I’ve worked with people who never stopped moving. Inbox zero by 9am. Back-to-back meetings. Spreadsheets colour-coded to within an inch of their lives. And yet, somehow, nothing ever seemed to change. The business wasn’t growing. Problems weren’t getting solved. The dashboard looked the same month after month.

They weren’t lazy. Far from it. But they’d confused activity with action.

The ancient distinction that still matters

Aristotle identified three basic modes of human activity: theoria (pursuit of truth and knowledge), poiesis (making or producing something), and praxis (action that’s valuable for its own sake).

The distinction between the last two is where most of us trip up.

Poiesis is goal-directed. You do it to produce an outcome — a product, a result, a change in the world. The work is a means to an end.

Praxis is different. It’s activity that’s valuable in itself. Ethical behaviour, political engagement, cultivating wisdom — these don’t produce external products. They’re worthwhile because of what they are, not what they make.

Here’s the problem: in business, almost everything should be poiesis. You’re not getting paid to perform rituals. You’re getting paid to produce results. Yet it’s remarkably easy to slip into treating your work as praxis — valuing the activity for its own sake, regardless of what it produces.

How work becomes ritual

It happens gradually. A weekly report that nobody reads but everyone dutifully completes. A meeting series that’s been running for two years with no clear purpose. A process that made sense once but now exists mainly because it’s how things are done.

The activity becomes comforting. Familiar. You can be busy all day, every day, and feel productive — without ever asking whether any of it matters.

I’ve seen entire teams trapped in this pattern. They’re not slacking. They’re working hard. But they’ve lost sight of what the work is for. The doing has become the point.

The antidote is uncomfortable

Getting out of this requires asking questions that feel almost rude: Why are we doing this? What would happen if we stopped? What outcome are we actually trying to produce?

These questions threaten the comfortable rhythm. They force you to confront the possibility that a chunk of your carefully structured day might be pointless. That’s not a pleasant realisation.

But it’s necessary. If you can’t articulate what a task produces — what external outcome it creates — then you’re doing praxis when you should be doing poiesis. You’re treating the work as valuable in itself when it’s supposed to be valuable for what it achieves.

Making it practical

The fix isn’t complicated, but it takes discipline. For any recurring task or process, define the outcome. What should be different in the world because this work exists? How would you measure success?

If you struggle to answer those questions, that’s useful information.

Then track whether you’re actually producing that outcome. Not whether you completed the task — whether the task produced the result. There’s a difference.

The goal isn’t to work less. It’s to make your work count. A high work ethic is admirable, but direction matters as much as effort. Running fast in circles is still running in circles.

The takeaway

Aristotle figured this out over two thousand years ago. Activity that exists for its own sake has value — but probably not in your job description. Your customers aren’t paying for rituals. They’re paying for results.

Stop occasionally. Ask why. Check whether your effort is actually producing something. It’s a simple habit, but it separates people who are genuinely effective from people who are just genuinely busy.