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.
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.
This is something I realised a lot talking to my therapist over the years, that one of the reasons I was constantly burning out was because I was usually 100% task focused and people would be amazed at how much I got done all the time. But most people kind of just naturally tread water or like basically just do enough to make it seem like they are not doing nothing. On that baseline, I also came to the same realisation as you. The whole of the working world is based on just about passing as not incompetent and then people do what they like the rest of the time, but nobody explicitly tells anyone this because then the illusion would be broken I guess. Everything is performative, the stupid evaluations or target setting they have you do is just stuff you know you can do anyway normally but you slack enough to make it seem like it’s something you ‘worked hard for’.
The plus side is when you realise this, it means you can gradually start to give yourself a break. Obviously it varies based on the nature of your job, but I’m talking about stuff that isn’t super high stakes.
For most managers, “pretend to be working” is their entire job. They constantly lie about how they’re spending their time.
You’re making them look bad.
That would explain a lot. I don’t think a lot of the people I worked for would feel bad about anything but the ones who were most upset about me leaving when my work was done were ones who sat around or walked laps around the work area observing nothing a lot.
No, the culture is definitely broken.
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
I’m terrified that this is how my entire career will be. I’m into my second professional job and I feel like I’m working in highschool projects where no one actually does any work. It’s infuriating.
Just doing enough to get by, but never anything more. I get all my work done and more while everyone else just seems to like, not even complete what was asked of them
Unless you’re working in healthcare or something similar, don’t worry about it.
The rule is, you do enough so you don’t get fired and they’ll pay you enough so you don’t quit.
The issue is I actually enjoy working :( I like my work, but my job is ass, so I’m not growing at all
It could be such a cool project if everyone carried their weight. We actually get paid pretty decent in this economy too so :/
Do you network in your industry?
There are always trade shows. Show up at one and see if there is another company more to your liking.
I’m into my second professional job and I feel like I’m working in highschool projects where no one actually does any work.
In my experience, most people never develop much past their high school years. They are just sort of stuck as the person they were when they turned 16 or 17. the fact that you are asking these questions means that you are capable of growth. I always recommend getting through college and getting a masters if you can just so that you can work around people who have developed further.
If everyone was working at 100% capacity 100% of the time then every step of the production line would have to be perfectly optimized and balanced. Achieving that is impossible so what happens is everyone has a bit of downtime sometimes.
Unless you’re in management, you don’t decide what you do. Management does. If your assigned tasks are done, report that to your supervisor. It’s their job to provide you with tasks; make them do it. They get paid more than you. Stop doing their jobs for them.
That sounds like a great way to get more work for the same pay.
What do hard workers get? More work!
thanks, I agree. I’ve just been punished for doing so. I didn’t stay in those jobs but I’m observing that it’s a reoccurring pattern
If you’re getting punished for not doing your boss’ job, that’s not a place you want to stay anyway.
This one will second FartMaster69, this culture is in fact incredibly sick and is likely to take some time to improve, if it does. Take your joy and platonically fuck the man.
you’re the logical one, fam!
keep fighting the normie neurocolonizers!
This is why certain jobs are very nice to have. Right now I’m transporting students. Best job I’ve had. There’s no down time. You are either on route or picking up or dropping off. Well you can be early and need to sit for a min, but I think 20min is the longest that’s ever been and that’s a one in a year occurrence of 5+ students canceling, which is not typical. Most days, we’re 5-10 early at the end of a full route simply because no unexpected delays happened. And that just means you sing the ABCs a few times waiting for the school site workers to come out and receive students.
Nice. I’ve been thinking about cabbing in the near future after a big change because it sounds like the lifestyle would fit me. I would miss heavy equipment but it’s probably worth it
This is why I like working from home towards the end of the week. Don’t have to pretend too hard, and usually have my work to do at the beginning of the week.
I was in the corp world as a low level drone for about 30 years. It’s true. There is a lot of time killing small talk and then the all of those meetings where there is a lot of time killing small talk.
I work in a company that has 3 shifts, morning shift i’ll pretend to be working, afternoon shift i’ll pretend to be working for at least the first 2-3 hours if i’m feeling charitable and in the night shift it’s mostly be happy if i do anything at all mindset.
