When someone asks you how you’re doing, how often do you answer not that you’re “good” or “fine,” but that you’re “busy”?

For Adam Waytz, a professor of management and organizations, this typical response is a symptom of society’s overemphasis on being busy, and our tendency to falsely equate busyness with productivity.

In a new piece in Harvard Business Review, Waytz explains how busyness can be detrimental to productivity at work and offers suggestions for how organizations can create a culture where busyness is no longer revered as a virtue.

Today we’ll hear some of his advice. We’ll also get some insights into how retailers can use augmented reality to increase sales.

How organizations can combat “a culture of busyness”

There are many downsides to encouraging busyness among employees, Waytz explains in his HBR piece, from hurting productivity and efficiency to prompting burnout and thus costly turnover.

Waytz offers managers several suggestions for combating a “culture of busyness.” Here are a few:

Do an activity audit: In order to better organize your team’s tasks, start with an audit of what they’re actually doing. Have employees list everything they do on a weekly basis and “rate on a five-point scale how cognitively demanding each task is, how much focus it involves, and how much training it requires,” Waytz says. Then look at the activities with low scores across the board and decide if those can be swapped out for something more productive. Waytz audited his own work and decided to cut out phone calls so that he could focus on work that requires more-sustained thinking.

Make sure people take time off: Companies would be wise to join the growing number of organizations with compulsory paid-time-off policies, Waytz writes. Some of those policies are quite creative. For example, he writes about software company FullContact, which pays people to take vacation—and rescinds that extra pay if the employee opens a work email while they’re off. “Such policies signal that the company values employee well-being over mere busyness,” Waytz writes.

Model the right behavior: Sure, you can tell your employees to focus on useful activities and take their vacation. But they likely won’t take you at face value if you’re still embracing busyness for the sake of busyness. “The message that companies value well-being over busyness will resonate with employees only if they see their bosses take time off too. The boldest leaders aren’t those who burn the midnight oil; they’re the individuals who set the norm by taking a pause,” Waytz writes.

Waytz offers many more insights on busyness and ways to combat it in his HBR article, which you can read here.

How retailers can use augmented reality to boost sales

In general, online shopping feels pretty easy these days. Buying anything from groceries to your favorite brand of socks takes a few clicks. But there are still some items that can feel risky to purchase online, particularly if you haven’t tried out the product in real life and you don’t know how it will look on you—for example, a new pair of glasses or shade of lipstick.

It’s these circumstances where augmented reality has the most potential to help both customers and retailers, according to new research from Srinivas K. Reddy, a visiting professor of marketing, and his colleagues.

Using data from an international cosmetics retailer that allowed customers to virtually “try on” lipstick, eyeliner, and eyeshadow, the researchers found that AR helped boost customer engagement and sales overall. Those who used AR as part of their mobile-app shopping experience spent 20 percent more time browsing, and their purchase rate was nearly 20 percent higher than that of those who did not use AR.

Furthermore, when customers used the AR feature, they bought products from less-popular brands and also purchased more expensive and unusual products. That’s likely because the AR system allowed them to take a chance on what would otherwise seem like riskier bets.

“This shows augmented reality is leveling the playing field for brands and products,” Reddy says. “Customers have never purchased blue lip shade, and now suddenly they buy it. And if this reduces their uncertainty, they are also willing to spend more.”

You can read the full Insight article here.