The Efficiency Myth and the Cult of Busyness in Consulting
Why consultants achieve more by thinking clearly than by staying constantly busy
Busyness has become the default state of modern work. It looks productive, but it mostly reflects an inability to prioritize—from you, or from someone else.
I’ve written about this in Duunitori, a major Finnish job platform and work-life publication, Medium and, somewhat unexpectedly, in my most popular LinkedIn post. The reaction has always been the same: people know they are busy, and they know something isn’t working.
When the calendar fills itself and every message appears urgent, thinking gets squeezed out. Without thinking time, even skilled people produce shallow results—not due to lack of competence, but due to lack of space.
What Efficiency Really Requires
True efficiency isn’t about doing more. It’s about choosing what matters and giving it the attention it deserves. That requires time to think—and a work rhythm that supports calm rather than constant motion. Insight rarely appears in the short gaps between meetings.
The idea is simple but difficult to practice: you must slow down long enough to decide what is essential. Yet many consulting workdays still resemble assembly lines, with full schedules and continuous alerts that create movement without real progress.
A consultant creates value through thinking, not by attending every discussion.
The Shift That Changed My Work
My own turning point came when I moved to a four-day workweek in 2022. At the time, I was handling client work and writing a book with the typical “full throttle” consulting rhythm. Outwardly it looked impressive; in reality it was a slow drift toward burnout.
Reducing the workweek forced genuine prioritization. With less time available, clarity improved, and so did the quality of everything I produced. Thinking returned to the center of the work, where it should have been all along.
The change didn’t only make writing possible—it made a writing career possible. That single day of protected time each week eventually led to multiple books, articles and even fiction projects. But just as importantly, it made me a better consultant. With more space to think, my work became calmer, more focused and ultimately more valuable to clients.
Practical Ways to Reduce Unnecessary Busyness
A shorter workweek is not a universal solution, nor should it be. But the principles behind it are widely useful—and you can apply many of them immediately, without changing your entire work structure:
Check email only a couple of times per day. Most messages are not urgent, even if they look like it.
Turn off push notifications and other constant alerts. They fragment attention and create artificial urgency; silence helps you regain control of your day.
Book dedicated focus time, and defend it. Put thinking blocks in your calendar the same way you book meetings. Treat them as real commitments, not optional space between “actual work.”
Avoid multitasking; it only scatters your attention. Focus is a competitive advantage, not a luxury.
Remove meetings that do not contribute to outcomes. If a meeting has no decision, no clear purpose or no owner, it probably does not need to exist.
Make priorities visible instead of assuming everyone understands them. Clarity reduces half of the noise in knowledge work.
Identify when and how you do your best work—and structure your day accordingly. If you think best in the morning, protect that time fiercely. If you need long uninterrupted blocks, make them non-negotiable. You are far more efficient when your schedule matches the way your mind actually works.
In the End, Busyness Is Not an Award
Busyness has become a kind of social currency. If you are busy, you must be important. But in practice, busyness reveals that something in your thinking or work structure is leaking.
The best way to increase efficiency is to pause for a moment. When you give thinking the space it needs, your work becomes better—with far less busyness.
See you next time,
Eetu Niemi
IT Consulting Career Hub 🚀
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👨💻About the Author
Eetu Niemi is an enterprise architect, consultant, and author.
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Books: Enterprise Architecture | Mastering IT Consulting