The key ideas

Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters.

Michael Bungay Stanier, 2010

You work hard, get everything done, and still tread water. Michael Bungay Stanier divides all work into Bad, Good, and Great, showing why Good Work gets in the way most of all. His simple maps help you find your Great Work, choose a project, and take the first step.

Who it is for

For anyone whose week is packed with meetings, emails, and reports, leaving no time for the work they actually look forward to doing. For managers, specialists, and anyone who feels capable of more than merely coping.

If everyone is happy, you are not doing Great Work.

A week when everything got done and nothing happened

Imagine Friday evening. A hundred emails sent this week, all the meetings over, the report submitted on time. Your boss is happy. Yet inside there is a strange emptiness: everything is done, but nothing important has happened. The project you have been thinking about for six months has again been put off until better times.

Michael Bungay Stanier, a coach who has worked with managers for years, believes the problem is neither laziness nor poor planning. Work comes in three kinds. For many people, most days are consumed not by the most useless kind, but by perfectly respectable, necessary work that simply leads nowhere.

The book has an unusual structure. Instead of long chapters, it contains maps: simple drawings you fill in by hand. The author believes ten minutes a day, a pencil, and a willingness to change are enough to start.

In this retelling, you will work through Stanier’s maps: find clues to your Great Work, choose where to focus, expand your options, and take a first step. We begin with where your week really goes.

Good Work is more dangerous than Bad Work

Stanier sorts all work into three baskets. He divides it by meaning and impact rather than quality.

• Bad Work. Bureaucracy, endless meetings, outdated procedures that waste everyone’s time. The author describes it mercilessly: work that numbs the mind and drains your energy.

• Good Work. What your job description contains. It is productive and useful, you know how to do it, and you are paid for it. But it does not excite you or make you grow.

• Great Work. What matters to you and changes something around you. It challenges you and rests on your values. The author says it lives at the intersection of excitement and anxiety: your palms sweat a little because the work really matters.

The main twist lies in where the trap hides. Bad Work is straightforward: nobody likes it. Good Work, however, is seductive and endless. There is always more than you can finish, and you receive praise for it. It resembles a comfortable armchair you do not want to leave.

Stanier’s first map is called “Where Are You Now?” Draw a circle and divide it into three sectors according to the time spent on each kind of work. In the author’s examples, planning meetings count as Bad Work, while weekly reports belong to dreary routine. Good Work is not going away; it is necessary. The point is to reclaim a little space from it.

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About the author

Michael Bungay Stanier is a coach and author on work and leadership, a Rhodes Scholar, and founder of Box of Crayons, which trains managers. He later wrote the bestseller The Coaching Habit.

All books by this author: Michael Bungay Stanier

Terms from the book

  • Brand
  • Coach
  • Allen
  • Catastrophizing
  • Bad Work: The author’s concept, not a scientific term: meaningless activities such as bureaucracy and empty meetings that waste time and energy.
  • Good Work: The author’s concept for useful, productive work within your job duties that is necessary but does not excite you or make you grow.
  • Great Work: The book’s central concept, not a scientific term: work that has meaning for you, draws on your values, changes something around you, and takes you beyond the familiar.

All terms

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