What is the purpose of busy work?
To keep individuals focused on mindless tasks to prevent them from questioning authority?
Busy work is a time filler that is used everywhere from education to non-profits.
Need to make a decision?
Let’s form a committee, two sub committees and a tiger team to find a solution.
Why?
We have been trained to believe that decisions cannot be reached without a committee.
Precious time is spent discussing the original problem to the point it becomes so watered down that we lose sight of what we were doing in the first place.
Wasted time that could have been used to find a solution and seek new opportunities.
Busy work is the norm in our public schools.
How else can the teachers keep the students focused when PE is eliminated?
Busy work accomplishes nothing.
Choose to Opt Out.
John Peterson says
March 27, 2013 at 10:19 amVery insightful and poignant article on busy work, and how it is used to keep people busy instead of being used to keep people productive. This is especially true with small business. There is an army of cloud based apps out there that are available to free you from the tyranny of busy work, and get you back to the work you can bill for!
tiffany says
March 27, 2013 at 9:06 pmI agree with you John, use technology to your advantage so you can focus on what matters.