The Allure of Busywork

We’ve all done it.

That moment when you sit down to finally tackle something meaningful and… instead find yourself reorganizing folders, adjusting fonts, or fine-tuning the margins on a spreadsheet that no one but you will ever notice. It’s not laziness. It’s busywork. And it’s strangely satisfying.

The term productivity porn has become common enough by now that most of you have probably heard it. For those who haven’t, it refers to the habit of consuming productivity-related content: watching videos about better workflows, reading listicles about “10 apps that changed my life”, testing new task managers, etc, rather than actually doing productive work.

Even if you didn’t know the term, you probably know the behavior. It’s almost universal, a small shared vice among knowledge workers. We chase that faint, warm glow of accomplishment from optimizing our system rather than from actually using it.

But I want to go deeper than the usual finger-wagging about procrastination. I want to look at why this kind of busywork feels good and whether it might even have hidden value.

The itch that real work doesn’t scratch

Let’s be honest: most white-collar work doesn’t feel good. It’s boring, it’s mindless, and it sucks.

We write reports that vanish into management, never to be seen again. We edit slides no one looks at. We send carefully worded messages that evaporate into the aether. There’s often no clear beginning or end, just an endless middle.

That’s what makes busywork seductive. When you spend an hour designing the perfect spreadsheet, labeling tabs, coloring cells, and watching the formulas align into neat columns, you see something take shape. It scratches a deep, almost physical itch: the need for visible progress.

We talk about the appeal of blue-collar work, the satisfaction of using your hands, of fixing something tangible. But the appeal isn’t really about manual labor. It’s about completion. A carpenter can step back and see the shelf he built. A gardener can see the weeds cleared, the soil turned. But the modern knowledge worker? We stare at abstractions.

Busywork — especially the kind that involves formatting, organizing, or tweaking — gives us that missing visual cue. A sense of order in a world where our labor’s result is usually invisible.

The illusion of control

There’s another layer too. Busywork feels good because it offers control. Our real work is uncertain. It depends on other people, on unpredictable outcomes, on markets, moods, and moments we can’t command. But in the small world of our task list or spreadsheet, we are gods.

You can highlight, bold, and color-code your way into feeling in charge. It’s fake power, sure, but it’s comforting. Especially when the real world is mindless chaos. Especially when everything else at the office is so maddeningly and seemingly worthless and we are powerless to affect it.

That’s why we clean our desks when stressed. It’s not about dust. It’s about asserting control over something. We might call it the microcosm instinct, the desire to fix the small when the large feels unfixable. The same instinct that drives people to alphabetize their bookshelves or color-coördinate their wardrobes when life feels messy.

To wit: Busywork isn’t useless: it’s a coping mechanism.

The dopamine trap

Ok ok, so that’s the why. But is it useful in any way? Well, first off, there’s danger in the comfort.

Each tiny productive act like moving a file, ticking a box, or renaming a folder gives a hit of dopamine. We feel momentarily accomplished, even though we haven’t advanced the larger goal.

This creates what psychologists call a reward loop. The brain starts preferring microtasks because they give predictable, fast rewards. Big goals like writing a book, launching a project, or finishing a thesis are full of uncertainty and delay. They’re long climbs without checkpoints. So that’s why we so easily slip into pseudo-work.

It’s not that we lack discipline, it’s that our brains are seeking safety and certainty in a world where success often feels vague or far away. Busywork becomes a psychological self-soothing mechanism disguised as productivity.

But maybe it’s not all bad

Before we condemn it entirely, I think we should ask whether busywork might actually serve a purpose.

Does it? Well.. maybe! Maybe sometimes it’s a warm-up.

When I’m facing a big project, I often find myself cleaning my desktop or formatting my notes first. It’s not avoidance. These small actions ease me into focus. Like stretching before running, they prepare the mind.

Other times, busywork can serve as mental decompression. After hours of intense creative work, doing something repetitive like sorting files or reformatting notes can help the brain shift gears.

And occasionally, the work done in these moments actually does pay off later. That perfect spreadsheet might make tomorrow’s data entry faster. That reorganized note folder might save you hours later in clarity and retrieval. See — you knew it wasn’t wasting time!

So the question isn’t whether busywork is good or bad—it’s whether it’s intentional. Are you using it as a prelude, a palate cleanser, or an escape?

The fine line between rest and avoidance

There’s a threshold we cross without noticing. One moment you’re organizing to prepare for work; the next, you’re organizing instead of work. That’s when it crosses over into avoidance.

I suppose that’s where productivity porn thrives. We tell ourselves we’re getting ready to be productive, when in fact we’re just looping the setup process endlessly.

It’s the same with apps. There’s always a “better” to-do app, a “cleaner” writing tool, a “simpler” calendar. And so we migrate, and re-tag, and rebuild. You better believe I see this with foreigners in Japan. There is always a new “better” Japanese study book to move to, and the end result is they never actually study, just collect books.

We convince ourselves this time we’ll be more efficient, because really that’s easier than admitting we’re afraid to begin.

The line between useful setup and avoidance is thin. But we can feel it when we cross it. There’s a heaviness, an inward sigh that says we’re circling the runway again, too afraid to take off.

Toward meaningful work

So what am I getting to here? I’m not sure. I think
if busywork appeals because it offers control and visible completion, maybe the answer isn’t to eliminate it, but to reclaim those feelings from our real work.

We can do that by breaking large, abstract goals into visible milestones. By keeping a daily log of what we’ve accomplished, even if small. By finishing things—not just starting them. The key here is to keep some kind of visible progress indicatpr, because this is what our minds crave.

Maybe if we learn to see our real work as a craft rather than a blur of tasks, we’ll feel that same satisfaction we get from designing a perfect spreadsheet—but applied to something that truly matters.

The allure of busywork will never disappear. It’s too human. But maybe we can learn to recognize it not as an enemy, but as a mirror—one reflecting what we crave most: visible progress, control, and meaning.

Thoughts?