Busy Or HPA?
- Robert de Loryn
- 10 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Have you ever finished a day completely exhausted, only to realise you achieved very little that actually mattered?
Most leaders have.
The modern workplace rewards activity. Calendars are full, inboxes are overflowing, phones are constantly ringing, and meetings consume large portions of the day.
The problem is that being busy and being productive are not the same thing.
The most effective leaders focus on High Payoff Activities (HPAs).
An HPA is any activity that directly contributes to delivering on the promises you have made to your stakeholders. Those stakeholders may be your Board, your CEO, your team, your customers, your shareholders, or even your family.
The question is simple.
Does this activity help me deliver on my commitments?
If the answer is yes, it is likely an HPA.
If the answer is no, it may simply be keeping you busy.
Research from the Harvard Business Review has repeatedly highlighted that managers often spend significant portions of their week on low-value activities that contribute little to strategic outcomes. The consequence is predictable. Important work gets delayed while urgent but less valuable tasks consume attention.
Great leaders constantly challenge how they spend their time.
Before accepting a task, attending a meeting, or taking on another responsibility, they ask themselves:
“Is this helping me deliver on my promise?”
If the answer is no, a second question follows.
“Does this task need to be done at all?”
Many activities continue simply because they have always been done. Reports nobody reads, meetings without purpose, approvals that add no value, and processes that have outlived their usefulness quietly consume hours every week.
If the activity is genuinely necessary, the next question becomes:
“Who is the safest, lowest level person who can successfully do this task?”
This is where effective delegation becomes a leadership accelerator.
Delegation is not about removing work. It is about ensuring work is completed at the right level while creating growth opportunities for others.
For more than 20 years, RDL has been helping leaders discover the discipline of identifying and prioritising High Payoff Activities. Across industries, one pattern remains remarkably consistent. The highest-performing leaders are not necessarily the busiest people in the organisation. They are the people who spend the greatest proportion of their time on the activities that matter most.
At the end of each day, do not ask yourself how busy you were.
Ask yourself whether your time was invested in the activities that delivered the greatest value to those who rely on you.
That is where real leadership performance begins.
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