This has been the bane of my existence in almost every job I’ve worked. “Look busy”, “don’t stand idle”, “delegate tasks for yourself”. My dude, if it’s not on the job description and it’s not a task I was onboarded in why would I do it?
But in life we’re just supposed to somehow already know. And assume that we should lie about how we’re spending our time. I’ve fought with multiple managers because I’ll just leave when I get far enough ahead of my work that the only thing left to do is pretend I’m still working. I’ve been reprimanded for helping other areas instead of just still pretending to do work in my own.
It happens in enough fields that I realize, the culture isn’t broken. This IS how average people get through their careers. I’m the one who can only survive in roles that don’t have a hard endpoint for tasks. Because I’m broken in someway that I can’t stop getting ahead of my work and I can’t make myself lie about it.
That’s why I think we can have the same productivity with less work time per day (or week), yet still there’s tendencies everywhere to increase work time unnecessarily for “the economy”.
you are 1000% correct. all of this bullshit is for the illusion of infinite growth. and maybe also for the psychological benefit of working people so hard that they’ll never consider trying to change the system we exist in
Kind of but technological progress also contributes to that somewhat