I’ve been working now for close to a decade and a half. One major thing that people always miss: busy doesn’t mean productive.
I write about the idea of “busy” vs. “productive” a lot, actually. To wit, here’s three examples:
- Only about 10 percent of Americans can balance ‘being busy’ and ‘being happy’
- Why do you keep telling me how busy you are?
- You’re not nearly as busy as you think you are
In reality, the whole ‘busy doesn’t mean productive’ — NO WAIT, BUSY IS PRODUCTIVE!! — argument/discussion comes from the intersection of these two essential points about having a job:
- Most people focus more on quantity of work than quality of produced work
- Being busy feels the same way as being high to most people
At that intersection — between ‘busy as a drug’ and ‘quantity over quality’ — what happens is that employees, devoid of true purpose in their work as their senior managers rush from revenue-centric meeting to financial metrics conference call №7,182, assume “Well, if I’m doing a lot, I must be valuable…” That leads to “Busy must mean productive…”
In reality, busy doesn’t mean productive. Here’s why.
