Wade Armstrong

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Lazy Productivity: On The Virtues of Doing a Half-Assed Job

Posted Friday December 22, 2006 in Productivity

It’s the holidays, and nobody wants to be at their desk doing work. We all have visions of sugarplums, or holiday shopping, or eggnog by the fireplace in our heads; sitting in one’s cube is hardly compatible with these daydreams. Since we all want to slack off, now is a great time to reflect on the virtues of doing a half-assed job. There’s really no better gift to oneself, one’s employees, and one’s productivity, than finally accepting the half-assed job.

In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey famously talks about the difference between important and urgent. In our modern, communications-overload world, most of us are pretty good at picking out the urgent things and putting out the fires related thereto; doing the important things is, however, much harder. Determined to put out every fire in the best way possible, we often stagger from near-disaster to near-disaster, doing exceptional work to handle crises while not doing that which is important but not (or not yet) urgent.

Commitment to excellence exacerbates this: businesses demand that every phone call be answered promptly, that every customer be served to their satisfaction every time, that every task be completed to high standards espoused by the company’s code and ensconced in its tradition. And a commitment to high-quality work output and customer service is essential. No company can consistently impress customers and gain business without consistently excelling; but it’s important to distinguish between where excellence is mandatory and where it’s unappreciated.

For the vast majority of urgent tasks, the key measure of quality is timeliness of completion. Running around putting out fires in the best way possible is an expensive luxury, with time being spent on added quality that customers and partners don’t fully appreciate, and time being reallocated to the fire patrol, from other tasks.

The tasks that are losing time an effort are those that don’t fit into the urgent category —and many of those are important. Ultimately, it’s the non-urgent, important tasks that are the most critical over the long term, including such activities as planning and analysis. No amount of stellar execution of other tasks in the short term can cover up the failure to execute on fundamental, important tasks — and it’s these tasks that must be carried out with the greatest excellence.

Doing a half-assed job is really about time management, not slacking off. Where do we find the time to do an excellent job at the tasks that are really important, whether or not we’re urgent? The only way to do that is to allocate less time to the unimportant. That means just getting the unimportant done, and not focusing on excellence. That means: doing a half-assed job on some of the things on your to-do list.


And that’s ok! Unimportant tasks are just that — unimportant. Just like their completion is less important, so they are less important in how we are judged by our partners and customers. And the benefit of doing a half-assed job on an unimportant task is that more time can be allocated to other truly important tasks. That contributes directly to both overall productivity on important tasks and the excellence with which those tasks are completed.

This holiday, manage your time and prioritize by importance. Get comfortable doing a half-assed job on the items that will never be important enough to justify your full effort, because that behavior is just a function of prioritizing. Only the person who’s learned when to do a half-assed job can truly be productive. Only the person who’s learned when to do a half-assed job can truly be excellent in work of critical importance. For the holidays this year, boost your productivity and commit to excellence — do a half-assed job.