The Power of Minimalist Productivity: Meaningful Actions Over Busy Work
It is the sculptor’s power and creativity to find the perfect form and features of their sculpture in a shapeless block of stone. This means they chip away only the extraneous matter to let their ideal shape stand out to themselves and the observer.
If an artist took the approach of busy work, there would be stone chips flying all over the place, yet no form left. Busy work is a low value approach to life that people rely upon to give the impression that they are working hard.
9 Examples of Busy work in your workplace and life:
Appearance: Making oneself appear busy, particularly when someone important is around by noticeably moving about the room, shuffling papers, tapping away at the keyboard, asking questions, or giving orders.
Side-lining: When a manager feels under threat by another’s talents, they may dismiss them from productive work by assigning meaningless and unimportant tasks to perform which will lead them to making little impact.
Mediocrity: When a person in power is unsure of their abilities or suffers “impostor syndrome” they will fill their speech and work with meaningless “fluff” to appear as if they know what they are talking about or that their wasteful actions are important.
Procrastination: When a task is uncomfortable or seems painful in some way, despite its importance, suddenly meaningless tasks will be raised from the bottom of a task list to become a priority.
Parkinson’s Law of Triviality: When focus is shifted from important solutions to smaller, easier, and more interesting tasks, a business or individual is in denial about the state and impact of their actions.
Not enough challenge: Busy work is an indicator that one is under-challenged and is just passing time.
Too much challenge: Busy work is also an indicator that one is under too much challenge and is not sure where to start.
Short term pleasure over long term goals: When you choose short term pleasure over more difficult efforts to achieve long term goals, you are choosing timewasting work over actions that have a greater benefit in the long run.
Focusing on the wrong area: In a business, thousands of likes on social media does not equal sales. In your personal life, thousands of likes on social media does not equal thousands of friends. The effort spent on social media should be redirected into real contact.
Powerful and Meaningful Actions
Each and every day, achieve one meaningful action. A meaningful action has an impact that is greater than any other action you take within your day. It affects you and it affects others, whether in a profound way, or a minimal way. A meaningful action is a small chip in a large stone sculpture that turns your eye, it is the note not played to make the other notes more beautiful. It is the word chosen or the word deleted that makes the poem so moving.
11 Powerful and Meaningful Actions you can take today:
Give a considered response in a conversation, rather than a reactive response.
Offer a positive gesture or word that changes someone’s day for the better.
Prioritise an action that solves 70% or more of an issue or challenge.
Perform small instant actions consistently to keep an area clean and clear.
Only plan strategic tasks with real actions attached to each goal.
Maintain eye contact in an interaction.
Really listen to what another is saying.
Help someone in difficulty.
Say “No.” Assert yourself when given a trivial task that interrupts a more important task at hand and explain why.
Focus on what is under your direct control rather than what is external and under the control of others = Your attitude and your actions.
Cut out all extraneous physical items and keep only those of quality and function.
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