How much of what is defined as “work” is worthless? It’s important to pose that question. Some tasks are mundane, no question. Many jobs require repetitive actions. You can’t avoid that.
But “worthless work” is another story. That implies doing something that has no value. Eliminate it and you’re cutting out something that didn’t matter to begin with. So you become more productive.
A worthwhile 2018 goal is to eliminate worthless work from your life. Stop doing things that don’t contribute to your personal or professional growth, success, bottom line. You can define it however you like, but the key is cutting back on stuff that wastes your time. In other words, you’re no better off than when you started, and neither is the company you work for.
A friend of mine was putting together a video several months back. He described it to me as “something that nobody cares about.” Isn’t that an ideal definition of “worthless work?”
“Oh, hey, Peabodynose, I want that video prepared on how we put together power point presentations on my desk Monday morning. Make sure you include what type of lettering we use in headlines and how many bullets are appropriate, and what color to use in the background.”
“Right away, Mr. Globnutsky. How many copies would you like and should I should I double-side the printed version or eat more trees and print it single-sided?”
The work is pointless. Nobody cares. Imagine that meeting when everyone watches the video on how to put together the corporate-approved power point presentation. Yawn. Nap time. Check the nodding heads five minutes into the presentation to see who’s about to fall asleep. That will tell you exactly how important and useful it is. Plus if you take a full head count in the room, you can give a percentages on how many watched, fell asleep or asked questions.
Over the course of your career (or anyone’s), there has to be a huge element of worthless work accomplished. Sometimes it is projects that are taken on with the best of intentions from management, but that scuttled. A work colleague of mine 20 years ago, for example, was put on a major five-year project to analyze all our field sites, catalogue the assets and what it took to clean them up, and develop a plan for the remediation. Three or four years into the project, the funding was eliminated. Someone determined it was worthless work.
You can determine worthlessness in many ways. Call a meeting. If no one shows up, it’s pretty pointless.
When senior management orders new software, but it never gets installed or it does get installed, but employees continue to bypass it, you know that if you worked in either of those areas you performed a worthless task. “Damn, all that time I spent programming the new timesheet enterprise software should have been spent more productively daydreaming about my Jamaican vacation or surfing the net to figure out who’s going to win the NFL Super Bowl in 2019.”
When you get too much worthless work, you become jaded, demotivated and unproductive. You don’t care, so you don’t act.
To maintain your motivation, polish off the worthless work and submit results to your boss. Then you can go online to kill time and see the top five contenders for next year’s Oscars. That’s way more fun and brain productive.
But “worthless work” is another story. That implies doing something that has no value. Eliminate it and you’re cutting out something that didn’t matter to begin with. So you become more productive.
A worthwhile 2018 goal is to eliminate worthless work from your life. Stop doing things that don’t contribute to your personal or professional growth, success, bottom line. You can define it however you like, but the key is cutting back on stuff that wastes your time. In other words, you’re no better off than when you started, and neither is the company you work for.
A friend of mine was putting together a video several months back. He described it to me as “something that nobody cares about.” Isn’t that an ideal definition of “worthless work?”
“Oh, hey, Peabodynose, I want that video prepared on how we put together power point presentations on my desk Monday morning. Make sure you include what type of lettering we use in headlines and how many bullets are appropriate, and what color to use in the background.”
“Right away, Mr. Globnutsky. How many copies would you like and should I should I double-side the printed version or eat more trees and print it single-sided?”
The work is pointless. Nobody cares. Imagine that meeting when everyone watches the video on how to put together the corporate-approved power point presentation. Yawn. Nap time. Check the nodding heads five minutes into the presentation to see who’s about to fall asleep. That will tell you exactly how important and useful it is. Plus if you take a full head count in the room, you can give a percentages on how many watched, fell asleep or asked questions.
Over the course of your career (or anyone’s), there has to be a huge element of worthless work accomplished. Sometimes it is projects that are taken on with the best of intentions from management, but that scuttled. A work colleague of mine 20 years ago, for example, was put on a major five-year project to analyze all our field sites, catalogue the assets and what it took to clean them up, and develop a plan for the remediation. Three or four years into the project, the funding was eliminated. Someone determined it was worthless work.
You can determine worthlessness in many ways. Call a meeting. If no one shows up, it’s pretty pointless.
When senior management orders new software, but it never gets installed or it does get installed, but employees continue to bypass it, you know that if you worked in either of those areas you performed a worthless task. “Damn, all that time I spent programming the new timesheet enterprise software should have been spent more productively daydreaming about my Jamaican vacation or surfing the net to figure out who’s going to win the NFL Super Bowl in 2019.”
When you get too much worthless work, you become jaded, demotivated and unproductive. You don’t care, so you don’t act.
To maintain your motivation, polish off the worthless work and submit results to your boss. Then you can go online to kill time and see the top five contenders for next year’s Oscars. That’s way more fun and brain productive.