Being busy is easy but...

Hi friend,

You worked all day yesterday.

Checked 50 emails. Attended three meetings. Responded to 20 Slack messages. Organized your desk. Updated your to-do list. Scrolled through LinkedIn for "networking."

By 6 PM, you were exhausted.

But here's the question: what did you actually accomplish?

If you're being honest, probably not much that actually mattered.

Welcome to the difference between motion and progress.

The Busy Trap

Motion is activity. Progress is achievement.

Motion is answering emails. Progress is finishing the project.

Motion is attending meetings. Progress is making decisions.

Motion is reorganizing your task list. Progress is completing the tasks.

Most people spend their entire day in motion, wondering why they never make progress.

Research shows that 48% of employees and 52% of leaders experience chaotic, fragmented work patterns. And here's the kicker - leaders experience more chaos than their teams.

You're not lazy. You're not unproductive. You're just doing the wrong kind of work.

The 23-Minute Problem

Every time you switch tasks, your brain pays a tax.

Research from the University of California found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully refocus after an interruption.

Read that again. Twenty-three minutes.

You check one Slack message.
One email.
One notification.
And you've just destroyed half an hour of focus.

The average person gets interrupted about 31 times a day.
Do the math - that's over 12 hours of lost focus time. In an 8-hour workday.

No wonder you feel like you worked all day but got nothing done.

Deep Work vs. Shallow Work

Cal Newport, a computer science professor, separates work into two categories:

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.

Shallow Work: Non-demanding tasks performed while distracted. Easy to replicate. Doesn't create much value.

Most people spend 80% of their day on shallow work and wonder why they're not advancing.

The culture of multitasking feels productive on the surface, but research repeatedly shows that divided attention fragments both learning and performance. Each time you switch tasks, the brain must reconfigure its mental map of what matters.

Your brain isn't designed to multitask. It's designed to focus deeply on one thing at a time.

The Illusion of Productivity

Here's what shallow work looks like:

• Checking email every 10 minutes

• Responding to every Slack ping immediately

• Attending meetings with no clear agenda or outcome

• Organizing files instead of creating content

• Reading about productivity instead of being productive

It all feels like work. You're busy. You're active. You're exhausted by the end of the day.

But you're confusing activity with achievement.

Studies show that chronic multitasking and frequent context switching can consume up to 40% of a person's productive time.

Translation: You're losing two days of work every single week to being "busy."

What Actually Matters

Progress happens in deep work.

Writing the proposal.
Building the product.
Creating the strategy.
Solving the complex problem.

The work that requires your full attention. The work that creates real value. The work you can't do while checking your phone.

From a neuroscience perspective, constant engagement in shallow work trains your brain to favor short attention spans and quick, but not deep, processing of information.

You're literally training yourself to be less capable of the work that actually matters.

The Fix

Stop measuring your day by how busy you were. Start measuring it by what you accomplished.

Block your time. Dedicate specific hours to deep work. No phone. No email. No distractions. Protect these blocks like your career depends on it - because it does.

Batch the shallow stuff. Check email twice a day, not 50 times. Have one time block for all your admin work.

Kill unnecessary meetings. If it doesn't have a clear agenda and outcome, decline it.

Track what matters. At the end of each day, ask yourself: "What did I create or complete today?" Not "What did I do today?"

Being busy is easy. Making progress is hard.

But here's the truth: the people who win aren't the ones who work the most hours. They're the ones who protect their focus and do deep work.

You don't need more time. You need less distraction.

You don't need more tasks. You need better priorities.

You don't need to be busier. You need to make progress.

So here's my challenge for you: tomorrow, block two hours for deep work. No phone. No email. No interruptions.

Pick your most important task and do nothing but that.

See what actually gets done when you stop confusing motion with progress.

Until Next Week
Lorenc - Founder of Success Skill