What to do when busy work takes over

I recently asked the good people of LinkedIn to tell me what ‘busy work’ looks like for them.

Here are some of the things folks said in response:

“It’s stuff that needs to be done, not necessarily urgent, when I’ve got a bit of a gap but not enough time to do something really constructive or focused.”

“To me that means keeping busy so I don’t feel guilty, even if it’s not really important.”

“For me there’s a category of tasks within busy work that’s driven by perfectionism and avoidance of the bit I don’t want to ‘get wrong’, so for example replacing images in a PowerPoint deck (hunting for the ‘right’ image) rather than updating the important content. Or formatting a bit of my website page rather than nailing down the copy.”

I also asked them to tell me what sorts of things fall into that category.

They said things like:

• pulling my financial info together for my accounts,

• scrolling or responding to social media,

• going through my Inbox, jotting down ideas for social media,

• tidying my files on my computer,

• posting on socials that are not my key platform,

• checking my email even though it's all newsletters,

• watching training sessions/webinars I know I'm not in a position to implement.

Does any of that feel familiar?

Whatever’s driving your busy work – whether it’s perfectionism, avoidance of something challenging, boredom or guilt – when you spend too much of your time engrossed in activities that aren’t actually moving the needle for you and your business, it stands to reason that there’s less time to spend on the things that matter most.

The projects you’re excited to make happen, but never have time for.

So if you feel you’re so busy juggling the day-to-day stuff that there’s never time for your bigger priorities, what do you do?

Well, today I want to share a few things you can think about that will help you redress the balance.

1)      Understand what busy work looks like for you and your business.

How? Well, you might want to spend a few days monitoring how you’re spending your time (I have a template to help with that – head here to download your copy).

Then look back over what you’ve been doing and pay attention to the activities that feel like they’re moving you forward, and the ones that might need doing, but aren’t contributing to your growth.

Keep an eye out in case there are any things you’re doing that actually don’t need to be done. Is there anything you can let go of all together?

2)      Once you know what busy work looks like for you – and you’ve established that it needs to be done - you can then ask yourself whether it needs to be done by YOU

If you already have a team, is there anything you’re doing that you could delegate? And if you don’t, are you ready to think about getting support?

In an ideal dream world, it would be great if we could all outsource all our busy work, so we spend 100% of our time doing the things only we can do that will lead directly to the growth of our business. But sadly most of us are not in that position. There are still some things we have to do, even if we don’t want to.

So then what? Well…

3)      Use your monitoring from before to notice how long your busy work is taking you. And then consider whether it needs to take that long.

Quick caveat – if you’ve been here a while, you’ll know I’m not a fan of telling people to speed up. That’s not helpful. Everyone has their own pace, and that’s totally ok.

BUT pay attention to whether your perfectionism is causing a task to take longer than it needs to (for example,are you agonising over a design in Canva, or finding the perfect image for a blog. Quick reality check – yes, you want things to be on brand. BUT the difference between a good enough image and an AMAZING image is not going to be the difference between the success or failure of your business.)

And also get curious to see whether a task you don’t really want to be doing is taking longer than it needs to because you’re bored, and keep bouncing around between tasks.

4)      If you know you’re spending too much time on busy work, create a container for it.

Decide how much time you’re willing to spend on those important tasks that need to get done but aren’t making the boat go faster, and do your best to stick to that. We all know that work expands to fill the time available. How might giving yourself LESS time to get your busy work done free up more space for other things.

Speaking of other things…

5)      Do you know what’s important to be doing INSTEAD of your busy work?

What’s the project or goal you WANT to be working on right now? And why is that thing so important to you?

I’m not usually a fan of the word ‘should’, but here’s somewhere it can be useful. If you know what you SHOULD be doing with your time – and you’re committed to making that thing happen – it becomes easier to limit the time you’re spending on other things.

For example, if you know there’s a new group programme you want to be working on, having clarity around the tasks you need to do to move that forward will help you choose wisely when you have a spare 15 minutes that you don’t know what to do with.

6)      Rethink what you do first.

If you’re used to getting the busy work out of the way before you let yourself focus on your bigger priorities, it’s no wonder you’re never getting to what’s important.

What would happen if you allowed yourself to spend time on your big exciting project first? Whether that’s blocking out every Monday morning for it, or spending the first hour of every day working on the thing that matters most. A great way of preventing busy work from eating into all your time, is NOT to do it first.

The truth of the matter is that if you spend all your time doing whatever’s shouting loudest, juggling the day to day stuff, engrossed in busy work… you’ll never do the things you need to do to get your business to the next level.

So remember you get to choose. Carry on as you are, waiting until you get to the end of your to-do list before you let yourself focus on what matters most to YOU. Or put yourself – your growth, your business growth – at the top of your list of priorities.

The key, as always, is awareness and intention. And if you’re realising that the busy work is taking up too much of your time and nothing I’ve shared here is going to help… it might be that you’ve created a business model or way of working that’s not serving you, and this could be your cue to sit down and think about what – if anything – you’d like to change.