It’s always been amazing to me how many people in “knowledge work” — we used to call it “white-collar,” but I think that’s now cancelled or somehow offensive — claim to be super busy, claim that the world is crushing them, and still somehow manage to know the plot of everything on Netflix. If you’re that busy, wouldn’t Netflix evade you at some level? You’d think, right? But I think a lot of “busy” is a smokescreen. It’s currency to say how busy you are — it underscores feelings of relevance, which is tremendously important to people — and honestly, it’s a defense mechanism. If you’re busy, you can’t have random other shit thrown on your plate (well, within reason; managers often load up the truly busiest people because they just want the work done and are assigning it to the most competent person). But in reality, this is also busy:
I’d agree with that. At most jobs you’ll ever come to have, there’s a constant discussion of “strategy” and “plays,” i.e. “revenue plays” or “branding plays.” The reality, though, is that true strategy requires effort and lift and taking time away from task-based action. Most people who “set strategy” utterly miss that aspect of it, and what they do is run from meeting to meeting, call to call, and task to task, with a periodic offsite or two sprinkled in there. Somehow, despite never embracing self-awareness or really looking at the business, they set a “strategy” for some year, say 2022. The “strategy” is truly just a list of operational tasks and logistical nice-to-haves, but it’s breathlessly called “strategy” by everyone, and if you question that, 1 of 2 things will happen. The first thing is you’ll be fired; that’s the more common outcome when you question an executive’s definition of their “strategy” as anything more than a slightly-advanced Trello board. The second thing that happens is people will default to deflecting the “strategy” discussion and talking about how busy and slammed they are, how much is on their plate, how much work needs to be done, etc. A lot of this shit is completely invented. I’ve worked at jobs where some high-up manager has kicked back an email marketing thing to me 10 times. In reality, on the first edit (nine edits ago), it could have been sent and been fine. But they do it nine more times because they need to be seen as “busy” (i.e. “relevant”), and they view the 10 edits as part of “strategy,” even though it’s just creating a hurry up and wait culture. “New edits are in, sir!”
“Hurry up and wait” is the real reality of knowledge work, especially with SaaS and other tech suites taking a lot of the load, especially in terms of organizing data for decks and reports, which is a huge “I’m so busy!” aspect of work. If you walk through an office — in the days of offices, that is! — and look at most people, a few are working, but a large chunk are reading articles, scrolling Instagram, gossiping with co-workers, listening to Joe Rogan, etc. Knowledge work is not that hard. The whole reason that Ferriss, who provided the quote above, is popular is because of Four-Hour Work Week (and eventually his podcast), and the whole reason that book is popular is because we all know it’s doable. A lot of sales guys work about 4-5 hours a week. They tell everyone they work 80 hours/week, of course, but they work 5 many weeks, and it’s all good if they close 2-3 big deals in a quarter. No one cares or questions. The output is what matters in that role. The problem becomes that in roles where output doesn’t matter, or can’t be seen as clearly, busy has to replace output. That’s how we got to the confusion around “busy” and “productive.”
There’s no real solution set for this because it comes at the intersection of core elements of humanity, and, frankly, core elements of success for a man. You want to be relevant, have trappings, have professional achievements, etc. As tech takes more of the beep-beep-bop-boop workload and the organizational side, you need to find other ways to be seen as relevant and kingdom-making. You need to control your fiefdom and there’s a few different paths to that, but one of the core paths is simply telling everyone how busy you are, despite the fact that you and your significant other still found the time to stream 18 hours of some series on 1992 Polish punk rock. I see you, Tim. I know you’re flexing on busy and not really busy, but I also know you desperately need relevance, so I’ll let you have this.
I used to write these articles and say “We can fix this with better priorities!” I thought I was so smart. But we can’t fix this — because the “priorities” for many are about how they’re seen and perceived (the relevance), not the overall betterment of the organization. You might be gone from the organization in six months, and have 60 years left in your body and mind. Which one would you prioritize?
When people tell you how “slammed” they are, it’s almost always a lie aimed at something else. And you know what? Ultimately, if that’s your game, it’s perfectly fine.
Takes?
