Are you Busy? Are you Productive? Two Separate Questions.

Busyness has become a badge of honour. An increasing number of people (proudly) report being busy in today’s time. Added to that is the recent shift from office to remote working, which has resulted in a blurred work-life balance, and amplified the normalcy of always juggling several things at once.

Let’s take a look at why this may be happening:

In today’s world, saying “I’m busy” means “I’m important”. It feeds into our sense of “self-importance”. There is some science behind this observation: A March 2017 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research looked at how signalling busyness in the workplace impacts one’s status. The researchers found that in the United States, having leisure time is actually no longer considered prestigious. Instead, that kind of status is achieved only when people are perceived as being overworked and constantly busy.

On an organisational level as well, being overworked is generally awarded. This is because the metrics of productivity and performance have unfortunately remained the same over the last several decades. While the idea of working long hours might have generated positive outcomes on a factory floor, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same in the way people work today. Unfortunately the lack of strong productivity metrics that can successfully measure the output of knowledge workers has resulted in a reliance on hours worked and Facetime in the office as markers for effort and success. The advent of technology and ability to work remotely has only compounded this expectation of being responsive and connected 24*7.

Organisational Implications:

If busyness is ingrained in a company’s culture, it can have negative impacts. Several studies have shown that busyness destroys productivity and threatens our wellbeing.

For instance, being busy can cause employees to feel run down and feel dissatisfied. Most importantly, it can contribute to employees being disengaged and even burnt out, despite the appearance that work is getting done. According to Gallup’s research, actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. economy $483 billion to $605 billion each year in lost productivity.

How do you know if you’re contributing to this culture of chronic busyness?

Take a moment to ask yourself these questions:

• If someone asked you about your day, would you almost instantly describe it as a hectic or busy one?
• How do you feel when you tell someone you’re busy? Does it make you feel proud / successful?
• Are your friends and family tired of hearing how busy you are?
• Is your down-time packed with more work? Do you rarely take time to sit and relax and just do something for fun?
• Have you ever seen someone roll their eyes when you talk about how busy you are?

If you’re this person, that is okay. More importantly, how can we counter this?

• Put an end to social comparison

When we see email conversations being exchanged until late at night, or colleagues posting messages on slack, we automatically believe that they have been hard at work. Now, with work being remote, it is even more difficult to see or understand other people’s schedules or register people’s lives outside of work. The busy culture becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, which never ends.

To end such social signals, that lead us to compare and emulate the busy behaviour, people at work should start being more transparent about their lives outside of work. Employees, especially leaders, can play a big part in normalising conversations about life outside of work, breaks in between a work-day or vacations.

• Be an advocate

Only once we truly start believing that an ideal employee in the 21st century is one who does great work while maintaining a healthy and balanced life outside of work, can we be genuine advocates for normalizing this standard of behavior. Being an advocate could be in the form of coaching your team members who seem to be trapped on the path to burn out or reminding your employees on how working 24/7 is not expected of them or rewarded at work. The key point to keep in mind is that these notions do not sprout out of thin air and are not shaped by our personalities, but rather by the environment around us. Recognize the power of your leadership voice in creating a work environment that breeds balance and does not make overly “busy days” a lifestyle norm.

• Focus on your core contribution

While deciding on your to-do list for the next day or week, take a step back and evaluate what tasks you are filling up your time with. Are those tasks part of your core contributions at work? Are they meaningful tasks that add to your sense of purpose either at work or outside of it? This will help you prioritise better and focus on what matters, and what adds value.

Leaders need to set an example of saying “no” at times to secondary duties, and tasks that don’t really connect with the larger purpose.

• Build in slack for important work

A lot of us have the tendency to underestimate and over promise on deliverable deadlines at work. We forget to account for unexpected demands and priorities that pop up out of the blue and take up all the time we had allocated to other work related tasks. This is also known as the planning fallacy and is largely why we can’t escape an overly busy schedule. Some workplace interventions advise employees to create time blocks or slacks in their calendars every week with the intention to use that blocked space of time to complete any work which got sidelined or delayed during the course of the day. By doing this, we account for those emergency projects that take longer than expected and reduce the chances of our to-do lists spilling over into the rest of the week.

In the last 10 years, surveys have indicated a dramatic increase in a number of clients and employees being chronically addicted to busyness. This workplace culture has manifested itself on a societal level too, where people glorify their worth by showing off their busy lifestyle. In short, this needs to stop. We need to encourage ourselves and others to stop competing with who is the busiest. It isn’t an indication of your productivity, achievements or success. All it is a warning sign that things need to change. And this change can begin with us.