How punctual are you about the time you start work?
Most people would answer positively, with a "fairly punctual."
But how punctual are we about the time we finish work?
It's far less common to give the same answer to this question!
More and more often, the end of the time devoted to your job is neither sharp nor defined: a phenomenon known as the "erosion of work-life boundaries."
Nobody ever forgets to go to the office, while many people forget personal commitments.
The longer you keep ignoring certain limits, the more problematic it becomes not to be able to set a clear boundary on work.
How the problems of busyness show up
How do you know you have a busyness problem?
There are some very common signals to recognize in typical everyday scenarios.
You live with too much to do, knowing that if you had one more day available, that would be filled with tasks and commitments right away too.
A constant feeling of falling behind on deadlines adds tension and anxiety to the day.
You feel overwhelmed by commitments and fear you'll never manage to finish your to-do list.
The to-do list, by the way, seems alive! It keeps filling up with additions that pile on top of the tasks already there.
To keep up with delegated work, you end up working beyond the planned hours, accepting interruptions throughout the day that come from outside but also from thoughts in your own mind (which trigger more things to do).
These are very common problems, but people rarely decide to act on them, often because they don't understand the major impact they have.
Being busy, feeling you have too much to do and not respecting personal and professional spaces and times is a steadily growing trend.
The numbers are rising and the negative consequences are increasing.
Several studies have looked into this topic.
What the science says
The Eurofound study "Right to disconnect: Implementation and impact at company level" (2023), conducted on workers in Belgium, France, Italy and Spain, provides data on the shifting of work-life boundaries:
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over 80% of respondents are contacted for work reasons outside their contractual hours in a typical week
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in Italy, the share of people contacted every day is the highest of the four countries: 20% by their managers and 42% by their colleagues
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61% respond to all or almost all communications received outside working hours, and 57% say they feel obliged to respond
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where a company rule on disconnecting exists, the share of people reporting stress or anxiety in the previous twelve months drops from 38% to 28%
The studies by Derks, D., van Duin, D., Tims, M., & Bakker, A. B. (2015) in "Smartphone use and work-home interference: The moderating role of social norms and employee work engagement" and Barber, L. K., & Santuzzi, A. M. (2015) in "Please respond ASAP: workplace telepressure and employee recovery" found that:
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evening availability depends mainly on the social norms perceived in the company, that is, on what colleagues and managers take for granted in terms of availability
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the perceived urgency to respond immediately to work messages (telepressure) predicts physical and cognitive exhaustion, poorer sleep quality and absenteeism, regardless of the actual workload
Pega, F., Nafradi, B., Momen, N. C., et al. (2021), in "Global, regional and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000-2016: a systematic analysis from WHO/ILO joint estimates of the work-related burden of disease and injury," showed that:
- working more than 55 hours/week increases the risk of stroke (+35%) and heart disease (+17%) and, in general, blood pressure problems.
Finally, Pencavel, J. (2014), "The productivity of working hours," found that:
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after about 50 hours/week of work, productivity drops sharply
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additional hours beyond 55 hours/week produce almost zero real output
The studies clearly show how mistaken the belief is that to be productive you need to work more, work beyond your hours and during the hours that should be devoted to rest and recovering your energy.
What the effects of the problem are
It's fair to ask, then, what effects the busyness problem produces.
There are 4 most evident effects:
1- project times and costs increase:
the inability to respect a boundary and to manage incoming inputs that create detours and delays drives up project times and costs.
In addition, team members who respond outside working hours set off unhealthy habits, wear themselves out and lower their productivity, affecting the quality of their work (and this too weighs on the project budget).
2- worsening lifestyle and well-being: the available research associates difficulty in maintaining boundaries between life and work with worse physical and emotional health; it measures an association, not a trend over time.
3- rising employee turnover: so much stress drives people to leave their jobs because of unsustainable conditions.
4- neglect and unreliability in your own roles: the more devoted you are to your job, the worse you spend the time devoted to your other roles, becoming negligent and unreliable.
The most common mistakes in solving the problem
It's easy to see that, if the situation keeps evolving the same way, the negative effects will tend to grow.
Once the problem has been identified, two options open up: ignore it, accepting it as part of normal life and living with its consequences, or step in and try to solve it.
However, deciding to act doesn't automatically guarantee the result you want.
Not all solutions are truly effective.
People often choose a solution that isn't the priority, and that therefore doesn't solve the problem for good.
Among the most common solutions people come up with to solve the busyness problem are:
1- Taking time management courses: the belief is that time is what creates the problem and that knowing how to organize your calendar guarantees closer adherence to plans.
Commitments known in advance aren't the only ones to manage: this solution, in fact, doesn't take into account the new inputs that arrive during work, both from delegated tasks and interruptions and from thoughts and emotions.
2- Strict rules on respecting boundaries: you choose maximum discipline to respect work-life boundaries, but at the risk of making the situation worse, because the amount of work that forces you to keep working may be real
If the things to do really exist, are many and can't be avoided, this solution risks making things worse: by imposing a forced stop, the interruption creates a pile-up of activities that aren't completed but only interrupted, and in fact the work doesn't decrease — quite the opposite!
At first glance these two solutions may seem valid, but in reality they don't solve the problem at its root.
The reason is simple: they focus on the effects rather than the causes.
When tackling the busyness problem, as with any other business issue, it's essential to start from the elements that generated it and not from those that only represent its consequences.
To achieve concrete, lasting results in solving a problem, you need a method.
You need to analyze how activities are carried out, check whether procedures are followed and identify the weak points of the process.
Every problem, in fact, stems from a precise cause.
That's why you need to understand which shortcoming or anomaly produced the unwanted situation and introduce a practical solution capable of eliminating it.
This article tackles the busyness problem by proposing an operational approach that works directly on its real cause.
The same principle can be used to effectively tackle most organizational problems.
This conviction gave rise to "Un Problema alla Settimana" (One Problem a Week), the Prodability Academy course that offers a 50-minute online lesson every week, devoted to a concrete topic in work and management.
Each lesson tackles one specific problem at a time, using the same precise, decisive method.
The course has a twofold aim: to offer tools you can use right away to solve the most common problems in companies and, at the same time, to consistently train the ability to identify and solve problems in a structured way.
The first step? Analyze the process involved and understand where the problem really originates.
Where to look for the cause of the problem: analyzing the process involved
Solving a problem for good is the result of a precise method.
People often think it's enough to find a solution, but the real starting point is different: understanding the problem in depth.
Without an accurate analysis of the problem, you risk acting only on the effects, leaving untouched the causes that generated it.
Analysis is the most important phase of the entire problem-solving path. When it's done correctly, the way forward becomes much clearer and the solution emerges naturally, also turning out to be simpler to apply.
It's a valuable cross-functional skill that requires a structured method but that, once acquired, can be used in any context: from the company to your personal life.
Analyzing the problem starts with asking a fundamental question: in which phase of the process is the cause that generated it?
The phases of the process where the real cause of the busyness problem may lie are:
1- planning the week
2- start-of-day check (time is managed once a day; reorganizing the day several times creates additional tasks to do)
3- handling delegation inputs (how to handle the input that arrives as a request for things to do for others)
4- any rescheduling
5- end-of-week report
This article explores the phase of the process concerning the handling of delegation inputs.
Identifying the real cause of the problem
In the phase of handling delegation inputs, what can the cause of busyness be?
People have trouble handling delegated tasks because there is no method (precise rules) for collecting and accepting delegated tasks.
To be productive and effective in carrying out a task, you need to know how to manage the inputs that keep arriving.
The focus shifts to the ability to accept a delegated task: precise rules that define boundaries and procedures before a task is considered assigned.
If the real cause is something missing, what fills this gap are 2 operational solutions to apply in handling delegation inputs.
The operational solutions
The proposed solutions develop an execution method and, therefore, work on how delegation inputs are handled.
To create a method for handling delegation inputs, you need to apply 2 solutions that are also rules to follow.
Solution 1 — Clearly distinguish delegated tasks from personal favors
First of all, you need to ask yourself what the role of the person delegating is and whether the request falls within that role's prerogatives.
Personal favors can sometimes be disguised as delegated tasks: the more favors are mistaken for delegation, the more confusion there is in the company.
Whatever doesn't concern the role, the duties or the function of the role is, to all intents and purposes, a personal favor.
The common habit is to think of others as people rather than as roles, but there's a distinction to make here:
- the role generates a delegated task
- the person asks for a personal favor
You can't ask for personal favors every day.
Clear agreements become necessary: specifying the role held, the role's functions and therefore whether or not it has the prerogative to delegate.
This makes it possible to set the boundaries of delegation and clarify who does what and who can ask for what.
Solution 2 — Create a clear procedure for taking on delegated tasks
It's essential to define a procedure that includes two points:
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how a delegated task is accepted
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what information the delegate must request
Between delegate and delegator, the more competent one must be the delegate: the delegate makes sure the delegator improves too, through a precise request for the information without which they couldn't begin carrying out the task.
When the process of accepting the delegated task ends, the delegate must have the clarity to proceed independently: that's why they must be the one to assess whether all the information is sufficient to carry out the task (if it isn't, the phase of collecting and accepting the delegated task isn't over).
Many delegated tasks fail precisely because the common focus is more on how to create a delegated task than on how to receive one.
How to accept a delegated task
First of all, the delegate defines which tool they use to accept delegated tasks: without this first choice there can be no method.
Then you need to define at what times (days/hours) delegated tasks are accepted.
Tools and times: without defining these two points you can't establish how delegated tasks are accepted.
What information a good delegate asks for
The delegated task must make known and clear all the information the delegate needs to know before starting work. In particular:
1- which role the task is being delegated to (to distinguish between delegation and a favor)
2- final valuable product: what is expected to be produced by the delegated task
3- preferred deadline and reasons: important for defining the task's timing, it varies depending on the type of delegation (see next point);
4- who sets the schedule (a calendar of the activities that need to be carried out to arrive at the valuable product): does the delegator provide the schedule, or can the delegate decide the task's timing?
There are 2 types of delegation:
- delegation with a schedule: the delegate is free to manage their own calendar and lets the delegator know when the task will be ready
- operational delegation without a schedule: the delegator also decides the delegate's calendar
To have decision-making autonomy over the schedule of a delegated task, you need to know how to define the calendar: so the type of delegation depends on the delegate's skills.
The most practical way to apply this solution, then, is to list the four pieces of information in a checklist and fill it in, when a delegated task arrives, by answering its points.
This level of clarity and order in defining the delegated task makes it possible to manage the request and safeguard the worker's productivity.
Two operational guidelines and simple rules of behavior that, if applied consistently, can produce immediate benefits and reduce issues that put the company's efficiency at risk.
Even the least visible problems can be solved in a lasting way through a method that starts from analyzing the causes and leads to concrete, applicable actions.
Sources and references
Eurofound (2023) "Right to disconnect: Implementation and impact at company level", Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg — https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/publications/2023/right-disconnect-implementation-and-impact-company-level
Derks, D., van Duin, D., Tims, M., & Bakker, A. B. (2015) "Smartphone use and work-home interference: The moderating role of social norms and employee work engagement", Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(1), 155-177 — https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12083
Barber, L. K., & Santuzzi, A. M. (2015) "Please respond ASAP: workplace telepressure and employee recovery", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 20(2), 172-189 — https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038278
Pega, F., Náfrádi, B., Momen, N. C., et al. (2021) "Global, regional and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000-2016: a systematic analysis from WHO/ILO joint estimates of the work-related burden of disease and injury", Environment International, 154, 106595 — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595
Pencavel, J. (2014) "The Productivity of Working Hours", The Economic Journal, 125(589), 2052-2076 — https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12166