I agree. The closest thing that page provided to concete advice was to avoid busy work and talk to your boss. But that runs into two immediate problems. The

I agree. The closest thing that page provided to concete advice was to avoid busy work and talk to your boss. But that runs into two immediate problems. The first is that unless your boss already thinks you are genuinely overworked, they are not likely to be too sympathetic to you wanting to work less. Now, if you can identify specific tasks that you think are busy work, you may get your boss to remove those or explain why they are not busy work. Of course, those tasks may then be replaced by others. And this also brings me to the second point. Busywork should be avoided, but you need to make sure it is busywork. Your boss may very well have a good reason to have given you a task that you just don't see from your point in the organization. It may be worth asking him/her about so you can better understand why you are doing those tasks, but that does not mean you should unilaterly decide they are busy work and stop doing it. Of course that only addresses work. Outside of work you may have more control, but even there your actions likely impact others and this should be considered when cutting things out. A proverbial soccer-mom may easily free up 3 hours a week by removing her child from soccer, but this will certainly impact the child.