“You may observe this in human life: no one can merely go wrong by themselves, but they must become both the cause and adviser of another’s wrong doing.” – Seneca

Busy. We are all just so busy. But if we took the amount of time we spent on things that weren’t actually productive, how much time do we really spend doing things that need to be done? How often do we find ourselves putting things on our plate that are not going to help our productivity? How often do we find ourselves giving these unimportant tasks to our spouses? Our coworkers? Our children?

This might be the only time we want to start with other people and then slowly work towards fixing a problem in ourselves.

Not only are we guilty of wasting our own time but we are all very likely guilty of wasting someone else’s as well. Probably someone we love. Just think about how many busy work tasks we push onto our spouses, our children, our friends.

As we move through our day today, let’s make a mental note of each of the tasks that we ask others to do. And as we get better of recognizing how much busy work we ask others to pick up we should start to ask ourselves, does this need to be done? Is it something we would do if we were able? Is it going to help the other person as well?

If we can answer yes to all of those questions, fine the task is important. If we answer no to any of them, maybe we should rethink it. We live in a chaotic time, there is always more to put on our plates, we should be careful about how much we place on anyone else’s to-do list.

And once we get good at not pushing busy work onto those around us, we should look inward and start trying to eliminate it in our own lives.

virtus fortis vocat