Wednesday, 1st April 2026
We spend roughly 10-15% of our entire life at work.
The past 2 weeks have included moments of realisation that a lot of the stuff I get involved in at work is largely irrelevant, and non-meaningful; both to my role and to the person I am.
In business, it is one thing to define a role, set up the parameters, start and end points, and theoretically design a role that is explicitly defined. The tricky part is turning theory into practice.
How do we maintain a siloed approach to role separation? How do we ensure that someone isn't venturing off to "help" someone out in their position, and slowly drifting into taking responsibilities from their role? For these, I don't have an answer, though I suspect I'll need to learn this.
What I do know, however, is that this is an inefficient approach, and that if an individual had a project that they believed in - or a team was working on a collection of tasks with collaborative belief - that our outputs would be significantly higher and more meaningful.
Sometimes, we just need to go back to our superiors and show them all of the crap that has slowly accumulated into our work calendar! I did this earlier this week, and along with my position description, I contested the extra responsibilities - especially the ones where my input really wasn't even required.
As someone who likes control, it is challenging to let go of the 5 or 6 different side projects that I collected like loose change, keeping them around in my calendar with the thought that I could have some good input and influence over the outcome.
The problem with this: the truly meaningful work was taking a backseat.
That is not to say that these "loose change" projects weren't objectively meaningful... improvements in platform communication, along with updated process acknowledgements are vital parts of a young business's growth. What I was failing to understand is that the right people were already in those meetings. I had identified the need for improvements, but failed to delegate properly, to allow myself to continue to work on my own meaningful work.
My to-do list was growing larger by the day, and I couldn't keep up. Plus, we all know the feeling of seeing tasks that we don't want to do, so a 1 hour task essentially takes 3 days of procrastination. This should have been the sign!
So, as mentioned at the outset, I realised that a lot of the tasks weren't my jurisdiction, so I cut them off. Delegation to the appropriate people (the experts, who will continue to be experts with or without me!!!) freed up my day, and I was able to continue to work on my 2 projects, that get me fired up and out of bed each morning.
These are the projects that align with being in process automation. By taking in client requests and meshing them with our internal requirements + goals, I can initiate projects that generate meaningful, high-ROI results - externally and internally.
It's all about figuring out what's meaningful in your role. At the start, I mentioned that we might spend 15% of our entire lives at work. Knowing this, I'd implore you to do two things, right now:
- Make sure you genuinely enjoy your job. If you don't, question what needs to happen to change this.
- Keep your time strict, and budget it as if it had a dollar sign next to it. Work on the meaningful stuff, and don't get dragged into other tasks just because you got asked nicely - help, delegate, and refocus.
Passion projects yield better results. Knowledge workers who genuinely love their field will generate consistently better outputs.
Ask yourself, are you passionate about your job, and are your tasks meaningful?
Talk soon.