Busy work can be regarded as any task or assignment we engaged in that consumes our time but in the end shows little for our effort. The net result is a decrease in our personal or business productivity. Now if procrastination is your thing, great, but if you have goals and objectives you're serious about listen up.

Your first priority when you set goals is to insure your efforts are efficient and effective. Becoming engaged in time consuming meaningless tasks that don't target your goals and objectives is a waste of time and effort. Avoiding such behavior is a key to reaching your goals quicker.

Let's look at 3 ways these seemingly harmless yet remedial tasks can devour your time and redirect your focus without you even realizing it.

Distracts From Primary Focus

Obviously little or no progress is being made toward your primary goal when you engage in activities of little or no relativity to the main focus. Depending upon the 'insignificance' of the remedial task you're caught up in this could prove to be a gross waste of your time and effort.

You'd be better off taking the afternoon to go fishing since at least this has some therapeutic value to it.

Disrupts Flow of Creative Thinking/Problem Solving

Your concentration of thought is diverted from where it should be to something else. By concentrating on and becoming immersed in a project you're inadvertently assigning your mind a singular focus. This focus picks up a certain train of thought and begins to subconsciously interpret and examine the subject matter for problems, opportunities or solutions. Obviously by diverting your focus a speedy resolution or completion of the project can not be expected.

Secondary Task Becomes Primary Focus

The longer you needless toil on secondary tasks the more of your focus they will consume. Eventually these tasks will now become your 'new, primary goal thereby further forestalling the successful accomplishment of the original task you set out to complete.

Aside from the lost time the danger exist that discouragement may set in since it's taking you so long to complete your original task. This could ultimately lead to you quitting before you ever invest any significant effort into the completion of your primary goal.

Although 'busy work' can give the illusion that you are making progress towards achieving your goals the results are not worth the effort you invest. It is important to remember that when you set goals you want to pursue them in the most direct and efficient manner possible. Work smarter not harder. Engaging in only those activities that will give you the biggest results towards reaching your goals and objectives is your first priority. Your ability to quickly recognize that you've become engaged in time consuming meaningless activities will help you minimize any time wasted. By taking the necessary corrective actions can then boost your business productivity and reach your goals quicker.