Too busy to do better
Have you heard (or worse, said) this nonsense before?
I really want to do _____ because that would be way more valuable but I’m too busy with _______ and that HAS to get done.
The day-to-day busywork matters even less than you suspect. Wasting time on busy work and missing out on opportunities to do better, hurts you, your leadership, your company, and your customers.
It is impractical for modern leaders to remove all of the stupid work that exists. Majority of them have almost no clue what the day-to-day work looks like and apathetic management is perfectly fine maintaining the status quo.
Often, people are too busy or lazy to sit and think about how to evaluate you properly, so they will use a big mess of shitty work to check the box. It provides an easy system for output to be measured without using any brain cells.
Don’t enable lazy behavior.
Often, employees are evaluated every 6 months or year. Take advantage of the time it takes to recognize value and use it for your benefit (and ultimately, the company’s).
This means, if you get evaluated annually, you can ignore day-to-day garbage work and seek out a huge win or two to deliver for the end of the year.
The next time you sideline a great idea in favor of a “priority near term deadline” be sure to also congratulate yourself for fucking your chances of a major positive impact.
Instead, pause your boring work and start to think about better ways to spend your time. The report that you spend hours slaving over that someone forgets to read benefits nobody. That’s time that could have gone into a new solution for a customer and ultimately, your next promotion.
BUT NOT MY WORK – MY WORK IS IMPORTANT
No. It’s not. Unless you’re a trauma surgeon in an active war zone, chances are every minute of your day-to-day is not mission critical.
Nobody gives a fuck about your stupid report. Even the “super important” executive who allegedly reads it spends 1% of her week thinking about it.
Don’t get caught in the trap of overvaluing the importance of your work. The fact that your work is useless is not a reflection of you. It’s a reflection of the state of enterprises. It’s not one person’s fault, but you as one person can make it better if you change your behavior.
For fun, pick 20% of your useless work this week and just … don’t do it. For even more fun, set a timer and see how long it takes for anyone to ask about it or notice. In the meantime, start to do better.
You probably have fantastic ideas. Use your newly gained 20% to figure out how to make your ideas come to reality. Chances are nobody will even notice but if you do get pressed for your day-to-day work, build a story around why your new project makes more sense.
No business is stupid enough to walk away from something useful. If they are, leave. If your bottom 20% day-to-day garbage work really can’t be avoided or hidden – automate it.
