We’ve all had that moment where work feels like busywork.  The forms multiply, the meetings breed, and the spreadsheets seem to develop a life of their own.

That’s where David Marlow, author of The Ikigai Way, found himself.  A former Marine who wandered through corporate corridors long enough to see how absurd they can be, David started to question the meaning of it all.  His search for purpose led him to ikigai, which is the Japanese idea of living in alignment with what you love, what you’re good at, and what actually matters.

In this story from his book, he takes us deep into the fluorescent glow of office life and shows what happens when you ask a very dangerous question:

What if I just deleted the line?

Take it away, David!

Delete the Line: The Radical Act of Eliminating Worthless Work

Back in my office, frustrated at the prospect of wasting another year on meaningless bureaucracy, I had a moment of clarity.

What if I just... deleted the line?

Let me back up.

The Budget Tracking Trap

I was heading up a network team for a large IT organization when leadership decided to track every dollar in our budget. All 40 managers in the department would document everything down to $10,000—in budgets ranging from $20 to $40 million. For perspective, $10,000 in a budget that size is a rounding error.

I ran a support team. Support work has to get done regardless of how you classify it. Whether I labeled $10,000 as "project work" or "break-fix support" made no difference. My budget was fixed because I needed a certain number of support people. The categorization changed nothing.

That first year, I reluctantly complied. Every time my numbers were slightly off, I sat through meetings with three or four people explaining the variance. One month I'd be $10,000 over in one category. The next month, $10,000 under in another. Both triggered meetings. Both wasted time.

By year's end, I came within a few hundred dollars of my planned budget.

Then we did nothing with the results. Nothing. No decisions were made. No analysis was conducted. No value was extracted from all this "budget management."

Naturally, senior leadership announced we'd do it again the following year.

The Moment of Rebellion

In the meeting announcing the repeat performance, I raised my hand. "Why are we doing this? What are we going to do with the feedback since we didn't do anything with it last year?"

The meeting leader looked aghast that I would question the process. He had no answer beyond "we have to do it to manage the budget."

I pressed further, insisting we needed justification for investing time in an activity that produced zero results. My concern was duly noted, along with several scowls. The meeting proceeded as if I'd never spoken.

The Spreadsheet Solution

Back in my office, staring at the prospect of another wasted year, something occurred to me.

We tracked everything in a spreadsheet. The manager leading the effort would post a master spreadsheet online where I'd fill in my projections. Those projections would be used to track my actual spending.

I walked through the scenarios:

• If I don't put in my numbers, they'll see zeros. That triggers a meeting.

• If I do put in my numbers and they're off, that triggers four or five meetings.

• But what if there was no line to see?

If there's no number, someone notices. But if there's no line at all, there's nothing to check.

With 40 managers in the division, would anyone even notice if one line disappeared?

So I deleted it.

Six Months Later

"I've got a meeting with the Bobs," my colleague complained over lunch, referencing the consultants from Office Space. "My budget numbers were off this month. What about you? How's it going with managing your budget?"

I made him promise not to tell anyone. "I deleted the line."

He threw his hands in the air. "I can't believe it!" He said some other things that a former Army guy would say to a former Marine that I won't print here.

They never noticed. Not once in six months.

The Real Cost of Worthless Work

Throughout my career, I've made it a practice to eliminate work that serves no purpose. Instead of wasting time on worthless activities, I invested that time in my team, my personal growth, helping other managers, and improving our products and support.

In the "delete the line" example alone, I saved five hours a week compared to each of my peers. That's nearly six weeks of reclaimed time over the course of a year.

Six weeks.

Imagine what you could do with that much extra time.

Becoming a Zealot for Your Time

When you understand what energizes you and what drains you, it becomes easier to identify waste and be zealous about removing it. Zealot might sound extreme, but it's the appropriate word. It takes intense commitment to pull off.

You must not only focus on removing waste—you must also defend against others constantly trying to pile more things onto you. That's just the way life works, especially in corporate environments.

Despite holding executive roles at several Fortune 500 companies, moving up the corporate ladder was never my ambition. My pursuit was autonomy—owning more of my time. The further up the organizational chart I moved, the fewer people could dictate how I spent my days. Titles and offices paled in comparison to owning my time and devoting it to what mattered most.

Your Turn

What worthless work are you doing right now? What meetings produce no decisions? What reports does no one read? What processes exist simply because "that's how we've always done it"?

You might not be able to literally delete the line from a spreadsheet. You can start questioning the value of activities that drain your time and energy without producing meaningful results.

Often the most productive thing you can do is stop doing something entirely.

This story is adapted from my new book, The Ikigai Way: A Simple Path for Living a Life of Purpose, where I explore how eliminating waste and noise from your life creates space for what truly matters—living out your essence and purpose in harmony with whatever you do.

Yours in Simplicity,