You have all seen this in the office. A person is heads-down, grinding away at something that looks to be a high priority. You can see the tenseness in their facial expressions. They don’t look around the room, make eye contact or entertain the slightest chit-chat with co-workers. On one hand, it seems like the employee is diligently working, but in actuality, they may be engaged in low-value “busywork.”
Now that the Great Resignation is over and workers have entered a white-collar “richcession” that makes it more challenging to find a new job, people may be hunkering down and trying to impress their bosses by portraying themselves as working vigorously and making substantial improvements for the organization. In reality, these folks may be spending an inordinate amount of time—and making sure the higher-ups are aware—looking busy. It’s unclear if they are making strides or just going around in circles. Workers can fall into this productivity trap even with the best intentions.
Busywork generally lacks a clear purpose, draws in other people, sucks up their time and does not lead to meaningful outcomes, which can be detrimental to the success of an organization.
False Urgency
Supervisors might create a sense of fake urgency in the same vein of busywork. This term refers to the pressure placed on individuals or teams to make decisions or take actions based on an exaggerated sense of urgency and need to get something done right away.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously deemed 2023 the “year of efficiency.” Zuckerberg called out the inefficiencies within his organization, which was also happening at other large tech companies, stating, “I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work.”
Zuckerberg cited the proliferation of middle managers, claiming it created unnecessary bloat and spiraling costs. With targets on their backs, these supervisors might—intentionally or unintentionally—create false urgency to justify the purpose and value of their jobs, teams and departments, especially as companies enact corporate belt-tightening.
Fear-Based Reaction
With false urgency and busywork, there is a genuine desire to be productive, but it is often rooted in anxiety. Workers will jump without being told to try to prove their worth by anticipating the needs of their managers.
According to the Harvard Business Review, it is important to ask yourself, “What is the primary source of my urgency?” If you act out of fear, you may harbor self-limiting beliefs that keep you in a perpetual cycle of unproductive behaviors. Under duress, people often fail to take a step back to focus on what is actually important.
Managers must establish clear goals to reinforce the big picture and assign high-value tasks. They must conduct workflow audits to ensure employees are efficiently meeting their productivity benchmarks, but not in a way that will instill fear and anxiety into workers’ minds. Otherwise, they will fall into these productivity traps where they put so much time and energy into low-value work. If people are bogged down by the minutia, what tasks can be automated so that employees can only focus on meaningful work?
Entrepreneur Gary Keller once said it best, “Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.” It is not enough to be busy. What are you busy about?
Source: Forbes
