Picture this: I’m standing in my campsite business years ago, exhausted after another 17-hour day. I woke up at 7 am to answer enquiries, cleaned bell tents until my hands were raw, greeted guests with a smile despite my fatigue, and then washed and ironed the bedding until midnight. I was working harder than I’d ever worked in my life—yet my business wasn’t growing, I had zero work-life balance, and I wasn’t taking home the money I deserved. Sound familiar? This is the perfect example of the critical difference between being busy and being productive in your business.
I kept telling myself I was being productive because I couldn’t possibly fit more into my day. But I wasn’t moving closer to my goals of more time, better work-life balance, and increased revenue. I was just spinning my wheels. What I really needed was to spend time on systems, automation, and marketing—the things that would actually move my business forward. In this episode, I’m sharing the 20 powerful filters I’ve developed since then to help you distinguish between truly productive work and the busy work that leaves you exhausted without results.
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In this episode, we cover:
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- Why feeling exhausted at the end of your day doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve been productive, and the surprising alternative measure you should use instead
- The “gradient of hours” concept that explains why when you do tasks matters just as much as what tasks you do
- How to identify whether you’re stuck in the “campsite trap” – working hard on low-value tasks while neglecting the ones that actually grow your business
- Why checking off your entire to-do list might be the least productive thing you did today
- How to allocate your “best brain” hours to tasks that create real progress instead of just activity
- The simple two-column exercise that will immediately reveal where you’re wasting your most valuable resource – your time
This episode is just the beginning of your journey from busy to productive. Take a moment to reflect: which of the 20 filters revealed your biggest opportunity to shift from busy work to productive work? I’d love to hear which filter resonated with you the most and what changes you plan to implement in your business.
Join my Productive Quarter program, where I’ll personally guide you through implementing these filters to create your most productive quarter yet. Check the link in the show notes or DM me on Instagram @kirstyknightcoaching to learn more about how we can work together to transform your business without burning you out.
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Links & Mentioned Resources
Connect with Kirsty
More about The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
The podcast to help you, as an ambitious high-achieving Type-A woman, master work-life balance as a business owner.
Join Kirsty Knight each week, so she can help you create the level of success you truly desire, in a business that you love, without needing to sacrifice time for yourself, your health, your family, and your enjoyment of life outside of your business. Without hustling, without working yourself into the ground, and without burning out.
Kirsty will be sharing lessons from her own business journey, business strategies, time management and productivity hacks, and the psychology you need to understand – to help you go from overworking and overwhelmed, to mastering your time and productivity, so you can be working less, and earning more.
If you are trying to build or scale your business, but find yourself struggling with overwhelm, self-sabotage, procrastination, distractions, perfectionism, people-pleasing, hustling, overworking and always thinking “there just aren’t enough hours in the day”, this podcast is for you.
You CAN have it all. And she’s going to show you how.
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
Good morning my lovelies, how are you?
I’m almost over my virus thank god. But still sound a bit croaky so I apologise for that…
Hope you are all well. And ready for today’s topic. Because it’s an important one.
Today we are talking about the difference between being productive and being busy in your business, because I’m sure you will have heard other people talking about this in the past, that you really want to be making sure that you’re productive, not being busy, but maybe you don’t actually know or you’ve never really thought about what that means, what the difference is, particularly with regard to your business tasks.
And so I want this to be a exercise for you to start thinking about what the difference is between a productive day and a busy day FOR you.
And that’s not necessarily so that you never do busywork in your business.
There will always be some things that you will have to get done, and that you will have to be the one to do them, particularly if you’re early on in your business journey.
But the fact remains that not all time is created equal.
There are hours that you put into your business where your brain is fresh and you’re in creative problem solving mode and you’re in a good productive state of mind.
And those hours, we want more of those hours ultimately, but we want to be putting those hours into the things that really make a difference for our business.
And then the things that we have to get done but that don’t make that big of a difference in our business or aren’t one of the most important things, we want to apply the dregs of our brain to those things.
Obviously, we want to still get them done to a decent quality and in a timely manner.
But if we accept that there is a gradient of how alert we are and energetic we are and how powerful our brain is, and that fades off as we go through the day, or if it fluctuates according to the time of our day, then we want to make sure we are using the hours where our brains are most alert, energetic and powerful on tasks that we would consider are a productive use of our time, and we want to have the busywork tasks fall into the hours where our brain is at the tail end of that scale.
We don’t want to be using our best brain on busywork and then be struggling to focus on the things that really make the difference for us. If you’ve ever heard the saying “Eat the frog first” – which is essentially the idea that you put the most important hardest task at the start of your day, it is from the same thinking – that we don’t want your day being used up by the less important, easier tasks, and then finding we get to the end of the day with a brain too depleted to tackle the hardest most important bit.
So in order to know which hours to allocate to what, we have to start by identifying what we would call a productive use of our time, and what we would term busywork instead.
I would also say it’s important to know how to make our hours that we work more productive so that we don’t need to be adding more hours in. I used to think “productive” meant fill every minute of every day with tasks – and I no longer subscribe to that definition. I think “productive” should mean how can I get more out of the hours I’ve got? How can I achieve more in less time? And to answer that we have to know what tasks are a better use of our time – what would be more productive versus just making us be busy.
Now I’m going to go through a bunch of definitions for you, a bunch of different filters that you can use and apply, sort of lenses you can look through to help you identify, oh, I think this is a productive task. This fits more into the busy category…
So as I go through the filters I want you to think about your typical daily to-do’s in your business. Think about what you’ve got on your task list. And see if you can categorise them as I go. You could also grab a piece of paper and pen, and draw a line down the page to make two columns with productive at the top on the left hand side, and busy on the right hand side. And as you think about your business tasks through these filters – jot them down into the column you think they fit into.
And then, of course, once you know, these are my productive tasks, these are the busy tasks, we want to strategize. How can I spend more of my time and more of my quality time on the productive tasks and less time on the busy tasks?
If there are strategies that I can streamline some stuff, pause some stuff, outsource, automate, delegate, you know, spend less of our time and less of our energy on the busywork, then we want to put those strategies in place.
And then, of course, whenever we come up with a strategy to act upon, there will always be obstacles to implementing.
So you can then consider what are some of the obstacles that are getting in the way of doing that.
And then if you are in any of my containers, you can bring those obstacles to a coaching session to get coaching on.
A note, though, before we start, is for you to know that there is no ONE right definition of either category.
These are just filters that I came up with for my own strategy and tasks and for your business strategy and tasks to help you determine whether or not you are using the hours in the way that you want to be using them in the best possible ways for your business.
They are unique to you. They can also change over time. It’s just a useful method to ensure that you’re consciously spending your limited hours rather than having the time disappear.
And you not making the progress that you want without knowing exactly why it might be.
So before we start with the filters – the potential definitions – there’s one other thing that I want you to think about
And that is what is your current definition for productive, and for busy.
Because this list may change it.
But also – I want you to consider what your current measure is of productive. How do you know if you have been productive…
Because what I often see is that people rely on how they feel at the end of the day, to determine whether or not they have been productive.
And I think if you are relying on how you feel at the end of the day versus using actual data, I would say this isn’t the best determiner – I would argue it isn’t really reliable because you could have had an objectively productive day, but have the “not enough” story in your head, or you could feel great because you ticked off lots of tasks, but not actually moved the business forward one bit.
So that’s just something worth thinking about – how you currently determine whether or not you’ve been productive. And then I want you to reconsider your definition and your objective measure once I’ve gone through all the filters to see if you want to change anything about how you think about it.
Okay, so let’s go through the filters one by one. And I’ll always start with the tasks that I would argue fall more under the category of productive. And then I’ll say what the busy version of it is.
So number 1 – a productive use of your time, I would say is when you’re spending your time doing a business strategy that does actually work for your business or has worked in the past. A proven strategy that you’ve created good results from in the past.
I would say if you’re doing that in your business, that’s a productive use of your time versus busy work is doing what is not working, doing a strategy that doesn’t actually currently work for your business.
So I’ll give you a personal example and I’ll give you a few examples for these. Not all of them.
What has worked for me in the past in my business is running workshops. What has never really worked to create clients for me is purely just posting on Instagram. So I could say that I have been productive all quarter because I posted a thousand times on Instagram. But really, if we’re using this definition, that would be me being busy busy on Instagram because I was not doing workshops prior to this, prior to this week.
So if you’re looking at, okay, am I spending my time in a productive way or a busy way? And we were using that as an example, that would be one clear example of where I was being busy and not productive. So think about it for you. What business strategy has worked for you in the past that you’re currently doing that’s productive piece of time. What are you currently doing that has never worked for you, is still not working for you. And don’t hear me and think I need to stop everything that I’m doing that isn’t working? That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying we want to categorize it. We want to think about it like this. Think of it through these lenses, then categorize what we’re doing.
And then perhaps we want to spend a little bit more time doing things that work whilst we test things that don’t work. It doesn’t mean that we don’t do them because obviously things that don’t work eventually work if we keep figuring them out. But we just want to make sure that if, if our goal is productive action taking in our business and we are doing things to produce results, then doing things that work is a better use of our time than or more productive use of our time than doing things that don’t work. So that’s number one.
The second definition that you could use to categorize your tasks. Does this produce results either negative or positive? So does this activity actually create a result at the end of it? Busy might be activities, but there are no results created. So we don’t even know if they’re working or not working.
Are there lessons available to be learned? If there are, I would say that’s a productive use of your time.
If there are no lessons available to be learned after having taken said action, I would say that’s probably a busy use of your time. You being busy, not productive.
4 – The next one is, is this moving me towards my goal, doing these actions, spending time on this thing, is it moving me close towards my goal or is it not moving towards my goal? And I’ll give you an example, another example, but this is from my campsite business. So I would used to say that I was very productive in the campsite business. I would wake up at seven, I’d start doing inquiries for several hours. I’d then go up to the site. About 10 o’clock, I’d start stripping bed linen, cleaning the 10 tents. I do the tent changeovers, I’d prep the logs, I’d clean the campfires, I’d clean the communal facilities and sort the toilets out.
I’d then start greeting guests, I’d show them to their pictures. I would, you know, deal with any problems. I’d go back home, I’d do the laundry, I would be ironing, I’d be doing more inquiries. That was my day, 7 till 12, for many days in a row, for an entire season. And I would have said I couldn’t have fit any more in. I was so productive. I was like really working hard. I was doing things at all hours.
I was using my time productively. But under the definition of where is this moving me towards my goal or not moving me towards my goal? My actual goal was to increase my profit in that business. It was to get time back from that business and have a better work life balance because I had none. It was to increase my bookings, the number of bookings that came in, and increase our revenue. None of those things that I was doing. Was actually moved me towards that goal. I wasn’t doing any marketing because I was busy doing other stuff. So I wasn’t going to increase the number of bookings that we had.
So I wasn’t going to increase the revenue that we had. I wasn’t working at looking at my costs and cutting my costs. So I wasn’t going to increase the profit margins either. I was not getting any time back from my business and I wasn’t working on actively getting time back from my business. So I wasn’t looking at systems that I could introduce that would save me time. I wasn’t documenting my processes so I could hire a team member. And so I wasn’t working on that. And so I wasn’t working on creating a better work life balance.
So my goals for that business, I was not moving any anywhere closer towards them. So actually what, what if by that definition I was being very busy in my business and I was not being productive? So think about it for your business. Think about how does this apply?
5 Another thing that you can think of, another filter to look through a lens is, is this making the boat go faster? So either by us paddling more we or by getting stronger or by fixing the boat or making the boat more streamlined, however it looks to make the boat go faster, that’s productive action taking I would say. So that could be working behind the scenes to make things something more automated. Or are you not making the boat go faster? Is what you’re doing not actually making any difference to how fast the boat goes? So insert in there exactly what that means to you.
6 – Another lens to go through is focusing on and prioritizing your most important tasks first. That could be considered a productive use of your time versus focusing on the number of tasks you can tick off in a day regardless of how important they are. That’s busy work.
Yeah. Just looking at the numbers, trying to get more done in less time. How can I achieve more in less hours of working? I would say that that is productive use of my time. If I’m considering and trying to get more done in less time. More productive than trying to fill every minute with tasks. That is me being busy. Excuse me, still recovering from a cold. Okay, the 7 – next filter or lens to look through is am I working on important but non urgent things or am I working on urgent and non important things? So if you were to categorize your things, are they urgent and not important or important and not urgent? And which ones are you working on?
8 -Are you ensuring you’re doing a balance of things that need to get done now and for the future of your business? Or are you just doing things to keep us afloat now with no progress being made towards the future? I would say that that is you being busy versus doing a balance of things.
Is you being more productive with your time? 9 – Are you focused on preventing fires from happening in the first place after you’ve put one out? Or are you just focused on putting out the fires, not making sure that they don’t happen in the future? Like, are you actively spending your time thinking, why did that happen? How can I prevent it from happening again? Or are you just fighting fires because that busy work is never going to improve your business, Whereas the productive work of looking at it and strategizing how can I prevent this from happening again? Is going to move your business forward.
10- Focusing on doing things once so setting them up, you don’t have to put the same amount of time in each time to get the same result versus doing things on repeat always. So with no movement towards eliminating them from our to do list. As a CEO, I would say that that is busy work because it’s keeping you busy all the time because you’re having to do it. You’re reinventing the wheel all the time versus how can I do this once and save myself time? So even if I have to do a repeated task, it takes less and less of my time and effort and energy. That’s a productive use of my time.
11 – This isn’t if you are thinking strategically and then implementing immediately. So you are thinking about your business and you’re thinking about your business strategy and then you’re implementing ideas immediately.
I’d say that’s productive use of your time versus overthinking and nothing being put out there like no real progress being made. That’s you being busy. You’re busy in your head, you’re busy in your mind, you’re not busy in your business.
12 Making sure all areas of your business are addressed over time, I would say that’s productive. If you’re looking at your marketing and your sales and your delivery and your back office operations and you’re addressing all of those things over time, not all at once, but eventually, that’s productive use of your time as a business owner versus doing lots on one aspect. So we’re just focused on delivery and we’re completely neglecting our marketing for months on end and we’re neglecting those aspects, that’s you being busy.
13 If quality is the focus, I would say that’s probably you doing productive work. Provided perfectionism isn’t creeping in there.
But if you’re confusing quantity with productive rather than quality, I would say that that’s busy work. So if you’re concerned with okay, how can I make this email a decent email, a valuable email that my list are likely to open, I’d say that’s a more productive use of your time than how can I put out 10 emails this week with no consideration for how good they are, whether or not they get opened, with no thought in them as to how they might be valuable, how they might add something to your readers lives?
14 – Working on high value tasks that only you can do or it’s worth your time to do, I’d say that’s productive use of your time. This is working on low value tasks that you could pay someone a low amount to do. I’m not saying that you do pay them a low amount to do it, but if you’re spending most of your time or the best part of your time, the best part of your hours on low value tasks instead of high value tasks, that’s not a productive use of your time.
15 A mix of behind the scenes and front of house public facing things I would say is productive use of your time versus working purely on behind the scenes things. Because no one knows about your business if you’re not telling them about your business. So are you doing a mix or are you just working behind the scenes? Have you been working on a course for the last 10 months and nobody even knows
16 who you are working on revenue generation tasks. This is working on everything other than revenue generation.
If your goal is revenue generation, like you actually want to be making money and you’re not making money, are you doing things that are actively working on making money or are you not?
17 Are you working in your zone of genius that you’re good at and you enjoy, or are you working on things that you’re not good at that take you a long time to do that you don’t enjoy? I would say that’s busy work versus productive work because you can produce a heck of a lot more when you’re in your zone of genius.
18 – Are you staying constrained and focused and preparing yourself ahead of time so you don’t need to go research something in order to get it done. You don’t need to look for inspiration. You don’t need to get something from your emails. I’d say that’s a productive use of your time. Yeah. If you’re like, okay, this is what I need to get done, I’m staying focused, I’m making sure that I’ve Got everything I need. That’s a productive use of your time versus thinking that you’re working.
When you’re actually scrolling, researching, looking for inspiration, getting something, and you’re getting lost down a rabbit hole without realizing, it looks like you’re working in your business, it looks like you’re busy, but what you’re really doing is wasting time versus actually getting the thing done without needing to do those things.
19 – Are you implementing or creating immediately when you have ideas, when you have strategies, when you make decisions? Or are you overthinking and consuming, learning good ideas and concepts and thinking about making decisions or thinking about them again, or questioning them and then not immediately implementing it feels like you’re being busy. You’re busy in your brain, but nothing’s happening in your business.
20 – And then the last filter I want you to think about that you can use when it comes to categorizing your tasks and your to do list is are you taking certain positive or are you certain and positive and thinking positively that drives you to take purposeful action? Or are you doubting and questioning and worrying and doomsday thinking that is leading you spinning out? So again, you’re busy in your head, nothing’s happening in your business.
So that is the last one. Those are just some filters that you can go back through and think about.
Okay, when I say I’m going to have a productive week this week, do those tasks that I’m going to do fall into any of the busy work categories? Do they fall into the productive category?
And sometimes you can tweak the task so that it does fall into the productive category. So for example, if you were going to write three emails and you were just concentrating on the number to make that a more productive use of your time, you would decide, okay, I’m going to still write the three emails, but I’m going to consciously make them better.
I’m going to look and really think about how I can improve the hooks on all of these three. Or I’m going to, from these three emails, I’m actually going to create a template that I could write three more from based on how I’ve written these three if I think these three are good.
So next time I come to write another three, I’ve actually got something that I can already use.
Or if ideas come out of these three, I’m going to write them down so that next time it’s easier for me to get started again.
You can take existing tasks from your to do list and make them more productive by using these categories, by using these filters.
And if you can’t, then I would question okay, is there a better use of my time? Is there something else that I should be doing this week? Or if I’ve got to do all of it, how can I allocate higher quality time to the more productive tasks than the busy ones?
And more importantly than just this week, how can I spend more time or a higher quality of time, or on productive tasks versus busy tasks on an ongoing basis? That is you coming up with strategies to tip the balance – to become more productive in your business, than busy.
And then lastly I want you to ask yourself, what are the obstacles to me making that happen? And those are the things you might want to reach out to me for coaching on.
Ok that’s it for this week peeps. Hope that gives you something to noodle on – until next time. Bye.
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