Performative Busyness Masks Productivity
“Busy” — the new canned response when asked how you’ve been. What will your colleagues think of you if you answer with anything else? You’re lazy, unproductive, uncommitted, not in demand?
A Reddit user asked those with 9–5 cubicle jobs, “How do you pretend to stay busy at work?” The post went on to receive nearly 15,000 comments and countless suggestions like:
“I worked at a call center that allowed reading between calls. I bought a thick-ass hard-backed history book and used an Exacto knife to cut out the shape of my phone midway through. I made the phone-shaped hole about an inch thick and happily browsed Reddit, watched YouTube, and even live tv.”
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“Leave a half-eaten meal on your desk. Leave your desk and go slack off somewhere. People will see the half-eaten meal and think you are so busy elsewhere you couldn’t finish your meal, or they will think you’ll be right back because who leaves in the middle of a meal.”
This is both comical and disturbing. Imagine spending hours of each day trying to look busy instead of creating something of value. It occurred to me that many people, even those who dutifully complete “company work” all day, aren’t being productive. Instead, they’re playing a game of charades in which they act out productive-looking tasks to ensure continued employment, the respect of their co-workers, and their place in the chain of command.
In between rounds (pointless meetings, shuffling papers, and small talk), they take smoke breaks, shoot the shit, and browse social media, leaving a fraction of the workday for real work. There’s a significant disconnect between busyness and productivity in many organizations where performative busyness is the norm.
But what is performative busyness?
Imagine your goal is to look busy. When asked how your day is going, the only acceptable response is, “busy, busy, busy.” In reality, though, most of the work you do has little impact and you find little meaning in the organization’s mission. The illusion of looking busy over being productive is performative busyness.
There are several clear indicators of a toxic performative busyness culture:
Arriving late to every meeting because you were “finishing a call.”
Not taking vacation days because you don’t want to seem dispensable.
There’s no clarity about the mission, goals, and roles.
Everything is an emergency where a fire has to be extinguished.
How did we get to a place where we value busyness over productivity?
Hustle culture: hard work is necessary for success. This truth has been distorted by members of a sub-culture in which work has come to dominate their lives to a point where time with family, friends, and leisure is considered useless. “The more you do, the better you are” — that’s the mentality. Social media and 24/7 access to work email amplify the unhealthy attitudes that inevitably lead to burnout.
Identity Crisis: our jobs have come to consume our identities. When you ask someone what they do, they don’t respond with their hobbies and favorite activities. They tell you what they do for work. It’s a quick way to measure and compare — to determine the pecking order. During introductions, this is the standard procedure to kill the awkward silence and progress from small talk to more meaningful interaction. Still, we don’t need to attach our entire identities to one facet of our lives.
How can we quit the busy?
Slow Productivity: Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University who’s written extensively about productivity, including the popular book Deep Work. Cal offers an alternative to the typical multi-tasked, hyperactive, quasi-productive state that most of us work within. He suggests tackling fewer initiatives but working “deeply and regularly” on the chosen few to achieve superior outcomes. Not only will the results be improved, so will attitudes.
Redefine productivity — staring out the window and thinking about the solution to a problem is work for a knowledge worker. But this same worker may feel a pressure to stare at their screen instead, to look busy, despite only being more distracted and less focused. Until productivity is redefined, the incentive system will push people to look busy, tackle unimportant tasks, and spend more time looking important than doing important work.
Rethink your self-worth — if your self-worth is measured by your net worth, career progression, job title, or other external measuring sticks, it’s only natural to lose sight of those things that matter. Warren Buffett famously implements an “inner scorecard,” whereby success is measured by his own standards. If something is important to you, give it the attention it deserves. If you’re doing things solely for the attaboys and perception, it’s time to reconsider how you spend your time.
80/20 analysis — If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times, “Twenty percent of your actions generate eighty percent of your results.” The Pareto principle begs the question, “what twenty percent is generating the bulk of your results?” As soon as you can answer, you can reallocate your time, spending less on the other eighty percent, freeing up time for rest, leisure, relationships, and creativity.
Do meaningful work - it’s not about working less. It’s not even about being more productive. It’s about spending time on things you find meaningful, both at and outside of work. The average American spends over 1800 hours working each year, so it’s easy to understand why anxiety, frustration, and burnout occur if that time is spent doing unfulfilling, trivial tasks — or worse, spent looking busy.
A person who values busyness over relationships, health, and balance will fail. Like many typical problems, people demand “fixes” at the societal or government level. These mandate-loving fixers suggest policies that provide more time off, better benefits, and other perks. Despite “progress” in these areas, many people work more than ever and feel less content.
The solution is at an individual level. Don’t wait for someone to permit you to spend time with family and friends — make time. Don’t sit idly, waiting for the opportunity to get healthy — do it. Don’t delegate finding meaning — seek it. In his book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown wrote, “if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” He’s right.
