting time. Tools, apps, or hacks, don’t work if you lack the right mindset.

Productivity is a way of living

...to things that don't thrill you. When you think ‘meh’ about something, always say NO. That eliminates wasting time on shit that you're not excited about.

Say no 

If something distracts you, eliminate it. Don’t think you’re immune to your distractions. Remove them.

Willpower is overrated

Keep a simple work and living environment. A desk, a laptop, and a notebook. You don’t need any fluff.With a cluttered brain, you can’t get stuff done.

Keep it simple

Decisions fatigue your brain. And routines eliminate decisions. Which ultimately means more brainpower. Routines are not OCD — they are efficient.

Routines work

Take that first hour to think about the day ahead of you, read a book, enjoy your breakfast, coffee or tea. A smartphone’s primary function is to interrupt you. Don’t let other people or apps interrupt you during the first hour of your day.

Do important stuff in the morning

Ask yourself the question Is That Really Necessary?  as often as you can. You will find that your answer is usually: Nope.

Stop doing unnecessary things

If you have recurring tasks, try to do as much of the same thing on one day, so that nothing else gets in the way.

Focus on 1 thing 

The last year has been huge for me. I've got more things done than ever, switched careers and countries, spent loads of time with my family and friends, kept a healthy lifestyle, and exercised at least 5 times a week. Many variables determine your overall productivity.

20 Things That Will Make You More Productive Than Ever

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

The new law of productivity

<ul><li>Deep work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. Creates value.</li><li>Shallow work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. Doesn't create value.</li></ul>

Deep work vs. Shallow work

<ul><li>Monastic: maximize Deep Work by minimizing or removing shallow obligations. Isolate yourself for long periods of time without distractions; no shallow work allowed</li><li>Bimodal: divide your time into some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leave the rest open to everything else. Reserve a few consecutive days when you will be working like a monastic. You need at least one day a week</li><li>Rhythmic: involves creating a routine where you define a specific time period — ideally three to four hours every day — that you can devote to Deep Work</li><li>Journalistic: alternate your day between deep and shallow work as it fits your blocks of time. Not recommended to try out first.</li></ul>

4 philosophies to integrate Deep Work into your life

<ul><li>Where: identify a location used only for depth, such as a conference room or a quiet library</li><li>How Long: set a specific time frame for each Deep Work session. </li><li>How: your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured. </li><li>Support: to maximize success, you need systematized support — so you deplete willpower — your efforts to go deep. </li></ul>

Make Deep Work a Habit

<ul><li>Use Headphones: Coworkers will think you can’t hear them and the barrier to interrupt you is much higher</li><li>Work Remotely: start by asking for a half-day, preferably mornings</li><li>Email: treat email as a to-do and schedule it in your calendar twice per day</li><li>Disable Phone Notifications: disable all notifications. If it’s truly urgent, people will call</li><li>Schedule Internet Time: schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet and avoid it outside of those times. </li><li>Clear to Neutral: at the end of the day, close all your tabs and programs, delete or move all the files from Downloads, empty the trash, and shut off your computer. </li></ul>

Remove distractions

<ul><li>New Insights: as your conscious mind rests, the unconscious mind takes over and provides valuable insights or creative ideas and consolidates memories</li><li>Recharge: rest fills up the energy needed to work deeply. You restore your ability to direct your attention by giving this activity a rest</li><li>Evening Work Is Usually Not Important: work that you fit in your downtime isn’t normally high-value activities that really advance your career but rather low-value shallow tasks.</li></ul>

Why downtime is so important:

<ul><li>Quit Social Media: all those notifications hurt your ability to focus and stay focused. Social media isn’t all bad but it’s definitely a bad habit.</li><li>Practice Saying “No”: be selective when deciding what opportunities to go after. </li><li>Meditate: 10 minutes of meditation in the morning will greatly increase your ability to focus throughout the day</li></ul>

How to Get Better at Deep Work

Some books you read, and then forget. Others change a small part of your life. Then there are the rare gems that fundamentally change the way you think, live, and work. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport is one of the later.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Ethan O.
@ethho

The managerial obsession with 'busywork'

Work-Life Balance Is a Cycle, Not an Achievement

How Twitter Applied the “Jobs to Be Done” Approach to Strategy

How to Get Things Done When You Have Trouble Getting Things Done

Can’t Stop Procrastinating? Here’s How to Break the Cycle - Mindful

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Ethan O.@ethho

The managerial obsession with 'busywork'

Work-Life Balance Is a Cycle, Not an Achievement

How Twitter Applied the “Jobs to Be Done” Approach to Strategy

How to Get Things Done When You Have Trouble Getting Things Done

Can’t Stop Procrastinating? Here’s How to Break the Cycle - Mindful

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Ethan O.
@ethho