By Andrew Forrester
Differentiating between what is just keeping busy and what is productivity is the best way to assess career growth. Here are some ways to help make that distinction to ensure your career is moving forward.
“Focus on being productive instead of busy.”
Tim Ferriss, American entrepreneur and investor
I have four kids, the oldest of whom turns seven in a month. My wife and I are very tired and very, very busy. We’re always on the move, whether it’s doing school drop-offs or baseball practice or birthday parties or playdates or library runs or, or, or . . . It never ends, and of course it’s a joy, and of course the kids, exhausting as they can be, are the best thing ever. But there are also days where I show up to the office on Monday morning and my answer to the question “What did you do this weekend?” is “I don’t remember.” In that moment, I know that I was going non-stop, relentlessly caring for and entertaining my children, but I cannot name one single thing we did on purpose or any real, notable accomplishments.
Do you ever feel that way at work? You look back over your day, your week, your month and think, I know I’ve been working hard . . . but what have I actually done? More than likely there’s an answer, and hopefully a good one. But without intentionally pursuing and achieving landmark moments, work can feel like a directionless slog. Differentiating between busyness and productivity is a key component in assessing your growth and ensuring that your career is moving forward rather than just spinning its wheels.
Keep a Log
In my life as a dad, it’s the day-to-day atmosphere that makes all the difference: I don’t need to attain anything, I just need to be there. I just need my kids to know that I love them and I’m here for them. The bad news? Your employment is, most likely, not a one-for-one analogue to raising kids. You actually have to do things, specific things, and you have to be able point to them, on paper and in the real world, and say, Look, I did that! I was instrumental in these specific ways! That could not have happened without me!
So here’s what you can do (and I promise this the last parenting illustration): keep track of milestones in your career just as assiduously as you’d update a child’s baby book. I’m not just talking about updating your resume to reflect big picture things, although you should of course do that. You should also be documenting the smaller, almost intangible things: learned a new technique for leading meetings, developed a smarter way of organizing emails and tasks, spoke to a record number of clients, whatever it may be.
Maybe you set aside one day each month to acknowledge the ways you’ve advanced and changed professionally. Put the sparkliest, most marketable things on your resume and don’t neglect everything else. Tallying up your professional development, even the most incremental moments of it, is a good way to keep yourself on track and feel assured about what you’re doing each day. And it’s a good reminder that, just because every quarter or every year doesn’t result in a big promotion or groundbreaking deal, growth is still growth.
Trim the Excess
Now, what about all the other stuff? If you look back over your list, what story is being told by what you’ve left out—the non-milestones, the monotonous, boring things? Each day, there are inescapable nuts and bolts we must see to: things which never win us any awards or even make it to our end-of-the-month tally. But there are almost certainly other things that have slipped into our routines and typical practices that could do with a little streamlining. Are you manually calculating something that could be thrown into a spreadsheet? Are you crafting a slideshow from scratch when helpful templates are out there waiting to be used? Just because something took you all day, and even if that thing that thing looks really impressive, that doesn’t mean you’ve used your time in a valuable way. We live in an age of helpful shortcuts and time-saving applications. To not make use of those gifts means subtracting time from the big ticket, flashy or even just feel-good achievements that help your career move forward.
Ask Around
Everywhere I’ve ever worked, there’s been a guy who seems to have hacked his routine. He does the bare minimum and is somehow celebrated for it, because nothing seems to slip through the cracks, and everything is completed on time. At the same time, there’s usually some elder statesperson who’s been doing their job so long that they know all the ins and outs and potential pitfalls.
Both of these people can be role models. While you might not want to base your attitude on the routine-hacker, he might have a trick or two you should mix into your own day-to-day. And while the elder statesperson might be prone to “the way things have always been done,” there’s so much to be said for experience, and observing them work for a bit can be like watching viral videos of municipal workers line-marking city streets with crosswalks and accessible parking logos: there’s a kind of steady self-assuredness that comes with discipline and practice. Glean what you can from each of these people, integrating the best of both worlds into your standard way of doing things.
Another resource: your friendly coworkers and superiors. Ask them questions like “What do you think I waste the most time on?” or “What big accomplishments come to mind when you think of me?” The answers to these questions, from people who have your best interests in mind, can act as way-finders towards the kind of employee or manager or teammate you hope to be known as. Take their feedback seriously and assess your work accordingly.
When in Doubt, Consider the ROI
When it comes down to it, each of is trying to make the most of the limited number of hours in each day, each week. We’re trying to do a lot and do it in a way that impresses and surprises those around and above us. If all else fails, the question you should be consistently asking yourself is this: Is the effort I’m putting in paying off? Is the time I’m spending busy actually amounting to productivity?
In any given company, there are real, accessible productivity trackers, and those are great tools. But in your gut, I suspect you just kind of know. You know whether you’re running on a treadmill or advancing in a marathon. After the logs, the trimming of the excess and the asking around, you have to be able to look head-on at the work you do and decide what real productivity looks like. What does success actually mean, and what tangible, nameable things are you doing along your path to it? If you can respond to that positively, you’re on the right track; the rest will, more than likely fall into place on its own. And then, when faced with the question “What have I actually done?” you’ll not only have an answer, but a sense of purpose and direction.
Andrew Forrester is a writer whose work has appeared in Parents Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. Andrew also teaches English and creative writing in Austin, Texas, and has a Ph.D. in English literature from Southern Methodist University.
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