Escaping the Busywork Trap

Let’s talk about busywork — you know the kind. The endless to-do lists, the back-to-back tasks that keep you occupied but don’t actually get you anywhere. It fills your space without giving you much back. The ride isn't fun any more, but how do you get off?

In today's episode, we're looking at the difference between busywork and valuable work — the kind that genuinely matters to you, your business, your life. We’ll explore how to recognise when you’re caught in the loop of filling time, why doing more doesn’t always mean getting more done, and how you can start shifting into work that actually moves the needle.

If you’re craving clarity, breathing room, and a way of working that brings you more satisfaction and more space, this one’s for you.

12 Prompts to Escape the Busywork Trap

I've created a free PDF download for you as a companion to this episode.
It includes 12 powerful prompts to help you distinguish your own busywork from your Valuable Work, and help you move towards your effectiveness, satisfaction and flow. 
Get your free PDF download on my website here

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Please get in touch with any questions, suggestions for future episode topics, and to let me know how you're going applying what I share in the podcast in your own life.

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Transcript

Hey, my friend. Welcome to Yes, you. I'm Annie. 

And I am so happy to be here with you. Thank you for joining me. I am coming to you from the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I want to pay respect to their elders past and present. And if you are in Australia, then you are probably aware that in the last week on ANZAC Day, during the Dawn Memorial service, that during the Welcome to Country some People piped up and were booing the welcome to country and again, booing during then an acknowledgement of land. When I saw this, it just broke my heart. I know that there are a range of different opinions about welcomes to country and acknowledgement of land, and they range from just that they're completely unnecessary to that they are tokenistic, to the really what I consider to be pretty gross, attitude of like ‘I'm sick of being welcomed to my own country.. Um, yeah, that one's pretty foul to me. Where there's a generosity from First Nations people in offering a welcome and doing that in a way that is true to their tradition and culture that so long precedes colonisation and settlement of white people in this country. It's an absolute honor to receive that from First Nations people, in my opinion. And so to think that people were booing and rejecting it, so explicitly, disrespectfully really, really broke my heart. And then on top of that, that night at a sports match, there was supposed to be a Welcome of Country given by Wurundjeri Elder, Auntie Joy, and it was canceled.

And there's been a whole lot of going back and forth about why it was canceled or it was a miscommunication within the team, but or within the management and all of that. But coincidental, just perhaps that it was the night of the day where that booing had happened at the the morning service. Um, and again, it really just broke my heart.

To see just this gross attitude towards First Nations people and their generosity and kindness, uh, the way that they continue to offer these beautiful ceremonies so generously, and for that to be disrespected in such a way. And then on top of that, like it already upset me. It was, um, disturbing. But on top of that, to see Auntie Joy's heartbreak over that, that she said that she was distressed and, and heartbroken was just another level.

Um, yeah, and I don't really know what we do about that. Those of us who are not indigenous, but are seeking to be friends and allies to First Nations people. I'm not really sure what the right action is in these situations. Um, one of the things that I. Really respect was. So when Auntie Joy was, uh, uninvited from doing the Welcome to Country, there were supposed to be the Djirri Djirri Dancers, this group of women Wurundjeri dancers, uh, who were going to be dancing as well.

And then they were still invited to do that, and they declined to do that. And Kathleen Teek, who is one of the Djirri Djirri, was quoted as saying, when it comes to our elders, we are not going to stand by and let our elders be disrespected. And so the jury de dancers chose not to perform, uh, at this sports opening.

And I really, really respect that. And I guess I'm just thinking how do we follow that lead? I'm not a Wurundjeri person, and so Wurundjeri elders are not my elders, but they are the elders of. The people who are custodians of the land on which I live. And so I think there is a responsibility for me also to say I won't stand by and let them be disrespected like that.

And so I guess that's for each of us. If that resonates with you, it's for each of us to kind of work out, well what does that mean for me? Like how do I. Not stand by and let First Nations be people, be disrespected, uh, when, when we see that. So I'll leave you to, to ponder that. It's, uh, definitely something that disturbs me and I can't even imagine how distressing and upsetting that that could be for First Nations people.

And so if I have First Nations listeners here, I do just want to. Just say, my heart's with you and I'm so sorry for this gross behavior. Um, yeah. Okay. I'll leave that there and shall we head into this episode? Let's get into it. A

let's talk about busy work. Are you familiar with this term busy work? Whether you've heard of the term or not, I'm sure you are familiar with the idea. Busy work. Is the work that you do that just feels like constant activity, keeping things going, doing stuff, just filling up your time without actually really achieving anything or without really getting anywhere.

I am sure that you know what that can feel like and for business owners, I'm looking at you today, but this absolutely applies to everybody else, whether in just your home life or in your work life. This can apply and so. So many of us can feel really overwhelmed and pulled in a thousand different directions and time poor, and yet our days are just full of this busy work.

This stuff that just keeps us active and busy, keeps our time full so that we are poor. We feel poor for time because we don't have that spare time. Uh. But we are not really getting anywhere, not really getting anything done, not feeling productive or effective in our time. So I want to chat today about this, about how we move away from busy work.

I have recently been doing some swimming, kind of swimming lessons, like part of a swimming squad, but it's like a stroke correction kind of class. One of the things that actually led me to do this is because sometimes when I've gone swimming just on my own in a a pool swimming laps. I'll be just swimming and sometimes I'll look at the clock and kind of note, how long does it take me to swim at, say a, a 50 meter lap?

And then I'll be like, okay, I'm going to swim a fast one, and I will put in lots more effort. I'll feel like I'm moving a lot faster, doing a lot more. I get to the end of the lap and I'm like way more puffed out. But I look at the clock and it's like. Only a tiny bit faster than my regular time for a lap, or maybe not even faster.

So, so much more effort, but not actually getting me there any faster or any more efficiently saving any energy along the way. And so. For me, I've been realising with my swimming that it's not just about doing more. It's not just about adding more effort, but it's about working out how I'm swimming, what I'm actually doing, and kind of breaking that down so that I can work out how I can do it better rather than just more, and it's that whole.

Old thing we've all heard about working smarter and not harder. I think that we are safe to agree that we are way past the point of glorifying busyness, aren't we? I. Being busy is no longer a badge of honor. It's certainly not a badge that I want to wear. How about you? But the thing is that even if we know that busyness isn't working, busyness is not where it's at, and it's like you want to get off that ride, don't want to be just caught up in being busy for the sake of being busy.

You may not actually know how to get off that ride. So we end up just staying stuck because we are not even sure what an alternative to busyness even looks like. You know, in the intro to this podcast, one of the things that I say in that introduction is that this podcast is about imagining, exploring and stepping right into a new paradigm of life and leadership and.

I guess what I'm talking about today is kind of part of that process. It's imagining a new paradigm and playing with how it might be possible to bring that to life in our own work and our lives more broadly. Sometimes we are just so kind of used to the way that we do things, and so caught up in that, that.

It's like we can't even conceive of an alternative to that. And there might be something in us that at certain times, or perhaps as just a, uh, overarching feeling, we just know this isn't it. I don't want to keep doing things like this, but we don't know how to change it and. I think even probably a bigger issue is that we don't even know what that change would look like.

Like how could things be different? So even if we were open to exploring that or stepping into it, it's like, how do I even imagine that to begin with? So today I want to offer you just a few steps. Now, this is something that I don't consider myself to have all the answers. Of course, not that any topic I ever share on, I consider myself to have all the answers.

Uh, but it's something that I am really into exploring and playing with. And I think that it is something important for us because it's really, really clear that the way that we are doing things at the moment where busyness is the norm, it's not working for us. It's not working for any individuals that I know and it's not working for us collectively.

And so I'm really into us imagining together and exploring and ultimately stepping into a different way of doing things. So let me share with you a few steps, a few things that you could play with if you want to move a little bit away or a lot away from busy work and into a possible alternative. So the first thing that I would suggest is that we need to identify what is your particular version of busy work and what the alternative to that could be.

So for me, I think of the alternative to busy work being what I'll call valuable work. It's work that actually makes a difference. Work that moves the needle adds value to yourself, to your clients, to your business, to your life. And so it could be in the realm of things like. Strategic work or working on values, vision goals, or developing new offerings or refining processes or empowering your team, like all of those to me feel like valuable work.

And those are not just things that kind of just keep me busy. They're actually really significant and make a difference to my business. You know, they say that 20% of your work yields 80% of your results, and so it's about kind of working out, well, what is that 20%? And doing more of that, clearing away some of what your current 80% is so that you're doing less of that kind of busy shuffling faffing kind of 80% stuff and doing more.

Of the effective, valuable, worthwhile 20% stuff. Some people will frame this as like CEO work, so the kind of work that you do as a CEO rather than the kind of work that you do as an operator. And for those of us who have started businesses, I think at some point it's about making a transition. Because when you are first starting a business, you're going to be in the busyness of just everything that's required to get a business up and running.

And so it is just. Kind of, you wear so many different hats, you'll jump from one thing to another and just do whatever it takes to get the business off the ground. And hopefully at some point it doesn't need to be like that anymore. And you can shift into doing what you might call CEO work. So not just kind of all the details he stuff, but actually more the stuff that's kind of steering the bigger ship of the business.

I know for myself, I felt sort of after a few years, or probably five or so years of my business, I felt that shift starting to take place and knew, okay, I actually need to kind of shift my role somewhat and uh, within that just shift the focus of my work somewhat. But I actually felt a little bit unsure of what that even looked like.

I think. I may have actually Googled what does a CEO do? And it's funny, actually, I caught up with some, with a group of people, this was a few years ago, and someone I hadn't seen in a while, he was working in this organisation and I hadn't, hadn't caught up with him in such a long time that I didn't really know what he was doing in the organisation anymore.

And so I said to him, oh, so what are you doing there now? And he sort of looked at me a little bit weird and he was like, I'm doing the things a CEO does. Um, and that was his way of saying, I'm the CEO. And I was like, oh, okay, congratulations. And it was sort of slightly awkward, but as I walked away from that, I was like, I kind of wanted to ask more questions like, what does A CEO do?

And I almost had the query. Does he even really know? Like even the fact that he answered like, that I do what A CEO does, and it's like. What does that actually look like? And so if you are in that position where you feel like, okay, yeah, I'm stuck in this busy work and I know that a transition to doing kind of more higher level, uh, larger picture stuff is where I'm at and what I need.

Part of that's gotta be working out well what? What is that kind of work like? What is CEO work for you? I've also heard this framed as moving from doing $10 tasks to $10,000 tasks, and I don't think that's so much about kind of what you are worth yourself individually, but rather than just doing the things that just make a little bit of difference in your business.

Or if we're talking about just in your life or, or your workplace, that, that make a little bit of impact versus the things that really, really could change things and, uh, yeah, have a, have a serious impact. So the first thing I'm going to suggest is that you start to work this out for yourself. What of the current things that you're doing could be classified as busy work?

Just keeping you occupied and what of the things that you're doing are actually really valuable and really make a difference. You know, when I told the swimming coach that I've been doing these sessions with about my. Issue where I would try to swim, say a fast lap, but actually would just put in all this effort and not get any faster, but just get more tired.

He said as a first step that I should practice doing laps in the pool where I do five strokes, where I'm going really, really slow, and five strokes where I'm going. Really fast. And that being for the purpose of my body, starting to work out the difference. So rather than spending a whole lot of time kind of stuck in between where it's just a lot of effort, but I'm not really going anywhere actually start to learn what it feels like to be kind of really, really cruisy versus what it feels like to be more effective.

And, uh, actually. Pressing forward, getting things done, making some progress, so. That distinction in itself can be really helpful, or at least I'm hoping that it will be for my swimming sake. But to come back to the topic at hand, your work or your life, and making that distinction for yourself between valuable work and busy work, I have a free PDF on my website for you that can help you to work this out.

With the particulars of your life, it has 12 prompt questions for you to go through and reflect on to help bring some clarity for you around what's busy work, what's valuable work, and help you to imagine. Explore what this new paradigm might look like for you. So that's on my website. Go and grab that.

As soon as you've listened to this episode, it's going to be a big help. So we're trying to make that distinction, busy work versus valuable work. The next step that actually will further help with the first step is to recognise when you are caught up. In busy work. So there's a couple of ways that you can do this.

One is informally just even having listened to this podcast, perhaps downloaded that PDF that I'm offering, uh, it'll just bring your awareness to it. And so you'll just notice more, ah, I'm actually just faffing around here. I'm just filling up my time and it's not really anything of great significance or great worth or great value.

Uh, and so you'll just become aware and awareness. Changes things. As soon as we start to be aware of something, the possibility of doing things differently is already in motion. So even just informally, just by being aware of it, uh, that might start to shift for you. The other thing that you could do is a more structured approach where you actually really audit your time.

I did this a little while back for myself and I used an app. There's plenty of apps out there that you can use. I used one called. Toggle, T-O-G-G-L,, and basically it just said it so that I checked my time every 15 minutes and noted what I was doing, and I did it over a couple of weeks. And then you can look back and see how have I been spending my time?

And start to divide it up into what you might consider busy work and what you might consider valuable work or CEO work or however you like to frame it. And then the next part is about practicing the shift from busy work into valuable work. And so this. Would involve scheduling some white blocks in your calendar.

So some empty spaces, open spaces that are exclusively and explicitly for valuable work, creativity or space. They are not for busy work, and that's the key. For us to make this shift from busy work into valuable work, we're going to have to practice something new and it's going to take a little bit of discipline because busy work does just find its way, creeps in and fills up our time.

But. If we want to move out of that as a habit, then we are going to need to protect some little blocks of time where we are not up for doing that busy work. And instead we're only open to the alternative, which is valuable work ultimately. But initially it might just be space. Space for dreaming, space for creativity.

And you might find that actually as you block out space for yourself. That that in itself is part of the challenge, and you might find this urge to just fill it back up or to distract yourself from it. So either to fill it up with busy work or to do something like go scrolling on your phone. So instead the discipline comes in here where you actually don't let yourself do that, and you just keep it as space.

And that might mean that. Initially, it actually just feels like a big empty, slightly awkward even space until you start to get used to it and start to get used to the possibility of having this space for creative thinking and for daydreaming and imagining. And perhaps that moves into. Strategising and vision and values based work and things that actually will start to make a difference for your life and for your business.

So perhaps you block out half a day once a week, or it might just be an hour or a couple of hours once a week. Maybe you have time for more than that, but whatever feels doable for you, block it out and really protect it, commit to it. Possibly the first thing that you'll do in that space will be just to start to consider what does.

CEO work look like. What does valuable work mean to me? Perhaps you do use that PDF that's on my website as a starting point to start to just tune into what this could be for you. And I want you to note here that the purpose of all this is not. More output necessarily. It's not about being more productive necessarily, although that could be the outcome, and if that's what you are looking for, then this could certainly help you to get there.

But it's about opening up more possibility. To take you to one more swimming story. My sister is a great swimmer, and years ago I was at the pool with her and her two kids, and we were swimming some laps at my sister and I and her kids were just playing, uh. Themselves not in the pool. And we had been swimming for a little while and then we were both at one end of the pool and she was like, should we do one more lap?

And I was like, yeah, sure. And so I was like, okay, she's a strong swimmer. Let me see if I can try vaguely to keep up with her. So I put in my extra effort and anyway. As it happened by the time I completed my one lap, so up and back, she had already done her lap up and back, and she was out of the pool and about 15 meters away sitting and playing with her kids.

So I was nowhere near keeping up with her. But to connect this with what I've been sharing about in this episode. This getting out of the, the busy work is for more openness and more efficiency and possibly more space. And you know, she could have decided to do another lap. She probably could have done two laps in the time that I did one.

So yes, more productivity, more output is a possibility. But she got up and outta the pool and she was hanging out with her kids. In that time while I was just doing all of the hard work of just trying to kind of do it my way. So as we move out of this busy work, it could actually be for the purpose of creating more space in your life that you might like, might like to choose for things that are totally unrelated to work, or you might like to choose them to do more effective work.

That's up to you. Regardless. The busy work is kind of standing in our way of having those options available to us, which is why it's a really beneficial transition to make if we can kind of move away from it and into that more deliberate, effective, efficient, and valuable work. So when you do identify the busy work that you are doing in your life and you want to move towards the more valuable work, which hopefully you'll start to identify what that looks like for you as well.

What do you do with the busy work? Because some of it, you're just so used to doing that, it's like it doesn't just vanish just because you decide you don't want to be doing it as much. So there's a few things that I would offer. They all start with D conveniently. So the first one is to ditch it. So if there's stuff that is just taking up your time, first thing you could consider is, can I just not do this?

Like, can I just delete it off the to-do list or just drop it out of my routine? And if that's. Possible. Then definitely do that. Just take it off the list, put it away. Don't come back to it so you can ditch it. The next thing you can do is you can delegate it, and so this may be if you have a team or you have somebody else that might step into.

Doing some of this work, then absolutely explore that. And what for you might be busy work could actually be in somebody else's zone of genius. It might be something that actually really lights them up and that they do more efficiently, more effectively, and that satisfies them more in their work as well.

So delegation is an option if you don't have. Staff, this delegation thing isn't, uh, impossible. It just might look different. So it could be about potentially outsourcing some work to someone else. And as you consider that, it'd be just about working out, well, actually what is your time worth to you? And so that might be literally kind of working out an hourly rate for yourself, or if you have an hourly rate that you, you know, uh, then looking at that and just kind of going, well, if I can pay somebody else that much or less.

To do this work that then frees me up to do more of the valuable work, then that's a really worthy, worthy exchange. So you might look at delegating like that. The other thing that you might do, the third D, is to deal with it and dealing with it. I, by dealing with it, I mean. Do something that actually makes it more efficient, something that helps you to get through it faster so that you can then move on to the more valuable work.

And so I'm talking about things like creating a template or creating an automation or systematising in some way. So if, for example, there's a certain. Question that lots of your clients ask you on a regular basis or lots of your team or colleagues ask you on a regular basis, rather than every single time you get an email asking you this particular question and you taking the time to write it out, could you prepare just a draft response that you could cut and paste and cut edit as needed?

So that might be one way that you could just. Get a little bit more efficient rather than the kind of fing around of continuously doing the same task over and over and over, where you're kind of starting from scratch every time. Something along these lines for myself that I'm looking at doing now as I've been thinking about this, is that my inbox is often really, really full and I get a lot of emails and that contributes to a feeling of being busy and a feeling like I've got a lot to do and getting through all of the emails.

Does. Take up a lot of time for me or can take up a lot of time and feels a lot like busy work. And the thing is that loads of the emails that are filling up my inbox are, uh, promotional stuff or spam or um, just lists that I've been on that I may or may not want to be on anymore. And I could just make that so much more streamlined for myself on a day-to-day basis.

So what I mean is I could give half an hour to unsubscribing from things that I don't want to be subscribed to anymore and setting up some automations so that promotional emails just go into one particular place. And so that I just clean it up to the point that my inbox is actually just the emails that are.

Really ones that I want to be giving my attention to on a day-to-day basis. So rather than having that sense of like, oh, I've got 93 emails today, and then feeling like, oh, that's a lot. And then kind of allocating all this time to having to go through it all, I could probably eliminate a good 60 to 70% of those just by doing this process so that on a day-to-day basis, it's actually a, a much less.

Bing around. Less busy activity for me to get through, to clear through my emails, so you get the idea and you'll have your own version of those things that actually, if you gave a bit of time to deal with them, like kind of get to the root of what's going on here and deal with it at that level rather than just kind of always responding on the surface.

Keeping yourself stuck in that busy work. So I hope all of this is feeling useful for you and something that you can apply. The busy work might be what we're used to. It's a habit, kind of a collective habit. Habit at this point. Gosh, it could be really different if we would make some changes to bring ourselves out of that.

And I just feel like the potential is so huge for if we could do that, both in terms of just actually doing work that really. Feels good to us and feels like it matters and is effective and has a positive impact. Like that to me is really exciting. And just as exciting is just the idea of us just having more space.

More space in life, more space to breathe, more space to play, more space to relax, all of those things. So whatever the end goal is for you with this, I think it's really, really worthwhile that. Work and play of imagining and exploring and stepping into this as as a new paradigm. A reminder for you before I go that that PDF is there, and I do think that you'll find it really helpful in working some of this stuff out for yourself.

What is your valuable work and what is your busy work and how do you distinguish between the two? So head to my website, it's annie carter.com au and it is there ready and waiting for you for free with my love. All righty. You have yourself a beautiful week, and I will talk to you again soon. Okay. Bye.

Thanks for joining me. Head on over to my website, annie carter.com au, where you'll find some free resources to support you in your life and leadership. Please make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and I would really love your help in spreading the word about Yes you. So if you're up for that, will you do one of these three things?

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