Episode 57 | Why you are busy but don't feel productive

Hello and welcome back to the Better Workday Podcast. I'm your host, Niamh Moynihan and today I want to talk about why sometimes we are so busy, but yet we still don't feel productive.

Welcome back to the Better Workday podcast. How are you doing? Today I want to talk about something that I see time and time again, not only with the people I work with, but also with myself. And that is those days and weeks where you feel you are doing so much, but yet you feel you've got nothing done. Have you ever been there? I bet you have. And today I want to try to understand why that might be happening and what we can do to manage it,

there's nothing more frustrating than going all day long and feeling like you've got nothing to show for it. Now, I did talk about this way back in episode one of The Better Workday Podcast, where I spoke about the difference between being productive and feeling productive. And so today I want to it a step further and talk about what might be causing that and what we can do.

So let's get into it.

I think there are a few reasons why you can be busy, busy, busy, but still not feeling like you've done enough or you've had a good day's work. And the first thing has got to be planning. If you haven't planned your week, if you haven't decided in advance what you want to achieve, well, then there's no way you're going to know when you have achieved it. It's as simple as that.

I always say that the biggest problem knowledge workers have is knowing when their work is done. So let's take an example. If your job was, I don't know, to make glass bottles and you had a target every day of making 20 glass bottles. Well, you'd go to work, you'd make the bottles and when you see 20 in front of you, you know the job is done. You've know you've done what's required and then you can go home and not worry about work, hopefully.

Now take a moment to think about your role. Do you have a clear target for the day? Do know what your 20 bottles would look like? If you're like me, you probably don't because there's always more you can do. There are projects to be done and if they're finished early, there's another project already on the backlog.

There is another blog you could write or another customer you could follow up with. There's another lead you could reach out to. There's another problem you could try and fix. There's always something you could always do more. And because there is no cut off time to these things, then it just feels like, well, we might as well just keep on going, keep on doing them. And while that is fine, in some ways, the problem is we don't know we've done enough. So coming back to the plan.

If you have a plan for the week, whether it's a high level, what I call the minimum viable plan, the three outcomes you want to achieve for the week or something more detailed, At least you could stop and look at that and say, how far have I got into my plan? How much have I achieved?

And now this brings me to the second part of why I think we don't feel productive. And that's because, even if you do plan the week

rarely goes to plan. So what usually happens is you start the day with an idea of how it's going to go. Either you have a plan in your head, an expectation in your mind, or you have a plan on paper. You have something and then life happens or work happens. And what we see are you get interruptions from other people, requests from other people, unexpected things go wrong. And all of a sudden you are spending your time on stuff that you didn't even think about at the start of the day.

And so by the end of the day, although you've done a lot, you haven't done what you want to do. you ever have those days? Like we all have a little bit of that in our days. And if you're in a very responsive role, you probably have it more than most. And here's the thing. When those things come up, we don't write them down. We don't track them. Well, most people I talk to don't. We just deal with them and then we move on. But that means at the end of the day, you can't recall where your time went or

why you didn't get that thing you wanted to do. You know, you did a lot of stuff, but you can't really remember what it was. And so that's why I like to always track things that come up. If you haven't already got my My Desk productivity system, which is basically a spreadsheet, you should really get it because it actually has a section for things that come up. And what I ask people to do is, yes, plan your week, but also track the things that derail your week as they're happening.

So at least at the end of it, maybe on a Friday when you're finishing up work, you can say, yeah, I didn't achieve everything I wanted to, but that's because these things interrupted it or these things took me away from my plans. And knowing that does two things. Number one, it can show you that, yes, you have been productive. You have been doing things that matter because you were obviously needed somewhere else. But also if you find that you're being pulled off, maybe for similar reasons time and time again, you can look to see is there anything you can do about that.

So again, that is the reason it is a core part of my framework and the template is free. So if you do want it, I will pop a link in the description and again in the show notes. So do be sure to get that if you're feeling like you're always doing a lot, but you're not feeling productive.

And now the third thing, the third reason why I find that sometimes people just don't feel like they're productive or there is this recognition gap, as I call it, is that they just don't recognize

that they are doing enough. So we have set expectations that are ridiculously high in terms of what we can achieve on a given day or week. And because they are so high, we're always falling short. And even if you do good work, even if you do a heap of it, there's little voice going, yeah, but didn't do enough. And you're not taking a moment to recognize all that you did do. Now, I have fallen into the recognition gap.

a lot over the years, I still fall into it. I think it's a human tendency but all the more reason to call it out and try to be more intentional about it. And that's why I want you to start recognizing what you did do. Maybe you didn't do it all, but you probably did a lot. And when I do workload reviews with people, I ask them to list all their tasks and the to do list is usually very, very long.

the second thing I ask them to do is to put down next to it.

what percentage of the work has already been complete. And people are amazed when they realize that a lot of the stuff on the list is stuff in progress, i.e. they have been doing stuff, they have been making headway. It's just it hasn't been finished yet. And many times it takes longer for us to finish things than we have planned or expected. And so you're not going to see that bow on your task as quickly. So it's all about recognizing the progress you've made, even if it's not at 100 % yet. Do you get me?

So look, there are just three of the reasons I find that we are often very, very busy, but we don't feel like we're doing anything of value.

But I want to add one final thing, and that is this idea of the 80-20 rule that I see being discussed an awful lot. And I suppose it's borrowed from Pareto's principle, and the way it's used or spoken about in productivity is that 20 % of the work results in 80 % of the impact.

And so from that, then some people suggest that you should focus on the 20 percent. Again, great in theory, but in practice, a lot of that 80 percent work, maybe not all of it, but a lot of it supports the 20 percent. And if it doesn't support your 20 percent, it probably helps other people. And so what I find is often people are spending an awful lot of time in that 80 percent stuff and they're feeling guilty for some reason because they're not spending their time on the

two or three things that had the biggest impact for their personal goals. Now, if that sounds like you, I want you to do two things. First of all, recognize you are doing a lot. You're doing your 80 percent. And so you're probably setting the foundation for those bigger things. Or you're helping other people in other teams and other departments. And that's good because we need to help each other. If everyone just focuses on their own silo, you're not going to get support from each other. And that's not a great place to work. OK, so first of all,

recognize that you are doing work, you are helping other people. But at the same time, you can ask yourself, how can I carve out more time for the things that I know make the most impact? And so one way you could do that is to set a minimum amount of time every day or every week that you are going to work on your core work on the most important tasks that you know you should be doing, but maybe you're not getting to. And so that could be an hour a day. It could be 30 minutes a day.

whatever it is, and just start creating that space and holding it for that work. And that way then you can focus on that for that time and not feel guilty when you're doing the other bits and pieces because you know the core stuff has been taken care of. OK, there is plenty of food for thought in that, so I'm not going to add any more into it. If anything from this episode resonates with you, I would love to hear from you. You can drop me an email, you can leave a message in the comments, you can leave a review, whatever works for you. I'd just love to hear from you.

Please download that My Desk template if you haven't got it. It's very, very helpful. I would say it's a game changer, although it's just a spreadsheet, but it is very, very helpful, especially if this episode topic has resonated with you. And as always, please share this with a friend or colleague who you think would find it And until next time, stay well and have a better work day.