Written by: David Carneal –  Digital Efficiency Consulting Group (DECG)

Read Time: 3 min

Busywork is a sneaky thief. It doesn’t kick down the door. It books a recurring meeting, asks you for “a quick favor,” and quietly turns your team into a human integration layer between tools that refuse to cooperate.

The worst part: busywork feels productive. It’s motion. It’s emails sent. It’s boxes checked. And then, somehow, the real work still waits patiently at the bottom of the pile.

What Counts as Busywork

Busywork is work that exists to move work around: chasing approvals, copying data, reformatting the same report, and sending status updates because nobody can see the workflow without asking three people.

  • Copy/paste between systems that should share data.
  • Approval chains buried in email threads.
  • Re-entering information because there’s no trusted source of truth.
  • Weekly reports rebuilt because definitions change depending on who runs them.
  • Status checks that exist only because work isn’t visible.

The 10‑Minute Busywork Log

For two workdays, capture the busywork as it happens. Don’t overthink it. The goal is to see patterns, not to write a novel.

  1. When you do a task that feels like “work about work,” jot it down.
  2. Note the trigger (email, meeting, someone asks, system alert).
  3. Estimate the time (round up; nobody gets a medal for suffering quietly).
  4. Mark whether it was preventable (yes/no/maybe).
  5. Tag what broke: missing info, unclear owner, bad data, or a tool gap.

Common Patterns You’ll Notice

Most logs cluster fast. You’ll likely see one of these themes dominating your week:

  • Missing information: you spend time asking for basics that should have been required.
  • Ownership fog: you spend time figuring out who should do the work.
  • Visibility gaps: you spend time answering “where is this at?”
  • Data drift: you spend time reconciling numbers because definitions change.

Turn the Log Into an Action List

At the end, group your log into three buckets. This is where frustration turns into a plan.

  • Standardize: fix intake templates and required fields so requests arrive complete.
  • Route: define owners and routing rules so work stops bouncing.
  • Validate: catch bad inputs early to prevent downstream rework.

What to measure (so this doesn’t become a feelings-only project)

Pick one simple measurement tied to the busywork you’re removing. You’re trying to prove relief, not win a data science award.

  • Touches: how many times a person has to handle the item before it’s done.
  • Cycle time: how long it takes from request to completion.
  • Rework: how often work is returned or corrected.
  • Status-check volume: how many “any update?” messages you get per week.

A warning sign to respect

If your log is dominated by status checks, you don’t have an employee problem. You have a visibility problem. A simple workflow view can eliminate half the interruptions without anyone working harder.

And if your log is dominated by copy/paste, you don’t have a “productivity” problem. You have a system boundary problem. Fixing it might be as small as one standardized export or one shared intake form.

CTA: Run the busywork log this week. Pick the single most frequent item and design a minimum workflow: intake, routing, validation, and an exception owner. Then track one metric for two weeks.