By Greg Blencoe:
“I’m busy.”
If you ask somebody at work how they are doing, you will likely get this response a lot.
I think that “I’m busy” usually means one of these three things:
1. “Busy people are important. Therefore, I’m letting you know that I’m busy, so you realize I’m important.”
2. “Busy people are productive and contributing a lot to the company, so they are less likely to lose their job than somebody who is not busy. Since deep down I’m really scared to lose my job, I want to let you know that I’m busy.”
3. “I’m not trying to boost my ego and I’m not scared to lose my job. I’m just honestly telling you that I have a lot of work to do.”
I think employees are definitely much busier than they have been in the past. Companies need to reduce costs as much as they can in order to be competitive. Therefore, fewer employees are typically expected to do the same amount of overall work as in the past and perhaps even more.
I totally get this.
But I think that lots of companies are missing out on some huge opportunities to be a lot more efficient. I think they would be very wise to question the value of all of the activities that employees are doing instead of just assuming that the activity has to be done or it has to be done that particular way.
Somebody who digs ditches and fills them back up for 10 hours a day can say they are busy. But they are not really getting anything done.
Being busy does not always mean being productive.
Furthermore, I think way too many people take way too much pride in being busy for the sake of being busy. Do we really live to just “be busy”? I believe the focus should instead be on being a lot more happy.
I’ve seen a lot of people (both people who are managers and those who are not managers) that have jobs that sound really fun and exciting. But many of them are actually quite unhappy, because they simply have too much work to do.
I would like this to change.
And I think this can happen if managers and employees are allowed to get together and apply some creative thinking about saving time by no longer doing certain activities that are providing little or no value and doing ones that need to be done more efficiently.
When you ask somebody at work how they are doing, I’d love to hear lots of people start saying:
“I’m productive and happy.”
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