“Workiness” is to work as “truthiness” is to truth.
Look familiar?
This is a picture of the inside of my mind.*
I’m halfway kidding. For the most part, I’m good about keeping a clean desk, and I may have mentioned before that I’m a real devotee of the philosophy embodied by Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero guide.
But if you think that means I don’t typically carry around a big stack of scribbled-up papers (drafts, articles, to-do lists, . . .), or that I don’t have many unfinished blog posts in the works, or that I’m totally on top of my many projects — if you think any of that, you’d be mistaken.
“Workiness”
One problem I tend to have is a tendency toward “workiness.” Read the title of this post again, ponder Steven Colbert’s use of “truthiness,” and you’ll understand what I mean. Just as Colbert’s on-air persona is more about the assertion or the mood of truth rather than the, y’know, truth type of truth, workiness is about the appearance or the attitude of real work rather than the doing of work.
Most of us fall victim to this at least some of the time. We spend all day in our offices, diligently writing and answering e-mails, attending meetings, cluttering and uncluttering our desks and our minds. Yet at the end of the day we tote up the score and can’t think of anything we’ve actually accomplished.
Or is it just me?
I thought not. Some office culture — the culture of the fire drill, we might call it — promote this counter-productive workiness more than others. Some personality types and styles of thinking (like, apparently, mine) are more prone to workiness than others.
And workiness gets us just as far as truthiness does. It may churn up our emotions like truthiness. It may feel like work just truthiness can feel like truth. But workiness isn’t the real work. It’s just a cheap copy, costume jewelry in place of real diamonds.
“The truth will set you free.”
Breaking free from workiness requires telling the truth, to yourself and to the rest of your organization. If you have a habit that you suspect wastes your time, take an honest look at it, figure out whether it really wastes your time, and take appropriate action. Maybe you won’t like it. Maybe it will be hard to break an old, unproductive habit. But it’s a heck of a lot better than pushing papers forever to no end.
It’s also good preparation for the next step, which is performing a workiness check for your team, your department, or your whole company. Look around you at all of these busy people. Busy, busy bees. But how much work is getting done? How much is being accomplished?
Baby steps.
It’s hard enough reforming yourself and your own habits — without the complexities of group dynamics in the mix. So don’t worry about reducing the workiness ratio of your team single-handedly, and don’t worry about achieving it all at once. But if you want to free yourself up to do your best work, it’s well worth the effort, for you and for those around you.
And if you don’t make the effort? Well, go ahead and embrace the mental and physical clutter depicted in the photo. Go ahead and keep up your non-producing habits of workiness. Go ahead wondering, day after day, whether all your toil is worth it — whether you’ll ever see any real rewards for your efforts.
Me, I’m in the process of reforming myself. No busywork. No half-hearted stabs at my projects. Work, or don’t work — but don’t fall victim to the siren song of workiness.
How’s the workiness in your organization?
~
* Not really. It’s actually taken from kk+.
Category: The language of business, The working life10 Comments so far
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Love the new look! Is that a picture of my desk?
This and the successor post make quite a pair. Think of dividing work into urgent and non-urgent (I’m a consultant so you’re gonna get a matrix here) and important and not-important. Think about your day, week, month. Where does most of your time go ? How ’bout for your workgroup ? Your organization ?
Minzberg et.al. did some interesting time diary studies years ago and, guess what, even before all of today’s time-wasters the lower left quadrant sucked up a disproportionate share, i.e. urgent but unimportant.
As a “checklist” at the end of the day just pencil in what your time budget was and what got accomplished. Sooner or later it’s likely to change on inspection.
“Workiness” is great name for this meme. I first (in recent memory) encountered the meme while reading The 4-Hour Workweek. I’m also resolving to decrease my workiness. It’s a hard habit to break. One thing I’m trying to do is to be aware why I’m doing something. What larger goals does it connect to? Is it really anywhere on my “Maslow” hierarchy?
This also reminds of another meme, “informating”, which Shoshana Zuboff started writing about in the ’80s: informating.
JohnD — I’m pretty sure this fits on Maslow’s hierarchy, under some sort of heading for “security”. We cling to things because they comfort us in some way, or because we’re afraid of what lives beyond the reach of our own personal little campfires.
I concede that workiness might be on Maslow’s hierarchy, albeit near the bottom. Realizing that could be useful. Do I really want to spend all my time there? If all I’m getting out of going to my next meeting is that I’m going to feel more secure, can’t I get my security issues resolved in another way? And spend my time on something further up the hierarchy?
Great post, and “workiness” is a great take on it!
I wrote a blog post recently on the subject, too. For me, it seems there will always be short-term goals and necessary projects that demand attention; but my long-term goals suffer from neglect. So I’ve tried to do the “verbs” that come with my “nouns”–writers write, web designers design web pages, etc.
It helps me when I give myself permission to put status quo maintenance lower on the to-do list, and prioritize what’s most important to me.
JohnD — Bear with my ignorance, because you likely know more about Maslow’s hierarchy than I do. But I don’t think that “workiness” is near the bottom of the hierarchy. We don’t pursue workiness ahead of food, clothing, shelter. It afflicts (some of) those of us who have the luxury of working in knowledge jobs where results can be hard to measure — i.e. jobs that have the “slack” necessary for “workiness” to thrive.
When we go through the motions of working, we *appear* to those around us as though we’re contributing, busting our butts, etc. — even when we’re not. We do this preferentially over *actual* work, I think, because actual work is scary and might reveal our (emotional, intellectual, etc.) weaknesses.
The key is to realize that workiness ISN’T at the TOP of the hierarchy, where self-actualization reigns. And then, as you rightly say, to make sure that dwelling on workiness doesn’t PREVENT us from achieving self-actualization.
I think!
You all are taking a very hard look at your habits and selves, and I agree that is very helpful. I was drawn to respond by the comments about self actualization.
As I thought about it, I decided that really “workiness” may be filling a need left over from our Industrial Revolution experiences. This was/is a time when our work ethic determined that sitting, thinking, motionlessness;D, etc. were evil.
That leaves “workiness” as a suitable method the mind/brain can use for metacognitive processing…to think in the background about what is important. Once the metacognition is complete, “workiness” becomes irrelevant and we move on to work….if we are able (or really want) to get out of the “workiness” loop.
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