"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work … If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle." – Steve Jobs.

You get to your office, turn on the computer and sort through a list of new emails, check your calendar and see what meetings you are facing, and maybe start on a memo for another meeting -- while noticing, uh-oh, ten more emails just flew into your inbox. Meanwhile, you still have half a dozen phone messages to return from yesterday, but you really need to concentrate on a deadline driven project.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you aren’t alone. According to business consultant Michael Bungay Stanier, named Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006 and author of the new book "Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork." Start the Work That Matters (Workman Publishing Company, February 2010), too many people feel like they are constantly treading water in their careers. They are constantly busy, busy, busy, and feel mired in "busywork" – yet still manage to produce what their managers recognize as good work.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

Plenty, says Stanier. Because, after working with thousands of people internationally as a facilitator and coach, he claims he’s learned these truths: being busy, and doing adequately well-done work isn’t a true measure of success. And doing "good work" isn’t the same as doing engaging, satisfying, creative work that is meaningful.

"You spend more than half your life at work. And you want your work to make an impact and have a purpose, to be more than just a salary," Stanier writes. "You want to make it count. But that keeps getting lost... somehow all the other stuff keeps getting in the way."

The good, the bad, and the great

To get all the "other stuff" -- a lot of which is "busywork" -- out of your way, Stanier says you have to understand the difference between bad, good, and great work.

• Bad work is the work that eats up your time and energy and accomplishes virtually nothing. Stanier’s examples include what he calls "soul-sucking, spirit-draining activities" like endless meetings, mounds of paper work, and other activities that fit into the "busywork" category.
• Good work is the work most people do most of the time and, if they care about their jobs at all, do it pretty well. It’s all necessary stuff that keeps things moving along, creates a product or service efficiently and markets it to the world. The problem with regular, standard good work? It seems endless -- one never ending task after another. And it is comfortable. So just doing good work doesn’t stretch you, challenge you, or get your creative juices going. It makes a job just a job – day in and day out.
• Great work is meaningful and makes a difference because it matters to you on a personal level. That, says Stanier, is good business on an organizational level, too, because it inspires innovation, strategic differentiation, productive evolution – and long-term success.

How to transform good work to great work

So how do you get there from here? You can’t go in to your boss’s office and announce you are done with busywork and answering every email that comes your way because it’s not rewarding enough. In his book, Stanier admits moving into the arena of Great Work (he always capitalizes it to emphasize its importance) carries with it uncertainty and risk as you aim for making an impact and achieving the rewards of doing innovative work.

In "Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters", Stanier (who is founder and senior partner of Box a Crayons, a company that helps organizations make the leap from good work to great work), offers exercises he dubs "maps" – visual tools that help you find, start, and sustain great work by figuring out what you really want to do, how you can manage the feeling of being overwhelmed and generate new ideas and possibilities for your company quickly.

He also discusses strategies that help you find the "sweet spot" – the place that falls between what you really want to do with your life and work and what your organization wants you to do – and how to land there and to begin your great work.

5 tips for moving from busy work to great work from Michael Stanier:

1. Instead of trying to check off 47 "to-dos" in a day, define 3 high-impact actions to take daily.
2. Be clear about making choices. Define an A-list (three people) and a B-list (five people) of those who matter. Consider saying "no" (or what Stanier calls a "slow yes" that usually pushes someone to find another person for a task) when anyone not on these lists asks you to do non-great work tasks.
3. Time meetings to keep them from being an enormous drain of energy and time. Let people know exactly how long they have to make a point and stick to the limit.
4. Control the Blackberry or iPhone. Stanier warns that relentless connectedness and constant attention to answering email disrupts focus and the ability to do great work.
5. Change places. Great work requires innovative, new ways of thinking. Try getting out of your usual "good work" space – move to another area in your office, an empty meeting room, a coffee shop, or your office cafeteria. By changing the context, Stanier says, you’ll change the way you work.

Sherry Baker is a writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She last wrote Diabetes 2: How to Prevent, Improve and (Possibly) Even Reverse It. Sherry can be reached at featuredstories@adamcorp.com