The Busy Paradox

📚 It’s not just you – and that’s the problem.

May 08, 2024

When I interviewed 45 white-collar workers about AI, I heard one problem over and over.

Everyone feels busy, but they also can’t get enough done – especially not enough “of value.”

Symptoms include: doing “real work” on nights and weekends, Zoom fatigue, search rage, Slack-a-mole, and the bi-weekly sync. 💀

I remember at one job I used to spend hours boomeranging between Slack, my code editor, Jira, and email.

This was before the pandemic. It’s clear this is the new normal post-pandemic.

There’s little time left over for clear thinking, creativity, and collaboration.

Call it the Busy Paradox.

Three Big Causes of the Busy Paradox

What’s causing it?

Part of it is cultural. If you’re incredibly busy with business, you must be in-demand – and important. In a world of work-ism, busy-ness is sacred.

Part of it is perceptual. Check-ins, document review, project trackers – these provide the sense that a lot is getting done, progress is being made, value is being created.

Part of it is technical. Modern work has built up layer after layer of digital tools. Each one takes another chunk of your time. Together, they make for constant digital distraction. Automation features exist (Zapier, Excel macros, etc.), but people don’t really know how to use them.

A Few Little Solutions (But They Add Up)

What’s the solution? (if there is one).

First of all, let's acknowledge that it's difficult, especially considering the cultural and perceptual causes.

These are system problems. It’s difficult for one person or business to move the needle on their own.

Would your client or boss be okay if you showed up to your next check-in and said, yeah, we really haven’t done much in the past week? Probably not.

But there’s still room for progress, and things you can put into practice on your own.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how I’ve limited myself to 3 tabs at a time, found a good office setup, and moved to a new mindset: doing less = competitive advantage.

Underrated hack: decline more meetings.

Let’s be honest, you probably don’t need to be there.

There can also be technical solutions to the technical problems. Basically, automate the stuff that eats up your time, so you have more bandwidth for the work that truly matters.

ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude all support uploading documents and summarizing text. Be an early adopter and start consolidating what you read.

It might seem like these steps don’t match up to the size of the problem at first. but the busy paradox built up slowly over time, and that’s the only way back out.

One step (less) at a time.