Busy work (also referred to as make-work and busywork) can refer to activity that is undertaken to pass time and stay busy. In educational settings, busy work has precedence as a means to corroborate and reinforce lessons and curriculums by allowing students time to practice new learned skill-sets independently. Busy work also occurs in business, military and other settings, in situations where people may be required to be present but may lack the opportunities, skills or need to do something more productive. People may engage in busy work to maintain an appearance of activity, in order to avoid criticism of being inactive or idle.
Read more about Busy Work: Educational Settings, Business and Work Settings, Military Settings
Famous quotes containing the words busy and/or work:
“Living, just by itself—what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom’s the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you’ve got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that’s terribly exciting—or he’ll come along and nibble your brain.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)