Busy work is an insidious thing. It sprouts up everywhere, declaring itself an emergency, demanding to be taken care of. As soon as you complete one piece of busy work, there always seems to be two more pointless tasks that spring up in its place. It eats up a lot of your day, and if it had its way it would eat up ALL of your day with inconsequential fires to put out. The worst part about busy work is what it does to your time management;; the time you spend tending to it is time you should really spend taking care of your most important tasks.
The most important tasks for the day are easy enough to define. They are the tasks that never seem to get done, that don't shout for your attention. They are the tasks that create long term changes and lasting benefits and growth. They are the tasks that actually contribute positively towards your work- they are the tasks that move you closer and closer to your larger goals. They do not waste your time, because all the time you put into accomplishing your most important tasks is time you have invested for much greater returns down the line.
Often your most important tasks get ignored because they have been on your plate for a long time, and they do not have a specific deadline. Busy work, on the other hand, tends to pop up out of nowhere (making it fresh in your mind) and screams and yells and whines and demands that it needs to be done IMMEDIATELY. It's really no wonder that most of our time goes to the later rather than the former. Unless consciously ignored or deferred, busy work will always leap to the fore. While they may not be number one when it comes to deadline-based prioritizing, your most important tasks are number one when it comes to long term importance.
Ultimately, you should aim to complete your most important tasks first thing in the morning. If you can work on them as soon as you wake up, all the better. The work seems to get done easier if you complete it before checking all the other distractions; your e-mail, your voice mail, your Twitter and Facebook. Don't check any of these things until work on your most important tasks is complete.
This can be a surprisingly time management difficult habit to get into. We're so used to checking our e-mail and finding out what everyone else is demanding from us first thing in the morning, and then at least once every fifteen minutes for the rest of the day. We're so used to prioritizing what other people think we should be doing over what we ourselves think we should be doing. We are so quick to minimize our own thoughts about what our job is, and so quick to comply with whatever our bosses or co-workers think our job is.
This is all nonsense and noise. Not only do you understand your position better than your boss or your co-workers, but often your most important tasks of the day have nothing to do with them. Often, your most important tasks of the day are bits of work you need to accomplish to build your own business, your own accomplishments. Even if you are a happy employee, you can ensure your job and increase your standing in the company by showing them that you are able to understand what work takes precedent, and that you are able to actually accomplish large, progressive tasks. In practicing time management and doing real work, you will show that you can do more than just spin in place, putting out the fires that almost always burn out on their own.
