Less is more: everyone advised to pause for thought

 Over the summer I’ve kept spotting reference to an article that appeared in The Economist that has caused me to smile and reflect.  With a busy term coming up, the advice seems very welcome: the biggest problem in the business world is too many distractions and interruptions, too many things done for the sake of form, and altogether too much busy-ness.

 I’m well aware of my own time wasting habits, and I see plenty of it going on around me too. Here are some of the key points that are raised:

According to the article, the Dutch seem to believe that an excess of meetings is the biggest devourer of time: they talk of “meeting sickness”. And a recent study suggests that e-mails are even worse: it found that highly skilled office workers spend more than a quarter of each working day writing and responding to them.The shocking conclusion: office workers are “on a treadmill of pointless activity”.

The trend is producing is producing an epidemic of overwork, particularly in the US. Americans now work for eight-and-a-half hours a week more than they did in 1979. Another survey last year found that more than 80% of respondents continue to work after leaving the office, 69% cannot go to bed without checking their inbox and 38% routinely check their work e-mails at the dinner table. This activity is making it harder to focus on “real work” as opposed to make-work. Another study suggests that workers are generally more creative when less ‘busy’ and when deprived of email they found that people without it concentrated on tasks for longer and experienced less stress.

The conclusion?

The author argues that it is high time that we tried a different strategy—not “leaning in” but “leaning back”. The most obvious winners from leaning back would be creative workers—the very people who are supposed to be at the heart of the modern economy. Peter Drucker, a management guru, summed up the concept: “One of the secrets of productivity is to have a very big waste-paper basket to take care of all invitations such as yours.” Creative people’s most important resource is their time—particularly big chunks of uninterrupted time—and their biggest enemies are those who try to nibble away at it with e-mails or meetings. Indeed, creative people may be at their most productive when, to the manager’s untutored eye, they appear to be doing nothing.

Managers themselves could benefit. Leaders’ weaknesses are well known, but some of the best take time out specifically for deeper thought and reflection. One good piece of advice is to keep a “stop doing list”. Is there a meeting you can cancel? Or a dinner you can avoid?

It all adds up to quite a powerful argument for more laisser faire styles of management. The book “Do Nothing” argues that the best managers focus their attention on establishing the right rules—recruiting the right people and establishing the right incentives—and then get out of the way. It adds up to a powerful set of arguments for doing a lot less—for rationing e-mail, cutting back on meetings and getting rid of a few over-keen bosses. I've put some other thoughts together on related issues here.