I
n the previous chapter you were asked to log how you spent
your time during a typical week. Diligence in completing this
exercise should provide an accurate and graphic picture of
broad categories of time use, a study that you can use to make gen-
eral decisions about which activities deserve more attention and
which deserve less. For example, it should be fairly obvious if you
are getting less sleep than you should, or if television watching is
eating up more time than you had supposed.
But what if your activities seem balanced, and you still feel
the stress of a rushed and unproductive schedule? You are getting
about eight hours of sleep most nights, harmonizing hours at work
with hours at play, devoting a worthwhile chunk of time to family
and friends, spending time exercising and eating healthy, doing
everything “right”—but for all your effort, you don’t seem to
accomplish what you set out to do. You make your list and check
off item after item, but still have more items left undone at the end
of the day. Are you spending your time working but not achieving,
busy but not productive? Could you be working on the “wrong”
things and avoiding the most important?
The Need for Busywork
Rarely is busywork (tasks which are time consuming but of lim-
ited value) listed on an employee’s job description or considered
during a performance review. It is however, an activity engaged in
by many individuals as a replacement for more important, mean-
ingful tasks. Why? It’s comforting to be busy and therefore unable