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Busy vs Productive

Pattern · leadership-principles

Core Concept

Being busy is not the same as being productive. In management especially, there are days where you enable a whole bunch of work to get done but have very few things checked off your todo list. The checklist-able things are not the end-all be-all of productivity. Many days as a tech leader you spend checking very few things off your list, have a meager EOD update, and yet you still had an intensely productive day enabling others, thinking through problems, and making progress on intangibles.

Origin Story

In 2013, when cofounder/CEO Roshan Choxi took a week-long vacation at Bloc, anything that would’ve gone to him was redirected to Dave. Within a day, overwhelmed. The solution: the bullet journal.

For several years, a physical bullet journal helped capture everything, prioritize with clarity, and be productive instead of drowning. One key benefit: you must hand-copy items from one day to the next if you don’t get them done. This forces your mind to be keenly aware of what isn’t getting done. It forces daily re-evaluation.

The insight: tasks are deleted by default, rather than carried over by default. Digital todo lists allow you to pile up items with few built-in mechanisms to re-evaluate what’s important. The bullet journal’s friction is the feature.

For Managers

The trap for managers is measuring their day by checkboxes completed. The real work of management — enabling others, thinking through problems, building connective tissue, having the right conversations — rarely shows up on a checklist. A manager who is always “busy” (lots of checkboxes) may actually be avoiding the harder, less measurable work of leadership.

Related Patterns

• Prioritization Reveals Leadership — the inability to prioritize often manifests as “busyness” — doing everything rather than choosing what matters
• Executive Presence — anxiety drives busyness as a coping mechanism; checklist completion soothes the nervous system

Cross-References