Busywork

I was reading a post on one of my Franklin Covey Facebook sites, and in passing, I read that someone was trying to minimize how much time they were wasting on “busywork”. I passed it by, thinking it made sense. I mean, we’ve all been there — in my case, many times were spent on projects I made up to avoid something else I was supposed to be working on.

The term “busywork” is different for each one of us, but is generally defined as tasks that keep you busy but don’t produce significant results or move you forward in your goals. This might be “wasting” time organizing something , writing in your planner (or, more specifically, multiple planners), creating a project for yourself that interests you, but seems redundant, or a waste of time when you could be working on more important things.

Now I bring into the equation the book by David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. The author maintains that everything we do in life is work…it doesn’t matter what it is. It could be the dishes and laundry, the emails, the blog post, running errands, grocery shopping, everything you do at your actual job, paying the bills, attending your child’s school play or parent-teacher interviews, etc. Here, the list is endless. Allen is suggesting that whatever you are doing in that moment is work, and he doesn’t define how important one task is over the other. In the end, the prioritization of said tasks are really up to the individual. However, if the task needs to get done today, tomorrow, next week or someday, it’s still you who are going to be completing it…