Busy ≠ Productive – Get Focussed on the Mission
Everyone seems to be talking about how busy they are, and how they have no time to get things done. At the same time productivity is reportedly falling. These observations are seemingly at odds with each other, until you consider that being busy and being productive are not the same thing.
Every technology advancement promises to liberate us from unproductive and menial tasks. But each leap forward ends with the creation of more unproductive work to fill our newfound time. Sapping our energy and taking us away from the activities that produce results and advance the mission.
Today we look at how getting focussed on the mission allows you to filter out the unimportant tasks and dedicate more time to the activities that matter.
Technological Leaps Make Us Busier
The advent of computers and the internet was supposed to reduce paperwork and set us free. Instead, all that happened was that our activities were digitised, and our processing capacity increased. As our technology has increased in efficient the number of processes and forms, we are required to comply with has also increased. Hardly liberating.
Prior to COVID meeting attendance was in person. This often-meant physical travel to your meetings, which in a large city is likely an hour each way. This constrained an individual’s meeting capacity. With the shift to online meetings, the travel constraints were lifted and our meeting capacity increased. It is now not uncommon for people to have back-to-back meetings for an entire workday. A whole day of meetings is probably the most unproductive thing I can think of. Its draining, frustrating and gets in the way of your thinking, planning, and delivering.
The current buzz around AI and the coming automation of our lives suggests yet again that we’ll have more free time. But why should expect things to be any different this time?
Work Expands to Fill the Time Available
Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. What this means is that as we get more efficient at completing tasks, people create more work to fill the available time. Often the bureaucrats creating this work belong to support functions who are removed from the deliver the business’ primary mission.
Think about how many reports or forms you produce that don’t advance the project or business Mission. What would happen if you spent less time on non-mission critical forms and processes?
How many meetings are you attending each day? Do you need to be there? What else could you be doing with your time? What would happen if you stopped attending the unproductive meetings?
You would free-up hours of time, for the cost of effectively nothing. Meetings and process are but two examples of how our time and energy has been diverted away from our mission to unproductive and menial tasks.
It’s about time we took control of our time and focussed our energies on delivering on our mission.
Know your Mission and Objectives
The key to taking back control of your time is to know your mission, key objectives, and key activities for advancing those objectives. These will be different for each business and position. The most important thing is to have a clear understanding of what they are so you can filter out unimportant activities. If your mission and objectives are vague, conflicting, or too long you lose focus, and remain stuck in an unproductive purgatory.
For a construction project the mission is to safely deliver a high-quality asset for your client within budget and on time.
The key objectives for this mission in order of precedent are;
- Workplace Safety
- End-product Quality
- Delivering within Budget
- Delivering on Time
Once you have your key objectives, you must list the non-negotiable routine activities required to advance them. For the Project Manager this could look like the following;
- Leading planning of safety critical work activities.
- Regularly site inspections for both safety and quality standards. Ensuring that you do not walk past anything below the required standard.
- Periodic checks of product quality and supporting quality documentation. Ensuring that deficiencies are rectified.
- Leading procurement of long lead time items and major packages.
- Reviewing actual vs planned progress several times per week. Ensuring that any delays are managed.
- Ensuring the cost report is done accurately and on-time each month
These activities are non-negotiables and must be completed routinely to achieve the mission. Activities that prevent you from attending to these activities, and therefore completing your mission should not be prioritised.
Summing Up
If you catch yourself regularly saying “I’m so busy” or “there aren’t enough hours in the day” then take it as an opportunity. An opportunity to get clear on what you are trying to achieve and stop letting others divert your attention with unimportant tasks.
We all have the same number of hours in day, week, month, and year. Yet those who clearly understand their mission and filter out unimportant activities experience exponentially greater results.
At TMY Advisory, we are focussed on the outcome and pride ourselves on delivering exceptional results. If you’re feeling the pinch on a project or need help getting things moving, we’d love to hear from you.
