Knowing about critical path work and actually doing critical path work are two different things. People trying to contribute to the critical path often find themselves diverted by being swamped with emails, interruptions, make-work, or other distractions. For many workers, it seems like they can seldom dig out from under all the crap to actually do any work of real value. Then, once they do get started on more important work, they get interrupted or pulled into a meeting. At the end of the day, they feel like they didn’t really get anything important done that day—and they are right!
The problem is that most workers lump everything they do under the term “work.” Cal Newport describes the problem well in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. He distinguishes between deep work and shallow work. Deep work is cognitively demanding. It harnesses hard thought, creativity, and concentration to add value to the critical path. Shallow work requires time but is not cognitively challenging (though some expense reports can be so convoluted that they can tax your patience). Shallow work is more concerned with all the administrivia and logistical work in an organization, such as emails, meetings, expense reports, and other record-keeping. Shallow work will keep you busy and may keep you employed. Deep work is what gets you recognized and promoted.
Shallow work and make-work result in the “busy-is-easy” phenomenon. A former student worked for the consulting firm McKinsey to help companies be more productive. He explained that it really doesn’t take much effort or planning to look or be “busy.” In fact, McKinsey found that the average knowledge worker spends 60% of their time each week on electronic communication and internet searches, with 30% devoted solely to reading and responding to email. This means that most companies spend the bulk of their compensation money on shallow work.
People who aren’t focused on the critical path, like many email writers and the HR folks censoring presentations, can be very busy. In fact, shallow work and make-work often consume more time than critical path work. Worse are those make-workers who create the impression that they are busy so that they don’t get assigned more work. In any company, whether a startup or a Fortune 50, you can always be busy. However, the “busy-is-easy” folks never question exactly what they are busy with—how much actually adds any value and how much is just wheel spinning?
Busy-ness becomes a proxy for productivity. Along with make-work, it undermines the critical path by robbing it of the time devoted to the deep work required to make it successful. Remember our discussion of JC Penney where employees at HQ were watching YouTube and Netflix videos all day long? Those workers should have been out in the stores doing the deep work of attracting and pleasing profitable customers. As my former student explained: McKinsey gets hired to eliminate the jobs (and workers doing them) who are not contributing to the critical path, like the ⅓ of JC Penney HQ workers who got fired.
Critical Path Action Items
What percent of your typical work day is spent on deep work?
What percent of your typical work day is spent on shallow work?
What percent of your organization follows the “Busy Is Easy” approach to work?