How to spot (and stop) time-wasting work in your business
Photo by Milena Trifonova on Unsplash
I’ve recently finished reading Slow Productivity by Cal Newport.
Early on in the book he introduces the term ‘pseudo-productivity’ to describe “The use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort.”
It's what I like to call busy work - the stuff that takes up our time but doesn't necessarily produce tangible results.
I think it's one of the biggest challenges we face as business owners, especially if you are a solopreneur working online.
It’s very easy to fill days, weeks and months of time with pseudo-productivity.
But it’s hard, if not impossible, to build a successful, sustainable business off the back of it.
What happens instead is that we end up always busy but feeling like there is still a lot of untapped potential in our business:
It could be that you are working flat-out but struggling to get clients.
Equally, it could be that you are fully booked, also working flat out and sensing that there must be an easier way.
In Slow Productivity, Cal makes the point that we (as humans!) will work to the point of maximum tension until something happens that forces us to make a change.
Until we are forced to slow down and make changes towards a more sustainable pace.
Maybe we think that's just the way it is or we have ingrained beliefs about our productivity and self-worth or maybe it’s actually just really hard to identify the activities that truly do grow our business and focus inly on those.
One thing is for sure, left unchecked pseudo-productivity will creep in and fill all the time you are willing to give it.
The key, I think, is finding the activities that feel most aligned with what you want to achieve and how you want to work.
Do those and try to cut out as much of the rest as possible.
When I start off with new clients, we begin by reviewing your why - the impact you want to make, how you want to spend your time, the physical and emotional capacity you have available and of course the income that you want or need to make.
Once you are clear on those things then you have a set of criteria against which to assess the activities you are doing - do they fit your why or don’t they.
Only then can you decide what counts as busy work and what actually makes a difference.
If you're ready to break out of the cycle of busy work that you are in - whether you are fully booked or with only a handful of clients - then my holistic business review is here to support you. Together we look look through not only the why behind your work, but also clients & community, products & services, sales & systems. So you can get a handle on what's working well and what needs to change in order to work towards the results you set out for.