Being productive vs. being busy

In everyday business it sometimes might be challenging to keep focused on the right activities. There are a lot of tools that can help you prioritize your tasks: from simple to-do lists all the way to the Eisenhower-Matrix - the available amount of these productivity tools shows that talking about being truly productive is an essential topic.

Let me give you two productivity killing examples that can be witnessed in every company on this planet:

1. During a calm project phase a manager gives instructions to her team to find something to do and keep busy with whatever they can find. Her explanation: “We have to look busy, so that the customer/boss/other team thinks we are making progress”. Even if not articulated in such an obvious way quite a lot of instructions carry that very same message. Be attentive when this message is being spread around you and allow me to be brief here: If this is a structural issue within your team or company you should really consider if its the right workplace for you (since you are reading this book I assume that you do not just want to trade time for money)

2. At a crucial and stressful point on a project a team member suggests the team leader to gather the team, take a step back and think about what to do next. The managers response: “We need to keep going - Otherwise we would be like a mouse in front of a snake - paralyzed and unable to move. If we don’t speed things up, we will get eaten alive!”. The manager in this case is not sure what to do and feels pressured. Instead of taking a minute (not literally - but i think you get the point) and thinking about the next steps to be taken he feels like there is no time for this. The situation is very common in the consulting industry since consultants pride themselves with being fast and hard workers.

In both cases blind actions are the result of the described behaviour. In addition to doing something for the sake of doing something oftentimes people actually try to speed these blind actions up when confronted with pressure.

But it’s not about going faster - it's about going into the right direction. Let me give you an analogy: Imagine you are driving your car on the german Autobahn and you are trying to get to another city as fast as possible. If you do not know where to go it makes absolutely no sense to simply go fast. If you are not sure if you are going into the right direction you would probably consult your navigation system. And if there was no navigation system you would probably pull over, think about where you wanted to go and look at a map - even if you were going at 300 km/h. For those of you who are thinking “Well, that example is a little outdated, since everybody has a navigation system of some sort nowadays”: If you work on a project it is highly improbable that the perfect way to do it has already been defined (otherwise you would not be hired). The point is: In most cases you don't have a navigation system on a project, but you might have maps and pieces of information that you need to combine in order to know where to go.

I am convinced that most people are applying the pareto-principle for most of the activities in their lives - at least on a subconscious level. In essence i think that everybody tries to achieve the biggest results (Pareto's 80%) with the least amount of effort possible (Pareto's 20%). When applying that principle it is crucial to keep in mind what your actual objective is. You can get 80% of your work done with 20% of the effort - the question is: Is it the right kind of work you are doing, or are you just trying to do the work in front of you right and fast? Did you catch that? Let me rephrase it, since it is quintessential for your work as a consultant:

Is it the right kind of task you are doing, or are you just trying to do the task in front of you right?

The overarching and omnipresent question should be: Does the task/work you are doing serve your goal - are you actually creating results which bring you closer to reaching your mission? This might sound trivial, but in the everyday project buzz we tend to accept quite a lot of requests and tasks without truly questioning their necessity. Since consulting is a service it might be challenging to question a client's inquiry but it is just as necessary.

If we know all of this, why does it still seem to be hard for us to focus on the right things? Because it is actually easier to keep your mind busy with solving simple or habitual tasks than strategically thinking about if the task you are doing is productive - the reason why we watch TV for hours without questioning it - it is simply easier for our brains (Reading recommendation in this context: “Thinking, fast and slow” by Daniel Kahnemann).

Here are three things that can help you to avoid being busy instead of being productive:

1. Set a fixed time at which you ask yourself “Am i just being busy or am i being productive ?” e.g. every wednesday at 11:00 AM. It takes you only a few seconds but will save you a lot of time for the important things

2. Especially when finding yourself in time consuming tasks, ask yourself: Is the 3976-column Excel spreadsheet i am working on actually creating relevant results or am i just being busy for the sake of being busy?

3. Be prepared to explain the overall goal of your current project to anyone at any time (yes i am talking about an elevator pitch). This consciousness for the greater cause will automatically direct your actions towards productive work.

Before closing this chapter i would like to add another aspect to the thought of wasting less time (without getting into details about the information age of the 21st century). In our current world almost everyone has access to infinite information (and consequently oportunities). By simply doing or knowing more you do not grow your or your customers business, since information have become a commodity not a luxury. Everyone could simply do or know more. Its about the abitlity to focus on less - on the relevant.

As a results driven person you are allowed to regularly ask “are we being productive or are we just being busy?”. To be truly productive is essentially the art of keeping in mind the overall goal of your mission and not losing it in the noise of everyday business. Be self-confident enough to stop an activity if it is not serving your goal.