The case I'm prosecuting is against a spreadsheet.
It's what I call Pointless Work. And if there's ever a time that I turn into Tom Cruise's Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee from A Few Good Men, it's to prosecute Pointless Work.
I work day and night to build the case: a point by point analysis on just how pointless the work is, rehearse it for colleagues, draft an email to my boss … only never to get to the "You can't handle the truth!" scene.
Pointless Work is required work where the most important output is a checked box. It's on your list, someone might notice if it doesn't get done, and it needs some real effort on your part—but only as much as the box requires, because completion is the deliverable. The only real question is: did it get done?
Nobody designs Pointless Work with intention. But somewhere a change went sideways, or a project surprised everyone, or someone got invited to the table and had to make a contribution and the reasonable response was a new process, a new template, or a new sign off. And who goes back to fix a problem after it's already been fixed?
The spreadsheet on the stand wanted change management details specified during the planning process. A plan determined months before anyone knew what they were doing. Before any decisions were made. Before you get into the nitty gritty of implementation, where the real problems emerge—which is, of course, when you find out what the change actually involves.
Best guesses, formatted. A spreadsheet completed. Box, checked.
Year one it cost me three weeks. Maybe two hours of that was completing the spreadsheet. The rest was the case—the grumbling, the facts, the ridiculousness of the request.
It took me two years to ask the question I could have asked in the first hour. Not: Is this pointless? That's not a question anyway. It's a verdict looking for a jury.
This one: What does this require?
Two hours. The Pointless Work required two hours.
Not all work that feels pointless is pointless, of course. Big bureaucracies do things that make no sense from where you're sitting and perfect sense from somewhere else. That's a different thing. And worth knowing the answer to a different question: What's this for? (It's one I never asked, because I'd already decided.)
The spreadsheet returned, on schedule. Year three, same section, same template. In and out of the inbox inside an hour, done to standard.
The work didn't change. Still pointless, still premature. What changed is I quit arguing with it while I did it.
Doing the Pointless Work wasn't the total drain. The case was. Made to no one, on my own time, against a template. No jury. No courtroom. Just colleagues who already agreed.
Somewhere on your to-do list is Pointless Work. A form, a report, a training. It isn't optional.
But the argument you're having with it is.