Insecurity Work

Found this great term from this book. The author writes:

"we spend too much time obsessing over real-time data. Whether you are checking your web site’s traffic, customer sentiment, or your bank account, these small actions don’t help you make ideas happen. They just help you feel safe. “Insecurity work” is stuff that you do that (1) has no intended outcome, (2) does not move the ball forward in any way, and (3) is quick enough that you can do it multiple times a day without realizing it- but nonetheless puts you at ease (159). "

I can be as guilty as anyone about doing this- checking email too frequently, checking bank accounts, checking survey results, etc. And it isn't that these items aren't important or necessary, it's that they don't need to be done multiple times throughout the day or some of them even once a day. Doing them makes us feel as if we've done something, but all we've done is prolong working on something that we should have been working on in the first place.