SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - If you feel like your workday is just one long list of meetings and emails that don’t actually get anything done, you are not alone. Hundreds of local leaders gathered in Springfield Thursday to learn how to fight back against ‘busy work.’

The 29th annual Women’s Leadership Conference, hosted by Bay Path University, is back at the MassMutual Center. But this year, the talk isn’t just about doing more — it’s about doing less of the ‘stupid stuff.’

“Well, we talked a lot today about wasted payroll, which is how you calculate the actual dollars your company is losing from doing stupid work,” Productivity Expert Juliet Funt said, ‘wasted payroll’ is the cost of all those unnecessary meetings and emails that drain our time and energy.

It’s a message that hit home for a local leader like Sara Goodwin, “our schedules are so packed with things that we’re trying to get done. Sometimes we’re just piling more and more on to try to meet those goals. And we have to kind of remember, you know, we’re only human.”

The goal for these women is to take these strategies back to their offices, creating a culture where it’s okay to step away and actually think.

“I can take back the information that I learned from here and bring it to my team. Learn how to be a better scheduler with, even today, just listening to the speaker, how to put wedges in my schedule and make more time. So that’s really helpful,” said Director of Early Childhood Education for Holyoke Public Schools Amy Roque.

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