[idiocrat]

There was a saying: If you want something important to be done, give it to the busiest person, not to a person who is free.

The busy people tend to be more efficient and organized. You do not need to explain them what to do -- they can figure out themselves.

The people who have free time tend to require external motivation/explanation, so you will end up micromanaging them, wasting your own time.

[colechristensen]

Some people are very good at appearing busy or at making themselves busy by being inefficient or by adding unnecessary steps and noise to the thing that needs doing.

[JadeNB]

> There was a saying: If you want something important to be done, give it to the busiest person, not to a person who is free.

> The busy people tend to be more efficient and organized. You do not need to explain them what to do -- they can figure out themselves.

Sounds like a great recipe for burning out your highest performers.

[cjbgkagh]

Also people look busy for all the wrong reasons. It’s a ridiculous rule of thumb. Like the ‘he did $1M of damage on his first day, why fire him, I spent $1M’ training him’. The odds are the new hire is a fool who will repeatedly make costly mistakes.

[unethical_ban]

If you think this, just fire the people with free time.

It is false that someone with free time has it because they are incompetent. It is false that someone who needs up-front hand holding needs it throughout an assignment.

I need a decent amount of explanation to wrap my head around concepts, but once I have the prerequisite information and the tools I need to develop a tool, I can do it.

And like others said, "give the busy people all the work" is how you get your top workers to navigate to LinkedIn.

[folkrav]

Or, hear me out: save yourself the trouble and don't build a team of people needing micromanagement in the first place.