3 Time Wasters Disguised As Work
These days it seems everyone is busy and there’s just not enough time in the day. Unfortunately, the last time we checked, a day still has the same number of minutes as it had 100 years ago. Modern-day conveniences and technology were sold to us under the pretense of having the ability to save us hours a day. So what happened? Either we’re the dumbest and laziest generation in the past century or we’ve deluded ourselves into believing the lies of false busyness and fake work. While we know there’s plenty of dumb and lazy to go around, we really think most people have truly convinced themselves that some time-wasters are actually real work. Here are the three most common areas of fake work that we come across.
#1 – Insanely Long Meetings
We love effective meetings and know that much can be accomplished through them. Unfortunately, effective meetings represent less than 10% of all work related meetings. If you find yourself in a 2-hour or longer meeting, unless it’s some type of annual corporate strategy meeting, then something has gone horribly wrong. A good principle to remember is that more gets done by doing than by talking about how it could be done. Don’t get us wrong, planning is good but at some point you have to act. What’s an effective meeting length? 20 to 60 minutes is a good rule of thumb, depending on the frequency of the meetings. There are exceptions, but not nearly as many as some seem to think.
#2 – Engaging the Disengaged
This is an area where many managers believe they are working but in reality they are involved in a colossal waste of time. Disengaged employees are those who are miscast in their current position, they are paycheck collectors who couldn’t care less about your bank’s vision and customers and they are status quo protectors, sabotaging your every move. Sadly there are far too many managers that accept the disengaged and spend countless hours complaining about them and attempting to fix the unfixable. Stop trying to figure out new ways of training them, incenting them to achieve average, and excusing their poor performance. Time spent in this area may seem like work but it’s nothing more than lost time.
#3 – Unproductive Busyness
Have you ever felt like you’ve worked hard all day but really can’t put your finger on any particular accomplishment? It happens to the best of us, but for some, it’s an everyday thing and they don’t even realize how unproductive they’ve become. The busyness could be getting trapped on a companywide cc’ed message that evolves into your own internal chain letter. It could possibly be those 10 coffee breaks a day discussing the latest gossip with your coworkers, or maybe it’s the unscheduled interruptions due to not utilizing a team calendar. Most often the busyness excuse is used for not meeting basic expectations. Learn to spot the unproductive employees and set basic expectations and hold your people accountable to them.
Stop Faking It
Take a few minutes to think about your work week. How much time did you spend on time-sucking tasks? Set clear expectations that are achievable and can be easily measured. Know your organization’s vision and goals. Align these two things and that will be a major step in staying away from the busyness of fake work.
