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These are people who look, but don’t buy. Retail stores dread window shoppers. The more egregious ones leave their fingerprints on the merchandise, and create work for staff who have to re-arrange the goods after the window shopper has left. A small percentage may return to purchase, the rest may just order it online. Having a small percentage of window shoppers has benefits, for one thing, the store will look crowded, so people will assume the store is popular.

You or your co-workers who do tasks without a plan are the “window shoppers” in the workplace. You dabble in this task, and that task, and leave at the end of the day satisfied that you did a “lot of things.” But the ROI on your time is minimal to none.

It is not easy to plan, because that requires clarity which is not always available in the workplace. When you make a plan, you are committing to a deadline, it almost feels like you have given up your freedom till that deadline is met. With a plan, you cannot wander off and do something else that may catch your fancy.

To say you are working in a fast moving environment is a sorry excuse. You need a plan, period. It may be a short term plan, and it may change, but a stake in the ground is needed to stamp out the loss of productivity from window shopping in the workplace.