Is work really that hard?

I often run into situations where if a person had put just a little effort into solving a problem, it would've been fixed instead of languishing unsolved. Every day though I hear colleagues say, "I'm too busy to deal with that" or "I would if I had the time". What is so difficult with work anyway?

What do you find difficult about work? Why?

What have you done lately to think about fixing that problem?

Did you follow through on your suppositions?

I'm willing to bet that even though you may be a terrible organizer (like me), or a distracted info junkie (like me), you can still make a lot of stuff happen in a short amount of time and boost your personal productivity.

Worker Productivity Drops??? GASP!

What to do? What to do? Perhaps I should blog about how I'm not working at this moment and thus contributing to the national epidemic of falling worker productivity. Is this a surprise to any of you out in work land? I know that I struggle every day to keep ahead of the slogging pace of my company, competitors and co-workers to actually produce something. It seems that to actually invoice someone or quote someone for work, it takes 2-3x what the actual work ends up being. But does that mean I'm not being productive? I still end up producing work and money at a profitable clip for my company.

There is a Sisyphus-ian feel to all of this worker productivity hype. For a long time now, the US has been the leader in services-based business around the globe. As we continue to lose our services economy edge to other countries, isn't this a good thing? There is only so much leverage we can exert on individuals to perform more and more work? The real pressure is to innovate, create and identify new areas for growth in our economy otherwise we might all just spontaneously combust from the adverse friction created by our commute gridlock.

What have you done recently to make yourself more productive? What tips can you offer that have made you a better contributor?