{"id":1197,"date":"2021-02-02T09:07:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T09:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1197"},"modified":"2021-02-02T09:07:20","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T09:07:20","slug":"activity-isnt-the-same-as-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/02\/02\/activity-isnt-the-same-as-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Activity isn\u2019t the same as progress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Occasionally, I enjoy playing computer games and during the Christmas break, I spent some time in Eve Online. It\u2019s an open-world game, set in space, where you\u2019re free to do any activity that you like. As I was spending time in this game, I realized something interesting: the return in terms of in-game currency that I was earning with certain activities was orders of magnitude different from other activities I could be spending time on. Not 10 percent but 10x, 100x or even 1000x!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I look at my life outside of computer games, I notice something \nsimilar. Whether it\u2019s publications (I am a professor after all), \nfinancial returns (I invest in startups as well as traditional passive \nindex funds) or health returns (I exercise daily), how I decide to spend\n my time has a significant impact on the return I generate. For \ninstance, standing on a cross-trainer at a moderate setting for 40 \nminutes has, according to some research that I read, the same \ncardiovascular effect as three times one minute of full-out \nhigh-intensity interval training (HIIT). Three minutes has the same \neffect as 40 minutes \u2013 that\u2019s more than 10x!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the companies I work with, in various capacities, I see a similar pattern: most of the people I meet are hardworking and well intended, but for many, the return on their activities is quite limited. Especially for us, who are toiling away trying to drive change in companies, many initiatives run out into the sand without any real impact as the resistance to change proves too powerful. It easily starts to feel like \u201cshuffling chairs on the deck of the Titanic\u201d \u2013 you\u2019re close to the lifeboats, but you\u2019re doing little to avoid disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many moons ago, when I was working for Nokia, one of the senior leaders in the company mentioned a quote that I\u2019ve taken to heart and try to operationalize as often as I can: activity isn\u2019t the same as progress. Being raised traditional Calvinist protestant, the importance of working hard was ingrained deeply in my upbringing. My dad often told me: \u201cThere are workhorses and there are show horses. You\u2019re a showy workhorse.\u201d And I must admit that I\u2019ve never met a successful person who didn\u2019t work his or her behind off.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. It\u2019s also about working \nsmart. How do we make sure that the things we spend our time on indeed \nresult in the outcomes we\u2019re looking for? The Pareto principle states \nthat 80 percent of the outcomes result from 20 percent of the causes. \nThe effect of this principle can be found in wealth and income \ndistribution, taxation, quality management, sports and even software \ndevelopment, as the hardest 20 percent of the code takes 80 percent of \nthe time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pareto principle also applies to how we spend our time as \nprofessionals. Being creatures of habit, it\u2019s easy to step on the \ntreadmill of our daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly tasks and just \nexecute as this is how we\u2019ve always done it. However, as everything we \nand our companies do commoditizes over time, we should always look for \nways to automate or remove activities that add little value in order to \nfree up time for new activities and initiatives that have the potential \nof an order of magnitude higher return of investment (RoI). Innovation \ndoesn\u2019t only apply to products and services but also to how we organize \nour workday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My challenge to you is to evaluate the effect or impact of the activities you spend your time on. Identify the 80 percent that results in little impact, find ways to automate or get rid of those and use the freed-up time to do more of the 20 percent activities that have the high RoI. In the end, we all want to make a difference and just working hard isn\u2019t the optimal way to get there. Remember: activity isn\u2019t the same as progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>), Medium<\/a> or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occasionally, I enjoy playing computer games and during the Christmas break, I spent some time in Eve Online. It\u2019s an open-world game, set in space, where you\u2019re free to do any activity that you like. As I was spending time in this game, I realized something interesting: the return in terms of in-game currency that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1198,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions\/1198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}