Being busy at work doesn't mean you are productive

In her regular column, business founder and wellness expert Nicola Elliott looks to make our nine-to-five feel healthier

- Nicola Elliott

We’re living in a time-pressured culture and, unfortunately, many of us have seen colleagues (or ourselves) associate being busy at work with achievement and subsequently sometimes suffer from burnout because of it.

When 10,000 senior leaders were asked in a recent management survey: “What is key to your company’s success?” 97 per cent of them said “long-term strategic thinking” ie: asking the right questions for perspective and thinking through actions with laser-like focus for maximum impact. So it is quite ironic then that, in a different study, 96 per cent of senior leaders said the one thing they need more of, but don’t have time for is... strategic thinking.

The average professional has 62 meetings per week. Add to that a McKinsey report that says 28 per cent of a professional’s working day is spent just replying to emails, not to mention the relentless Slack messages which are thrown at us like rocks during any given day, and you can see how squeezed for time many of us are.

How can we then adjust our day so we manage to have the time we need to do our jobs and not fall into behaviours that don’t give us the space that is required to do them properly?