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.
Not because you’re broken but because the culture is broken. Average people get through their careers this way because the culture allows for it, and the culture allows for it because capitalism is literally about extracting as much work out of workers as possible, and neglecting things workers actually need like break periods and periods of idle time which make them more productive overall.
So to take back some of that idle time under a culture of capitalism that is looking to stamp it out everywhere, people are pretending to be busy because it’s the only way to maintain the idle time they need in order to be productive.
Yeah it’s messed up that nobody tells people that. If I didn’t have both ADHD and Autism I wouldn’t be able to piece it together and even then it took a really really long time.
But it’s because society is sick, not because there’s anything wrong with you. I learned as a kid that if I finished all my work, teachers would come up with more work for me to do. My brain recognized that pattern even if it didn’t understand why, and my sense of fairness alarms went off when I realized I was doing twice as much but work as everyone else. My solution to this wasn’t to rebel by looking busy. I decided to do something else worthwhile with my time. I read books in class. Most teachers took them away, resulting in me bringing several books with the knowledge that a fair number of them would be confiscated. There was one teacher who just let me read and didn’t bother me and they were one of my very favorites because they understood that I wasn’t causing problems for other students and I was doing the work they asked me to do. I didn’t realize til I was a middle aged adult that this was why people tried to look busy.
If more people in positions of authority had that realization they would protect workers who get things done ahead of time and do the job that’s asked of them.
But like I said. The culture is broken. Management is a broken system always trying to justify its existence. And some people need idle time.
Im not even sure its about extracting the most work. We know that working from home is more productive for some professions, but they are forced back into office.
I think its just because the economy is built on people going to offices, paying for transport there and back, lunch, working clothes, etc. And also because it makes everyone feel small to be forced to be in a office culture with lots of hierarchy, official of not.
The system also wants us tired so we will watch Netflix with ads, or buy movies, or go out and drink, to get our minds off of the daily grind. And it wants us to compare with others and always want nicer stuff.
Without being at work, a loooot of the behaviors we are doing would fall away. Im not currently working so I know. Every day is Saturday. No thoughts are about work. Energy is high. Mood is positive. Its very different.