Is busyness bad for business?
The answer isn’t a simple “yes” or “no”. While Kreider argues that we need bout of idleness to get inspired and work more effectively, there is evidence that workers benefit from busyness. Take one experiment conducted in 2010 by professor Christopher Hsee at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Hsee’s team found that people who kept themselves occupied rather than waiting idly after a test felt happier. Interestingly, participants in the study were not likely to busy themselves unless they could justify the activity; they weren’t interested in what Hsee and his colleagues call “futile busyness”. But the results showed that even futile busyness is better than idleness.
In my organization’s own recent research with a global firm, we discovered that a common characteristic among the company’s great leaders was their recognition of the importance of busyness. They knew idle employees would suffer, and so pushed to instead create a stimulating work environment. For example, one leader responded to a downturn in work by encouraging team members to look for novel projects that interested them and might generate opportunities. Not only did this keep the group engaged, but some of the projects also eventually bore fruit. This wasn’t futile busyness, of course. “Creative busyness” might be more appropriate.
Indeed, busyness seems to be most productive when the tasks we busy ourselves with are also meaningful. In a 2008 MIT study, researchers investigated meaning by asking participants to build Lego models. Finished models were either kept, or they were disassembled in front of the participant and handed back for rebuilding. (This was called the “Sisyphus condition”, after the mythical figure condemned to repeatedly push a boulder up a mountain only to watch it roll back down again). Even though the two conditions involved exactly the same type of work, participants in the “meaningful” condition were willing to produce more models (and built them more efficiently, for a lower median wage) than those who mimicked Sisyphus. Surely Michael, who attends one meeting only to have another scheduled, and completes one spreadsheet only to be presented with new figures, is starting to feel like he’s pushing that boulder.
Perhaps we are not so much caught in a “busy trap”, as a “meaning trap”. A meaningful life involves pursuing what we truly value, a sense of contribution in our work, as well as time outside of work to relax, enjoy hobbies, and spend time with loved ones. It’s perhaps no surprise that the great leaders in our study were also expert at modeling work-life integration; they valued not only busyness but also meaning. How did their emphasis on both impact the bottom line? Positively. Their teams were more engaged, their revenues were higher and their turnover was lower than other groups’.
