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 aside, it’s also hard to pretend what we (as humanity, as countries, as groups) are doing is important in the light of other far bigger things going on in the world. I’ve struggled a lot with this but neurotypicals are totally unfazed by this, often citing things to be far away or unrelated until - surprise - it affects them. Makes you think you’re crazy.
But yeah no this meeting now is really the most important one. For some thing that’s dumped by management later on a whim anyway.