Why your team feels so busy and
how it’s jeopardizing effectiveness
“When you’re busy, you’re more likely to make poor time-management choices:
taking on commitments you can’t handle or prioritizing trifling tasks over crucial ones.”
—Eldar Shafir
Behavioral Science Professor
Princeton University
By Kimberly Paterson, CEC
Ask someone on your team to take on a new task or explain why they’re behind on a high-priority project, and odds are they’ll tell you how busy they are. I hear the same stories from many of the leaders I coach: too many priorities, unproductive back-to-back meetings, overflowing email inboxes and the constant pressure to balance the demands of work and home.
“Busy” is the prevailing mindset among today’s professionals and begs the question, are we working harder?
Contrary to common wisdom, data say the number of hours people work has steadily decreased over the last seven decades. In 1948, when the government started keeping track, Americans worked an average of 42.8 hours a week. In 2023, that fell to 37.5 hours, according to an ADP Research Institute study.
Hours worked are only part of the equation. While people may be clocking fewer official hours, the intensity and stress of work are on the rise. According to a 2023 JobSage Research Study of 2,000 American workers, 67% reported being stressed and 54% anxious about their jobs compared to 55% and 36% in 2022.
The contradiction between how hard people feel they work and the actual hours worked is partially explained by a recent Gallup Report on the causes and cures of employee burnout. Their research shows that the “quality of the work experience has 2.5 to three times the impact than the number of days or hours worked.”
Getting to the root cause
There are a number of common factors that contribute to the busyness epidemic:
- Fewer boundaries. Technology, work-from-home arrangements, and flexible hours blur the lines between the office and home. Unless people are highly disciplined, it’s impossible to escape the pressures of the job. Work is always as close as your cell phone or home office in the spare bedroom. People are one email or instant message away from being sucked into work issues.
- The volume of information coming at us. Inbound messages are at an all-time high. According to a McKinsey analysis, the average full-time American worker receives 120 messages in a workday and spends 28% of their day reading and answering emails. Email is only the beginning. Some professionals report monitoring 10 different channels for incoming information. Expanding digital communications channels not only increases the volume, it also heightens the pressure to be available and respond quickly.
- Wheel spinning. Hallmarks of wheel-spinning cultures are unclear roles and decision-making authority and a mismatch between workers’ capabilities and managers’ expectations. Poor delegation, unresolved conflict and vague or shifting priorities also take a toll.
- Constant task switching. Multi-tasking, the norm in many workplaces, triggers conflict in the brain, increasing stress and reducing productivity. Trying to complete two or more tasks at once can take 50% more time or longer, depending on the complexity of the tasks. That’s because when we switch between tasks, our brains must halt any processing of the current rule set and load a new one for the next task.
But halting, unloading, loading, and restarting takes a toll on the brain and slows you down. We’re working harder but accomplishing less. - Internal pressures. Busyness has become a badge of honor. According to sociologist John Gershuny, we live in a culture where “[w]ork, not leisure, is now the signifier of dominant social status.” At work, busyness signals our importance and self-worth. The more meetings we’re asked to participate in, the more we feel needed and valued by the organization.
People think busyness feeds the perception that they’re hardworking, loyal employees worthy of raises and advancement.
Busyness is also a form of escapism. In our personal lives, it’s a way to avoid slowing down and facing tough questions or issues in our lives. At work, it’s a way of avoiding projects that require a higher level of thinking or tasks we find challenging. - Discomfort with inactivity. When busyness is a virtue, we’re uncomfortable with empty spaces in our schedule. We feel guilty spending time thinking or taking downtime to replenish ourselves. As Americans, we’re wired to avoid inactivity.
In a classic experiment, psychologist Timothy Wilson learned that 25% of women and 67% of men chose to electrically shock themselves by pressing a button rather than to sit in a room and do nothing. What’s ironic is that prior to entering the room where the experiment was conducted, participants said they would pay money to avoid being shocked.
How busyness hurts effectiveness
Research shows that the more time pressure we feel, the worse our performance becomes.
According to Eldar Shafir, a behavioral scientist and professor at Prince-ton University, the reason is “cognitive bandwidth.” He says, “Feelings of scarcity, whether money or time, prey on the mind, impairing decision-making.
“When you’re busy,” Shafir adds, “you’re more likely to make poor time-management choices: taking on commitments you can’t handle or prioritizing trifling tasks over crucial ones. A vicious spiral kicks in, and your feelings of busyness leave you even busier than before.”
Stress compounds the problem. When people are under stress, surges in “adrenaline” and “cortisol” strongly affect their ability to think. The soaring cortisol levels and an added hard kick of adrenaline can paralyze the mind’s critical thinking abilities. Attention fixates on the threat rather than the work at hand; memory, planning, and creativity go out the window.
Change the norm from busy to effective
Making the transition requires a change in the way people think, how managers lead and the way in which your organization operates. Here are seven strategies to deploy:
Shift the mindset. Increase awareness that movement is not progress. Just because people are working harder and doing more doesn’t mean they’re getting more done. Identify and stay focused on the real value people bring to the job rather than the quantity of activities in which they’re engaged.
Review priorities on a regular basis and make sure they’re aligned with high-value tasks. When people lack clear priorities and accountability, they can create endless amounts of work on what they think matters.
- Measure and reward contribution. All too often, the people who advance in organizations are the ones who are the busiest. They’re always on their computer or phone. They serve on committees and task forces. They’re quick to help colleagues and volunteer for whatever needs doing. They may be working hard but at activities that don’t make an appreciable difference.
When an organization falls into the trap of rewarding the appearance of hard work rather than outcomes, it furthers the busyness culture. Both managers and employees need tools, goals and accountability to ensure they focus on achieving results. - Model the behavior. Leaders send the signal for the behavior that gets rewarded in the organization. Leaders who waste time on low-value initiatives, rush from back-to-back meetings, cancel staff check-ins and multitask during conversations reinforce the perception that important people in the firm are the busy people.
- Remove barriers. Processes and cultural norms that contribute to busyness are deeply embedded in many organizations. Leaders need to take a hard look at business practices that are barriers to productivity.
Meetings can be a great place to start. Before you say, “Let’s have a meeting” or you agree to attend one, think ROI. What’s the cost of sitting at the table? Not just your hourly rate but the cost of everyone in the room and what people could be doing for the business if they weren’t in the meeting.
Also, look at the number and efficiency of your internal communications channels. Are they serving the work or becoming the work? - Resolve conflicts. Conflict avoidance exists at all levels of the organization, from frontline workers and managers to senior leaders and business partners. When conflict is unresolved, people waste valuable time ruminating excessively about crucial issues, complaining, getting angry, doing unnecessary work and avoiding colleagues altogether. People are distracted from important work, and nothing is resolved.
- Institute focus time. When multitasking and interruptions are the norm, people lose their ability to focus, which hurts productivity and accuracy. Eliminating distractions allows a project that typically takes several hours to complete to be handled in a fraction of the time. Have designated periods during the day where people can work uninterrupted.
- Minimize 11th-hour demands. You can’t eliminate all last-minute emergencies. In reality, many are self-induced resulting from poor planning or procrastination. Leaving work until the last minute increases stress and forces people to sacrifice the important for the urgent.
An excellent starting point
With intense organization demands, it can be difficult for leaders to allow themselves time to think. Leaders are expected to be busy. “Doing” feels productive; “thinking” feels like being idle and wasting time.
Giving yourself the time and space to think is vital to maintaining a clear picture of the critical work that can move the organization forward and not falling victim to the busyness epidemic.
The author
Kimberly Paterson, Certified Executive Coach and Master Energy Leadership Coach, is president of CIM (www.cim-co.com), CIM works with organizations and individuals to maximize performance through positive lasting behavioral change. Her clients are property & casualty insurance companies, agencies, and brokers. She can be reached at kpaterson@cim-co.com. Follow Kimberly on www.linkedin.com/in/kimberly-paterson and twitter.com/CIMChangeMinds.
