Speakers
Frank Butler
Paul Harvey

Frank Butler  00:17
Hello busybodies, welcome to our first episode of the Busyness Paradox. I'm Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey  00:25
Good day.

Frank Butler  00:26
And on today's episode, we are actually going to be discussing busyness. And particularly focusing on busyness at the workplace. So if you listened to our intro episode where we went into the etymology of the word busyness, and how it shares a route with business, that's what we're building off of today, thinking about business and sort of this idea of business, right? They seem to go hand in hand, no matter what. 

Paul Harvey  00:54
Yeah, you look at the two words, they're basically the same word. And yet, I guess that has occurred to me in the past, like busyness business, there must be a connection there. Apparently, there is.

Frank Butler  01:04
Yeah, you know, and I think it's funny, because I think that is being addressed in pop culture, in a lot of ways, though, too. You know, it's that paradox of business in general, of, you know, business means that you've got to be busy, what have you, but you know, it's played off of in movies like office space, for example, words, yeah, I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday. Or, you know, for what reason, right? I mean, right to do the cover of a TPS report. Nobody cares, right? Or in the office, or in TV shows like corporate or even in comics like Dilbert. Right. I mean, we constantly see either this play off of busyness at work or something to that effect, or people feigning busyness. And I think that's what makes this so interesting. Is this notion of feigning busyness. Right? We see it all the time.

Paul Harvey  01:54
Yeah. It's kind of like a mutually accepted, universally accepted absurdity. You know, we all know that we're not crankin, 100% 810 12 hours a day. But we all many of us, I should say, pretend we are. And we know that other people are probably pretending to be super busy all the time, even though they're not.

Frank Butler  02:16
So why do we do this? You know, it's fascinating, right? You know, I think part of it just, it just stems back to history, right? If you think about generations in the workplace, right? There's multiple different generations working in the workplace. And they've all gone through different stages of either technology, or how jobs have to be done. I mean, I know, for example, I have a friend who has been in the field of finance for 40 years now. He's still working, you know, he's not necessarily super technologically savvy. I believe he's still using a different version of Excel, but it's not Excel. It's whatever that other version is. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's what he's still using. And you know, and that's not the gold standard anymore. But I think he's so entrenched on that, because that's the first one he learned, either in the late 80s, or early 90s. Right. But before he learned how to use that he was using those giant paper spreadsheets that you had to fill out by hand. And you know, those would take a week to fill out on their own. And if you made a mistake, you had to go back and redo the whole darn thing. And it's all calculating by hand, basically, you've got your calculator, you're filling in the blanks, blah, blah, blah. But you know, now with Excel, what it takes you a second to make a change.

Paul Harvey  03:35
Yep. And that's not an exaggeration, either. And I've heard it from many people, that literally things that used to take a week, spreadsheet calculating can now be done with the click of a button.

Frank Butler  03:45
It's insane, right? And I think, then the expectations there are, it's, you know, oh, I'm not necessarily quite as adept at the technology as maybe a younger colleague, but I'm not thinking that way as a manager at that point, because I don't know, right? It's not experienced, I can understand or share, it still takes me a few hours to work on an Excel spreadsheet, compared to maybe somebody younger, not literally, but just as an example,

Paul Harvey  04:11
Right. 

Frank Butler  04:11
And so that's the thing is that I'm thinking, well, this person needs to be working a lot harder and doing a lot more 

Paul Harvey  04:17
[impersonating manager] When I was in their shoes, I was working eight hours a day on those spreadsheets or what have you. So if they're not to spend and they're spending 10 minutes, they must obviously be doing something wrong, right? They're making a mistake, they're cutting corners, something's not working.

Frank Butler  04:32
Right, you know, and, and that's the problem. Right? And I so I think there's sort of these expectations that people have to look like they're busy, because tasks need to take longer than they might actually take in reality for that person to do. Now, that's not to say that all things are equal, you know, not every person is gonna be super quick at Excel or, or what have you, but I think in general, the time aspect has compressed so fast or so much To technology is a big part of it. Right. And I think that's sort of that that challenge that we run into is that people feel like they need a fame busyness to some extent in the in the question is, is that really true anymore?

Paul Harvey  05:16
Yeah. And, you know, you bring up an interesting point that I hadn't really thought of before. That, you know, this is not just a workplace phenomenon. You know, the New York Times several years ago did a piece on the larger social absurdity of everyone pretending to be busy, or I shouldn't say that everyone claiming to be busy all the time, everything, how are you doing? Oh, everything's been crazy lately. This mindset that we all sort of share. And that mindset, you know, it translates or it filters down into the workplace. And it doesn't really account for the fact that things that used to take longer, because technology sometimes don't take so long anymore. So you've got a situation where the, you know, the social site, Geist is, everything's crazy. We're always busy all the time. And all of a sudden, you've got extra hours in the day, what do we do with that?

Frank Butler  06:09
Right, well and I think that plays out, in what we see out of some of the data, right? They they're showing, for example, that younger employees spend, on average about three hours of their work day, their eight hour work day on social media or doing other things that are not related to their jobs. Is that a bad thing? Right? I don't know. I don't I don't necessarily think so. I think the reality is that we need to focus in on the right things, which is not how much time somebody's spending working, per se. But rather, are they getting the job done in a way that's satisfactory? Meaning what we needed to do?

Paul Harvey  06:47
Right, what's the outcome of their work, regardless of the number of hours spent doing it? And that ties into another common theory on why we have this fake busyness phenomenon? And why is it so common, in addition to unexpected efficiencies, if you will, from technological advances, there's always been this notion of the ideal employee, I believe, was the way a Harvard Business Review article put it several years back, that the ideal employee is someone who just crushes it all day long, they go in the office at whatever time in the morning, they stay for eight, but probably more like 10 or 12 hours, and they're just not going to the whole time, they're just they're banging that drum. So that's this idea that we have of that is like the perfect employee. But the reality is, very few people can, and probably nobody should try to perform at that level all the time, you're gonna burn out, you're, it's not generally a good way to stay creative, and innovative and productive. But we all seem to want a project, this image of the ideal employee. So there's this theory of that, even though we all know, it's not a real thing. It's all absurd. No one wants to be the one who's not putting on the show of an ideal employee.

Frank Butler  08:03
And really, to piggyback off of what you said, there's two other things that I think are sort of to be considered in this process. The first is the work life balance, right? Not take away the notion that, you know, it's unsustainable to work 80 hours every week, and really, truly operate at your peak performance all the time. Second, how does that impact your home life, if you are in a relationship with somebody else, or you're married, or even if you're not, you still need to have some level of socialization that's there to help provide support. And if you don't have that support at home, that will eventually catch up. If you have any type of downtime, I think that's where that really starts to come into play. Where if you're giving your mind some time to rest, those things creep in and you go, Oh, my gosh, I don't have this other piece that kind of makes me whole feeling. But beyond the individual aspect, I think there's the impact on others. And in particular, what I think is how the perceptions of one person appearing to be busy doing these kind of crazy hours. How does that impact others who are going, you know, this person is working their tail off? Am I doing something wrong? right kind of impact does that have on me?

Paul Harvey  09:23
It's a bit like the - what do they call that - the Facebook effect? Or that that social media effect where everyone's putting their

Paul Harvey  09:30
FOMO

Paul Harvey  09:31
Is that what it is? 

Frank Butler  09:32
Fear of missing out?

Paul Harvey  09:33
Eh, kinda I'm thinking about when people put like, their greatest self forward

Frank Butler  09:40
Oh, yeah

Paul Harvey  09:40
On social media all the time. So you get this impression that that's just who they are 24/7. I think there's some parallels here where the people who are doing the best job of acting like the ideal employee and just backing busy, busy, busy all the time seeming important. The truth is that we are including managers. We're susceptible to good acting in that regard. We see people act in that part. We think, man, they're, they're a real go getter. It's good for them. So you're right. When you're not in that mindset, and you see people doing the same job as you. And I mean, I've been there in my own, in my own experience, several jobs that I've had in the past, were being relatively new and not quite understanding what was going on. What's what I would see these people doing the same job as me and just cranking it 12 hour days, like bleary eyed, not sleeping, their marriages going down the toilet, because they're at the office so much, I'm thinking, I think I do the same job that they do. But it takes me like, a third of the time, what am I missing? What am I? am I forgetting something? Is there something I'm doing wrong, but eventually, you grow older and wiser and realize, no, most of this is just an act.

Frank Butler  10:53
Or there could be some cases where the person has to work harder to get the same output as others. I mean, you know, not everybody's necessarily equal in terms of their ability to process things, right. I know, for example, I would have friends who would take a few days to study for an exam that might take me only a few hours to study for to get the same results. And then you got those friends who don't seem to need to study at all, and they just walk in and aced the thing. Right? Exactly. You know, I mean, like, for me, it was anything that was sort of more quantitative based was really fairly simple for me to do in school. But that wasn't did that didn't translate the same way, when it became more qualitative in nature, always, you know, so I had to do more effort in certain cases. Whereas in other cases, I didn't have to put in as much effort. And that's true for people is that they have their strengths and weaknesses, right. So somebody who might be working 12 hours might actually need to work those 12 hours. But I think, on average, most probably do not.

Paul Harvey  11:55
Right. So we shouldn't really hold ourselves to the, to the standard set by someone who's not good at their job, is what you're saying. It takes us less than 12 hours, they shouldn't, we shouldn't see them as being the better employee, because they're putting in 12 hour days, if it's because they're just not as adept at doing their task.

Frank Butler  12:13
You know, I think that that triggered something that I never quite thought about until just now. Somebody said somewhere along the lines that basically, those who are really good at what they do make it look effortless. And if somebody's spending way too much time, that means that they're probably putting in way too much effort, which means that they're probably not doing it the right way, isn't the whole concept of business anyway, to try to find an extract efficiencies, and be effective.

Paul Harvey  12:51
And I think that gets us into a real level of absurdity. When I think about situations I've seen or been in, one of my first jobs out of college is working in the finance wing of a company. And I had two different positions in my first couple years that both went extinct as I left them, because I would just be twiddling my thumbs from like Tuesday afternoon through Friday afternoon. And it was clear that you know, this is not a 40 hour a week or more slice of activity, we can take this small job and divvy it up to other people. But having done that twice, I would talk to people and they would say, yeah, that's a that's a risky approach there. Why, but yeah, you know, you're, you're making yourself seem less necessary. Like, if that's the mindset that some people bring to the workplace, you can kind of see where the fake busyness makes sense to them. If the whole idea is to not be too efficient, for job security, I guess, pretending to be busy without actually being busy is one way to do that. 

Frank Butler  13:54
And it's absurd, 

Paul Harvey  13:56
It is absurd. [laughter] It's patently absurd.

Frank Butler  13:58
Because I think what you end up doing is causing more harm than good. Because you could be taking those non busy segments of your job time, or whatever. And really just simply use that to pursue some sort of personal development activities, you know, and really, to help better yourself, isn't that what we should be encouraging our employees to do? Instead of faking? Like they're working on something so hard, and taking so much time doing something that ultimately, while important? isn't everything that really we want to offer people? Isn't it better that we encourage them to do things that might actually help them grow? I mean, I've always learned that the best managers are the ones who don't try to hold their people back. They let them grow, they let them flourish. And even if they get promoted beyond them, it's never a bad thing, that it's really, that not only are the people going to respect them more, but it's going to stand out at the end of the day because people will know that person knows how to develop talent and people are happier. The morale is better. I mean, we know on average, that the average Employee quits their job because of their manager, not because of the company. 

Paul Harvey  15:04
Yeah. I like to think...I have to think that in the grand scheme of things, someone who does what you're saying, you know, takes their idle time at work and puts it towards anything else that's productive, is, maybe this isn't true in 100% of jobs out there. But it's hard to imagine that someone who's doing that making their work more efficient, is not going to be noticed for doing that in a positive way. You'd like to think that someone who takes what was a 40 hour week position and figures out how to do it in 10, you'd like to think that someone that upper management is going to notice that, hey, what's this guy doing over here? You know, this, he's got some kind of a talent. We could use more of that. But yeah, you hate to say it. But the pretending to be busy strategy does work in a lot of organizations. That, because we're not really, no one really gives it as much conscious thought as we are right now. And we often judge performance by the behaviors that we see. So if we see someone acting busy a lot, without even thinking about it, subconsciously, we're forming this idea of that's a hard working person. So in some situations, there may be no incentive to be more efficient, if quietly getting your stuff done faster and building skills isn't being seen and translated into higher performance evaluations.

Frank Butler  16:27
Right, right, the incentive alignment challenge that a lot of companies run into, we need to make sure we're providing the right instance. But you know, I think that comes back to we need to also sort of retrain the brain of society as to what's important, and I think that's something that this Harvard Business Review study that you refer to, said, a critical implication of this research is that working long hours is not necessary for high quality work. I think that's the key. It's again, for me, it's about let's focus on the results, not on how we get there. And I think that's sort of a common theme that you would I will probably come back to another podcast when we talk about the topics that we cover. But this seems to me that the one thing that stands out the most, let's not worry about how we get somewhere, let's make sure that we're getting to the right results.

Paul Harvey  17:22
To the extent possible, if we can just take our minds off of the indicators of performance and focus instead on actual performance. What was the actual deliverable that was expected? And did you get it on time? Was the work done? Well, if so, to heck with everything else? Within reason.

Frank Butler  17:43
Right, exactly. And speaking of busyness, I believe we have a sponsor who has something on the HR process. So let's hear from them now.

Paul Harvey  17:56
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Frank Butler  19:48
Man that HR tracker sounds like a product I wouldn't recommend I don't think

Paul Harvey  19:57
I...I have to agree. Yeah. I don't I don't know that. I have anything more to say about that.

Frank Butler  20:06
No, I think we'll just leave that as is. We're not shells, we promise? No. When it comes to discussing busyness in the office, I think one of the things that we have to deal with his understanding that, you know, what we're trying to say is that output is what should be the focus, right? What are the results we're looking for, not the process of getting there. And, to me, that means that if somebody spends three hours, on average every day, not doing anything productive, they're on social media, maybe because it makes them look kind of busy. So if they're, they've got their monitor just right. You know, they're looking in social media, and they're typing, like, you know, in the chat function with their friends, or whatever, you know, and it looks like they're doing something busy. Is that is that a good use of anybody's time? I mean, to me, why can't I just show up, then a little bit later, leave a little early to avoid the traffic or something along those lines, you know, what's the harm in that?

Paul Harvey  21:01
Not unnecessarily? But, yeah, I think there can be some benefits to allowing employees to build in distractions, fun things during the day study after study has shown us that those little mini distractions can facilitate the creative process help you solve problems that are stumping, you come up with ideas that weren't obvious beforehand, there's a lot of benefits to giving ourselves a mental break from whatever it is that we're working on. And I think as long as you know, say you spent three hours a day doing that just tack that three hours on somewhere else in the day. I don't see that it's a big round. Wait.

Frank Butler  21:35
But doesn't that go against the notion of focusing on the results and not on the time?

Paul Harvey  21:41
How so? 

Frank Butler  21:42
Well, if you...

Paul Harvey  21:44
Oh, yeah, I did that, didn't I? Right. So see, this is how easy it is to fall into this busyness trap? Yeah, we're sitting here talking about why it's not a good thing to do. And I just stumbled right on into it. And so it doesn't necessarily matter, does it? If that three hours gets made up somewhere else, but as long as the end result is good, right?

Frank Butler  22:06
That That to me is sort of the function, right? If we've get or if we're getting the desired outcomes? What, you know, what does it matter? Right? I think at that point, the company has to be really clear and understanding the importance of that job, right. So it means that there's going to be a clear job description, what's important for that job to create the value that needs to be created to help the company meet its objectives and goals, right. And, you know, obviously, it starts at that lower level where I help my manager accomplish their goals. But that is helping then their manager accomplish their greater goals, which then contributes then to the overall company's goals and metrics that they're trying to accomplish. Right. And I think that's something that a lot of companies do a little bit, but not really necessarily very well, they don't necessarily articulate how my job is going to connect to that bottom line at the end of the day. And, and I don't want it to be like the idea of bottom line, as in no costs or revenues, specifically, but more along the lines of what is my job function. And then let me just focus in on what I need to do to be successful in that. And help me with those things as my manager, right, making sure you're getting the obstacles out of the way that are keeping me from success. For example, if I'm having to go home or come to the office, every day, during rush hour, I'm going to be probably pretty cranky, because I've spent probably two hours or so just in traffic every day. And who does that help, you know, and my spouse is probably going to be unhappy, because I'm going to get home and be snippy, because I just dealt with crappy drivers. And I mean, I got road rage issues anyway. So it's probably not going to work out for anybody's favor, which means that I'm going to be cranky for the first half of my start of my day trying to get over that issue. And so I'm not as productive if, if I'm given the opportunity to just be productive when I'm productive. And I'm getting my job done. Isn't that what we want?

Paul Harvey  23:59
You got a lot of ways it is now we do need to acknowledge that it's sometimes easier said than done. You know, sometimes you do have to coordinate schedules, and align work hours with deadlines and that sort of thing. And it's sometimes difficult to really put your finger on exactly what a person's job function is, and to measure the output related to that job function accurately. That's something we're going to get into in a future episode. But I think the bigger point here is that that's what we should be striving towards, not towards How can we look busy when we're not busy?

Frank Butler  24:36
Right. I think that's it right? And obviously, there's a lot of jobs out there that don't fit the necessarily mold of having that freedom for getting things done in terms of time. You know, obviously, if you're working on an assembly line, that's a different type of job or if you're in a retail environment, and you're at checkout, and you've got a long line of people, you don't just get to work when you want to work, but I think that's true in any job too is that if I'm not necessary Doing anything, don't just give me work to do either. That's don't give me busy work. Let's think through the process more of how do we better allow people to get things done to help develop themselves, and then get greater output for the company to you know, not only for that person, but for the company.

Paul Harvey  25:18
Channel the energy that we expend towards pretending to look busy when or not, and use it towards all those things you just said.

Frank Butler  25:25
Exactly, you know, let's make the job environment better and what have you. And with that, you know, I think that's the episode so thank you guys for listening.

Paul Harvey  25:35
The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from its business time by Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie, our production manager is just in one take. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we'd love to hear from you. Please send questions, comments or ideas for future episode topics to input at Busyness. paradox.com, or find us on Twitter. Also, be sure to visit our website, Busyness, paradox.com to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show. Finally, please take a moment to rate and subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify iHeartRadio, Google podcasts, or wherever you found this episode.

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