Busy ≠ effective
Lots of people confuse working a lot (busyness) with working well (efficacy). I don’t think they’re the same. Often, they are inversely correlated.
First, let’s define our terms.
“Busyness” is having a lot to do. It is often associated with working long hours, lack of sleep, and back-to-back meetings. Emotionally, “busy” often implies stress and anxiety. It is used as an excuse. “I’m too busy.”
“Efficacy” is getting shit done. It is getting the right shit done: not the urgent, necessarily, but important.
Lots of people are busy with stupid things. That’s why I think it’s a bad proxy for efficacy, or productivity.
We are better off doing nothing than busywork. Doing nothing has at least two benefits. One is that you are not wasting your time with the stupid thing. This is valuable in saved time. But also—to the thinking person, to the person engaged in the world—doing nothing is productive.
People sometimes ask me how long it takes me to write these daily essays. The answer is, it varies. Some take 20 minutes, others take 2+ hours. But what is always true is that most of the work is not typing on my laptop. Most of the work is reading and listening. I estimate that I absorb at least 10-30x of what I output. Probably much more. I mean that I absorb 10-30 ideas—from conversation, observation or reading—for every one idea I put into the world.
Since most of the “work” of writing essays is input, most of the “work” is not actually “work” but rather doing nothing and its cousin called “leisure,” like going for a walk, working out, or going on a coffee date. Behind any prolific writer I think you will find a voracious reader.
Why do people make themselves so busy? I think in order to feel productive, since feeling productive makes a person feel important, and egos love feeling important.
The issue is, the dopamine hit provided by busywork quickly fades. Stupid tasks are like narcotics. They seem important. You do them and feel productive. But when you come up from air, and arrive home after a long day, you ask yourself, or your partner asks you, what did you do today? Having come up for air, you should have perspective. Seemingly, you’re no longer distracted. But the answer is, nothing, not really.
On the other hand, tasks of importance demand more brain energy. They are longer-term and easier to procrastinate. These are the actions that push the needle—on your career, your family, company, world. But doing them often doesn’t feels productive since they are hard and long. Progress is incremental. Day to day, there is not much to show. There is no “click submit” dopamine hit. With the Opposite of Busywork, our egos don’t feel as important.
But when the productive feeling does arrive, and the paparazzi show up…boy, that feeling doesn’t fade.
This piece goes nicely with Timeless = always timely from Feb. 4.