The art of not working at work

[rujancified]

I am essentially pretty lazy so when I do have work I get it done fast - but well - so I can go back to doing nothing.  And that is the reason why I wat to be FIREd.

Love this. I'm the same. I'll spend hours/days automating a task so that it saves me the 5 or 10 minutes the task used to take.

Always thought this was hilarious: http://xkcd.com/1205/

[OutBy40]

To me, the ability to get extra time at work is about efficiency at doing your job.  There are times where I need to work a full 8-hour day, but other times, I can get my work done in about half of that and spend the remaining time improving my life by reading and learning. 

I used to work at a place where 10 to 12 hour days were expected, but I'm not subjecting myself to that any longer (and haven't for the past couple of years).  Work just isn't worth all that added stress, and no paycheck in the world would get me to put my health and well-being in jeopardy just so I can roll around in a bunch of money. 

I'm still fairly young (33), but I know what buys happiness for me - and it ain't money.  It is the ability to enjoy my time all day, every day.  If I can get my work done quickly and move on to other things, I will.  When I have to put in the occasional 10 hour day, I do that as well.  But, the keyword there is occasional.

I think too many people believe that if you aren't busy during the day, then your job either isn't important or you suck at what you do.  While either of these certainly may be true (and I've seen a LOT of it working at several government installations around the country), it is entirely possible that some people prioritize efficiency of what they do over the time it takes to do it.

The key, though - when you find yourself without much to do, find something productive to spend your time doing.  Learn.  Plan your finances for the month.  Finally schedule that doctor's appointment that you've been pushing off. 

...find a way to keep yourself productive, both with work and your personal life.

[OutBy40]

I work in a clerical job that can be mind-numbingly boring and often I don't have enough work to even remotely fill the day.  MMM, Fark.com and my own writing projects save my sanity.  With the latter, it actually gives the appearance that I'm working.

You have found a way to make yourself productive even if your work-related duties aren't exactly heavy.  Yeah, that IS how sanity prevails.

[jba302]

So you had 40 hours of meetings in roughly 4 months of time at your workplace.  That would be a light meeting schedule at my workplace.  I've already got 8.5 hours worth of meetings on my calendar for next week, and I'm sure it will be more like 10 or 12 when it's all said and done.  And my calendar is pretty light compared to a lot of people's.  What that tells me is those people don't have much real work to do.  If they did, they wouldn't have time for all those meetings.

I couldn't deal with that. My team seems to be closing in on this though. We all sit in the same area (there's 4 of us, at a normal voice level we don't have to move and have discussions), and I seem to have 3-4 meetings a week with my team in one of the meeting rooms. So the 4 of us will be talking about something, stand up, walk down the hall, then continue talking about the same thing because it's meeting time. Drives me absolutely nuts but no one seems to understand why.

[seanc0x0]

In my industry, meetings are necessary (like 1 hour per week kind of thing per client). Other than that, most other meetings are pointless. We don't do pointless meetings here. It's either for client questions (i.e. THEY make more work for us which they pay for) or for project hand-off (person A is going onto another project so person B needs to get up to speed). There's always a weekly departmental meeting for managers and that kind of thing, but meetings are very rare unless you are a manager on a lot of projects (1 hour a week x 8 projects = 1 day a week). We are required to log 40 hours a week, so during the more idle times (Nov -Jan), we get lots of time to "learn" things and surf the web/post of MMM :).

I hate pointless meetings. The first company I worked for out of university put me on a project that was behind schedule when I started. They had daily status meetings for the project that usually ran 1 to 1.5 hours, and everyone on the project was required to attend. No wonder the project was behind.

[OutBy40]

I hate pointless meetings. The first company I worked for out of university put me on a project that was behind schedule when I started. They had daily status meetings for the project that usually ran 1 to 1.5 hours, and everyone on the project was required to attend. No wonder the project was behind.

Wow.  Looks like the place you worked at was bastardizing the whole "Agile" development process.  Daily meetings happen, but they aren't supposed to last more than 5 or 10 minutes.  What a horrible waste of time daily 1+ hour meetings are.

[YTProphet]

In my industry, meetings are necessary (like 1 hour per week kind of thing per client). Other than that, most other meetings are pointless. We don't do pointless meetings here. It's either for client questions (i.e. THEY make more work for us which they pay for) or for project hand-off (person A is going onto another project so person B needs to get up to speed). There's always a weekly departmental meeting for managers and that kind of thing, but meetings are very rare unless you are a manager on a lot of projects (1 hour a week x 8 projects = 1 day a week). We are required to log 40 hours a week, so during the more idle times (Nov -Jan), we get lots of time to "learn" things and surf the web/post of MMM :).

I hate pointless meetings. The first company I worked for out of university put me on a project that was behind schedule when I started. They had daily status meetings for the project that usually ran 1 to 1.5 hours, and everyone on the project was required to attend. No wonder the project was behind.

That would drive me insane. I have no idea how you put up with that.

[FarmerPete]

For days when I work at home, I bought one of these.  http://www.amazon.com/Wiebetech-Mouse-Jiggler-Slow-Version/dp/B000O3S0PK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1417790733&sr=8-2&keywords=jiggler  BEST MONEY SPENT EVER.  I just set my laptop up on a table near my seat and "monitor" incoming emails/IMs.  Works great.  It keeps the screensaver from kicking in and I appear to be active on our IM client.  The computer sees it as just a regular external mouse.  So worth it.

[Nickyd£g]

I am essentially pretty lazy so when I do have work I get it done fast - but well - so I can go back to doing nothing.  And that is the reason why I wat to be FIREd.

Love this. I'm the same. I'll spend hours/days automating a task so that it saves me the 5 or 10 minutes the task used to take.

Always thought this was hilarious: http://xkcd.com/1205/

Love it!

[Nickyd£g]

For days when I work at home, I bought one of these.  http://www.amazon.com/Wiebetech-Mouse-Jiggler-Slow-Version/dp/B000O3S0PK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1417790733&sr=8-2&keywords=jiggler  BEST MONEY SPENT EVER.  I just set my laptop up on a table near my seat and "monitor" incoming emails/IMs.  Works great.  It keeps the screensaver from kicking in and I appear to be active on our IM client.  The computer sees it as just a regular external mouse.  So worth it.

I AM SO GETTING THIS!!!

[MillenialMustache]

For me, a 'super' hour (being totally focussed) is worth 2 - 3 'normal' hours. I know that a '12 hour day' is not something I will have unless technology fucks me over (it'll happen a couple times a year). I can finish 12 hours of normal work in my normal schedule. I'll just not be very happy when I go home that night. I know how to be efficient when I need to be. Thankfully my desk is in a super awesome place (back against the wall, no one behind me, no one next to me except maybe 1x per week). I will say I've learned how to run a household and work at the same time. I've got about 2-3 'super' hours of work to do each day right now. I try to cut it off at about 5 'super' hours of work (I.e. 10 normal hours). Gives me enough time to do my job while still fucking around enough to not stress too much. I know a couple people at work who are always perfectionists. They always work 10 hour days and have 'so much' to do.

Just remember the forum you're on. Most of us here are INTJ people who live efficiency. Personally I'm either focused and working or I'm not focused and not working, so i only work in 'super' hours and procrastinate the rest of the time.

This is really interesting and I have never thought about it before. I am ENTJ, the only difference being more extroverted than introverted. It is interesting that many on this forum have similar personalities.

[Workinghard]

I am essentially pretty lazy so when I do have work I get it done fast - but well - so I can go back to doing nothing.  And that is the reason why I wat to be FIREd.

Love this. I'm the same. I'll spend hours/days automating a task so that it saves me the 5 or 10 minutes the task used to take.

Always thought this was hilarious: http://xkcd.com/1205/

I don't know about days, but I will definitely spend hours to save time. For instance I have to document teaching when I see patients. I made up a word doc with all my teaching in it, so all I have to do is copy and paste it into my nursing notes. If you are teaching a patient about a certain medication, or a blood clot, it's the same teaching regardless. This saves so much time and I don't have to think about what I want to say or how to say it. When we went to the computer documention, and I was training people, I told them about being able to set up a teaching doc. Most everyone didn't want to mess with creating their own document. Unbelievable as it saves so much time.

[jba302]

That time saving doc is interesting, never thought about it that way. I'm significantly in the red on an automation project, but it's less a time savings and more a way to not need someone else handling it if I can't. We are a small team and want to keep a lot of this work within our dept. so my boss likes to take the "what if you got hit by a bus" approach.

[Cheddar Stacker]

Just in case anyone hasn't read this already, this post discusses on what a few people commented on here. Essentially, working fast and then enjoying the rest of your "required work time" with leisure.

http://www.bravenewlife.com/06/the-pareto-strategy-to-maximize-leisure-time/

[jexy103]

Some people are very focused and efficient.  They grab a task and bear down on it, killing it quickly.  They tend to need far less than the "normal" amount of time to perform a task, and hence often find themselves with a lot free time on the job.  Since most employers in a traditional setting expect their employees to be sitting in the office for "x" hours per day, these folks need to find fillers (surfing the net, BSing, etc).

This is me. I spent 1.5 years as one of four secretaries in a very busy office. After I was there four months, one secretary left and I was tasked with her job to do in addition to mine (which I was happy about, since I probably only worked 1-3 hours a day before that). Even doing two jobs (for over a year due to the federal hiring freeze), I was still bored 2-3 hours a day. I would read MMM and Mad FIentist and work on schoolwork for my MBA. Being a secretary, I was tied to my phone all day, so no cutting out early or leaving when the job was done. The people I worked with were great, but I was largely unsatisfied with my job.

In July, I started a new position in the same company but a different department. Night and day difference. I now have the option of working my 40 hours in 9 days instead of 10, so I get a three-day weekend every other week. I come in at start time, work my 9 hours, and leave at the end of the day feeling satisfied with the amount of work I accomplished in the day. Some days I feel like I have a lot piled on me, but other day I have some slow time to do some required training for my new field. Even when another employee left after two months, leaving me with two jobs to do (seems to be a common trend), I'm rarely stressed and rarely bored. I love it!

[MB1443]

An open floor plan is great for employee who don't want to work.  It is pretty sad i have to work from home when I want to get a lot done. People constantly interrupt each other all day and you're included in any and every conversation by default.  I absolutely hate it.  Love the work though and get to travel frequently.  I also make 150k for 40 hours a week and five weeks of vacation so I can't complain.  Pension and 7 percent 401k matching too.

[MB1443]

I've learned that being confident and speaking up in meeting gs is just as important as doing actual work.  As an efficient person and a woman (taught to be sweet and a bit shy), it took me a while to get this.  Now I share my ideas all the time and get off on presenting to who I consider a bunch of morons.  I actually have a rather senior and what many consider impressive career. I find it to be a joke.  The less serious you are,the better you perform. 

[myteafix]

As a supervisor, the way I look at work is this: I pay you to fulfill a set of tasks and responsibilities. If you do so by physically staying motion every second of the eight hours you are assigned to perform that set in, then I am satisfied. If you do so by taking a coffee break at 12:30 and playing Angry Birds on your phone from 2:30 to 3:15, I am satisfied.

The very bottom line is: are you accomplishing that which you are paid to do? If you are paid to serve clients, are your clients leaving satisfied and likely to return? If you are paid to make a part, is that part finished, properly constructed, and ready to be shipped? If you are paid to make me a hamburger, is that hamburger ready to go in my hands, safe and enjoyable to eat?

I'm not worried about my employees checking their email, going for a walk, or even napping during slow hours provided that they fulfill their end of the unspoken contract (of course, that's what break rooms are for, not the floor itself). Because the contract does not stipulate "You should LOOK like you are doing the work specified to you." It says "You should DO the work that is specified to you." It's my job to ensure you have work to do. If you do that work, you have fulfilled the contract. If you do not, then you can look, act, and say you are a good worker all you want, but you are dragging my organization down. You are not working.

Good philosophy to have. I wish more people were like you.

Just remember the forum you're on. Most of us here are INTJ people who live efficiency.

Interesting, I never realized a lot of people here are INTJ, I guess there is something to it. I have taken that test so many times and it always comes out as either INTJ or ENTJ.

I'm an INFJ. Stranger in a strange land, I guess.

[CowboyAndIndian]

For days when I work at home, I bought one of these.  http://www.amazon.com/Wiebetech-Mouse-Jiggler-Slow-Version/dp/B000O3S0PK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1417790733&sr=8-2&keywords=jiggler  BEST MONEY SPENT EVER.  I just set my laptop up on a table near my seat and "monitor" incoming emails/IMs.  Works great.  It keeps the screensaver from kicking in and I appear to be active on our IM client.  The computer sees it as just a regular external mouse.  So worth it.

Thank you!

I got one of these for my wife. She works from home and if she leaves her computer for 5 minutes it logs her off.
We got the jiggler last night and after one and half hours of not touching keyboard/mouse, she was still logged in.

[MMMdude]

Man this thread totally describes me.  I'm in accounting which for most accountants is feast or famine.  Feast during month ends, quarter ends, budget time, etc and then a whole bunch of dead time in between.  Some weeks I am very busy and put in a legit 40-50 hours hard work.  I consider myself very efficient so it is all hard work and nothing wasted.  No, I'm not perfect but I'd rather go home on time than stay there til 6PM to tie everything off to the penny.

Anyways they recently added people to my department (and above me) while only adding abit more work - all while being passed over for a promotion.  So it'll be even slower for me going forward.  Part of me thinks, fuck it i'll just screw the dog til i possibly get let go (and get a nice payout) while the other part is just dying inside most days wondering why I have to sit at a desk and look busy for eight hours a day. Well, make that 9 as we are forced to take an hour lunch - something i've asked them to change for us, but they refuse because the company I work for generally has HR policies from medieval times.  I occasionally look for something new but realistically it would be hard to match my existing salary with something similar at this time, but I"m nearly FI so I should really make the move.

To kill time I re-work my retirement spreadsheets about a million times a day, surf the net on my phone with the wifi there and read some investment docs that I email to myself. I also believe more than half the people working there put in 2-3 hours of real work in the day and the rest is look busy mode.

[babysnowbyrd]

I do this. Sometimes I really like it because I get naturally curious about things and I'll binge research stuff. MMM articles have sent me off on several new topics. I generally take good care to hide it when I do it during the day. Got my own system cuz I share an office with my immediate supervisor. It started when I first started working here because I wasn't trained and people were so busy getting work done themselves no one wanted to take the time to walk a newbie through it. Some stuff required certain access that I didn't have yet and others involved a lot of detail and know-how that I obviously didn't have. My first couple of week were generally profoundly boring even after getting a lot of personal "chores" done. I researched my town, tons of different living options, applied for apartments, got new car insurance, address changes for banks, student loans, insurance and the like. I live in an RV now, so lots of research and browsing sales for that one.

I'm more useful now, but my mornings are generally slower. I prepare shipping documents and as production has ramped up a lot within the last few months, I'm here later and later in the evening. The thing is that my job depends entirely on when a lot of other jobs are done, but needs to be done immediately once everyone else has finished. After 5pm I have a lot more leeway. I'm not expected to "play busy" when my stuff is done so I can do personal stuff a little more "guilt-free."

It's nice to be able to get some stuff done during work, but other times I wish I was more useful. And sometimes I'm way more into reading MMM than actual work so when an important task does come up I find that I'm irritated to have to do it. Not so good overall. I look forward to the time when I can be FI too.

[retired?]

I think some of this may have to do with how people perform their jobs.

Some people are very focused and efficient.  They grab a task and bear down on it, killing it quickly.  They tend to need far less than the "normal" amount of time to perform a task, and hence often find themselves with a lot free time on the job.  Since most employers in a traditional setting expect their employees to be sitting in the office for "x" hours per day, these folks need to find fillers (surfing the net, BSing, etc).

So which employee is the "good" employee and which is the "bad?"  I figure if both are getting the job done for roughly the same salary, there is no "good" or "bad," just different.

I think "needing" to find fillers is exactly what causes stress for the more efficient workers.  They know how little they work (albeit, getting the job done)but are conscientious and feel bad.  Being idle simply looks bad.....you aren't adding value during those times. 

What do we expect a manager to do when he/she understands an employee gets a job done in half the time that another team member does?  Reasonable actions would be:

1)  Let the efficient employee go home.  Or, at worst, have them stay if something comes up, but have an understanding with them that they can do as they please (e.g. read, surf web, exercise etc.).

2)  Pay them more and add work to fill their time.

I think mgr's are reluctant to do either.  "Bill, where's Tom, I never see him after 2pm?"  Now Bill has to explain that the work can really be done in 5 hours instead of 8+ hours.  "Well, geez, we are paying him a salary to work full time, let's fill up his plate."  That only works if you are willing to pay Tom more.  If Tom doesn't expect to get paid more, he'll fake it.

I had one former co-worker who did get stuff done and was lucky enough to have a manager that understood he was more efficient.  He was, but the others were also inefficient.....taking a mid-day run each day, talking sports for 2 hours each day.  In reality, the job only took 5 hours.  The co-worker religiously stood up at about 2pm and said "ok, well I guess it's Miller Time".  Others stayed another 3 hours or so.

[mak1277]

I think "needing" to find fillers is exactly what causes stress for the more efficient workers.  They know how little they work (albeit, getting the job done)but are conscientious and feel bad.  Being idle simply looks bad.....you aren't adding value during those times. 

Not all of us.  I'd much rather be idle and surf the net than do actual work.  I put off my real work as long as possible and then get it done under threat of a deadline. 

[retired?]

I think "needing" to find fillers is exactly what causes stress for the more efficient workers.  They know how little they work (albeit, getting the job done)but are conscientious and feel bad.  Being idle simply looks bad.....you aren't adding value during those times. 

Not all of us.  I'd much rather be idle and surf the net than do actual work.  I put off my real work as long as possible and then get it done under threat of a deadline.

Sheeeeettt, me, too, but I'd be worried about being fired, OR since a large part of my total comp was discretionary bonus, fear of getting squat.

[cpa cat]

All last week, I was feeling tired, so I hit the snooze and came in an hour later. This meant that I was staying an hour later in the evening.

This week, I got kudos from my immediate boss, thanking me for putting in the "extra effort" by staying a little later every day. It's really appreciated, since the department is going through a difficult leadership transition right now.

Maybe if I come in two hours later, I'll get a big bonus!

-.-

[mak1277]

I think "needing" to find fillers is exactly what causes stress for the more efficient workers.  They know how little they work (albeit, getting the job done)but are conscientious and feel bad.  Being idle simply looks bad.....you aren't adding value during those times. 

Not all of us.  I'd much rather be idle and surf the net than do actual work.  I put off my real work as long as possible and then get it done under threat of a deadline.

Sheeeeettt, me, too, but I'd be worried about being fired, OR since a large part of my total comp was discretionary bonus, fear of getting squat.

In my experience, my work style is feasible only because of two things:

1) I never actually miss a deadline. 
2) As MB1443 talked about above, I'm very confident in meetings and other interactions with people at work.  Even if I haven't started a project, I"m able to confidently discuss it.  The art of BS, really, is one that keeps me going.

I always say, it takes hard work to be as lazy as I am.

[irishbear99]

HAHA!!! This describes my life perfectly! I always finish things very quickly, but that doesn't mean I do it badly, I am just really efficient! My boss on the other hand...FRAZZLED!!!! Always busy busy busy, but never getting anything done. Your email example...spot on...I observed her "composing" an email once...it would have taken me literally 30 seconds: 'Dear X, are you free to meet on this date..."...simple enough, but no, she spent at least 15min composing the email! Just today she wanted me to edit a certain model and was freaking out how long that will take me. I was like wtf lady....it takes like 30min...and that's exactly how long it took. But never mind, I still have to be in the office the whole day...even though only 50% of the time I actually work on things. The rest I am just bored...surfing the net or whatever. Of course that sounds like bliss to some people...but not for me...it's been too long like this. There are some (few) days when I am really challenged all day and have things to work on. Those are the days that I am happiest at work...because I am not bored.

LOL. I had to check the name on this post to see if it was mine and I just didn't remember responding. This describes my day to a T, especially the part about the busy days being the happiest.

[agent13x]

Wish I had to fake work.  I run a batch process unit in a chemical plant using an Emerson DCS.  I monitor 16 screens for a 12 hour shift.  The system is poorly programed and the instrumentation has constant problems.  At times I get 100 or more alarms an hour. 

You can see this same problem happen in the infosec field where companies buy all these vendor security products and then overwhelm themselves with alerts. The tools need to be tuned to get rid of the false positives so that when an alert fires, you know it's real. You should only have a few alerts per shift, not 100's per hour.

[agent13x]

So two years ago, I took a server administrator job for state government.  Worse, job, ever.  I went from making 44k to now making 66k in just two years.  I'll cap out at $81k in 27 more months.  Then it'll be annual 1-2% raises after that, assuming I don't apply for a higher level job.  If I had stayed with my old company, I would have never gotten more than the 1-2% raises again.  Over my last 3 years working there, I had gotten an $0.08 raise after I calculated CPI.  My new job has a great 401k/457 plan.  I get 17 vacation days a year and 13 sick days.  My insurance is better and costs me $1.5k less a year.  The jobs are equal distance from my house.  So what's the problem?  There is NO WORK TO DO.  We have a team of 4 people to do the work that 1 person could be bored to death doing.

Just to put this in perspective...at my last company, there were 5 network administrators who did 100% of the support for the entire companies server infrastructure.  They managed 500 servers.  They did all the backups, email, active directory, vmware, etc.  At my new job, we have a team of 5 people to support 200 servers.  BUT, every possible task that can be consolidated has been.  So there is a backup team to deal with the backups.  There is a SAN team to deal with the storage.  There is a VMWare team to handle the hosts.  There is a Symantec team to handle the antivirus.  So what do we do?  We grant temporary admin rights to the servers, occasionally reboot them, restart services, patch the servers quarterly, install a certificate here and there, and "monitor" the servers.  To put a number on it, we get on average, maybe 2 requests a day for 5 people.  All of the monitoring is automated.  I AM BORED OUT OF MY SKULL!

The problem with my current job though, is that it's comfortable, easy, and secure.  The boredom was REALLY bad when I first started.  It's less of an issue now.  You just kind of get used to it.  There are 4-5 other teams just like mine here.  They are all similarly staffed.  They all like to complain about being busy, but if you walk down the cube hall, you'll see a mix of Facebook, YouTube, forums, book reading, candy crush, etc.  When I first started, I was paranoid about people seeing my computer screen, but really, no one cares.  Even if they did, they couldn't fire you for it.  It's virtually impossible to get fired from this place.  I had a coworker showing up intoxicated and he repeatedly no-call/no-showed for months.  He then took 3 months of forced FMLA to get "cleaned up".  He missed deadlines for paperwork and whatnot.  He was eventually in jail for a month after getting his 3rd DUI.  Guess what, he's still in his cube now playing Candy Crush.  I'd say that 90% of the terminations that do happen here end up in wrongful termination suites where the fired wins.  That's why they don't try to fire anyone.

I've thought about leaving, but really, in my area, it would be hard to find a similar job making +80k.  Also, every day that I'm here, I feel like i'm getting -Experience.  It's like the desire to learn and excel is being sucked out of me.  I'm seriously a little frightened about it.

You are not alone. In fact, we are currently in very similar positions. I currently work in a government job where I can't be fired. I could make more elsewhere, but why? My current time off, stability, insurance, benefits, pension are better than what I can get elsewhere. I keep in touch with guys who've left and while they are making more, they are also working more hours and a few of them have openly said they want to come back. But we're not hiring. I often discuss with my wife about leaving for a better paying job with more work to do, but she brings me back to reality every time. It's better to be bored, stable, and making enough vs being stressed out and working long hours for just a couple thousand more per year. It's not worth it.

So here I am, boredly dreaming of one day hitting FI. But not too soon, because I need to stick around long enough to get my pension to a decent amount. I'll see you around. Are you also in Nebraska, FarmerPete?

[Numbers Man]

All last week, I was feeling tired, so I hit the snooze and came in an hour later. This meant that I was staying an hour later in the evening.

This week, I got kudos from my immediate boss, thanking me for putting in the "extra effort" by staying a little later every day. It's really appreciated, since the department is going through a difficult leadership transition right now.

Maybe if I come in two hours later, I'll get a big bonus!

-.-

Yep, Facetime seems to be more important than production these days. I've seen the Facetime factor pay out bigger bonuses then to the guys that work their 8 hours and go home. The scary part is that your boss has no idea what time you come into work.

[Milizard]

All last week, I was feeling tired, so I hit the snooze and came in an hour later. This meant that I was staying an hour later in the evening.

This week, I got kudos from my immediate boss, thanking me for putting in the "extra effort" by staying a little later every day. It's really appreciated, since the department is going through a difficult leadership transition right now.

Maybe if I come in two hours later, I'll get a big bonus!

-.-

Lol

[goodlife]

All last week, I was feeling tired, so I hit the snooze and came in an hour later. This meant that I was staying an hour later in the evening.

This week, I got kudos from my immediate boss, thanking me for putting in the "extra effort" by staying a little later every day. It's really appreciated, since the department is going through a difficult leadership transition right now.

Maybe if I come in two hours later, I'll get a big bonus!

-.-

This is so true and I hate it. It doesn't matter how late you come in, as long as people have the impression that you are staying late, you are perceived as hard working. I am a morning person and would love to come in at 7am or earlier every day and then leave in the early afternoon. But of course I can't do that, this would be highly frowned upon and I am sure I would be perceived as a slacker. Staying late...even if I do absolutely nothing...is all that people care for.

[Cheddar Stacker]

All last week, I was feeling tired, so I hit the snooze and came in an hour later. This meant that I was staying an hour later in the evening.

This week, I got kudos from my immediate boss, thanking me for putting in the "extra effort" by staying a little later every day. It's really appreciated, since the department is going through a difficult leadership transition right now.

Maybe if I come in two hours later, I'll get a big bonus!

-.-

This is so true and I hate it. It doesn't matter how late you come in, as long as people have the impression that you are staying late, you are perceived as hard working. I am a morning person and would love to come in at 7am or earlier every day and then leave in the early afternoon. But of course I can't do that, this would be highly frowned upon and I am sure I would be perceived as a slacker. Staying late...even if I do absolutely nothing...is all that people care for.

You could just go George Costanza style.

I see this both ways. The thing about the late crowd though, sometimes late is like 4 hours late at nite. It's really hard to come in 4 hours early.

[MMMdude]

The other thing that drives me nuts is that few want to leave on the actual end of work day schedule, be it 4 or 5 PM.  Noone seems to want to be known as one of the first people out the door it seems.  I for one am gladly out the door first.  Are people really getting shit done in that extra hour every day that can't be deferred until tomorrow?  I highly doubt it

[goodlife]

The other thing that drives me nuts is that few want to leave on the actual end of work day schedule, be it 4 or 5 PM.  Noone seems to want to be known as one of the first people out the door it seems.  I for one am gladly out the door first.  Are people really getting shit done in that extra hour every day that can't be deferred until tomorrow?  I highly doubt it

I wonder about that too. I don't hate my job, but I always look forward to getting out of the office because I have a lot of other things I want to do. I leave on the dot. I have worked with (and still work with) other people who seem to want to just stick around, even though they do nothing. Sometimes I wonder if there is some reason that they don't want to go home...marriage problems etc....or maybe they just have no hobbies or other interests...so goofing off on the work computer is the same as goofing off on your laptop at home.

[Schaefer Light]

The other thing that drives me nuts is that few want to leave on the actual end of work day schedule, be it 4 or 5 PM.  Noone seems to want to be known as one of the first people out the door it seems.  I for one am gladly out the door first.  Are people really getting shit done in that extra hour every day that can't be deferred until tomorrow?  I highly doubt it

I wonder about that too. I don't hate my job, but I always look forward to getting out of the office because I have a lot of other things I want to do. I leave on the dot. I have worked with (and still work with) other people who seem to want to just stick around, even though they do nothing. Sometimes I wonder if there is some reason that they don't want to go home...marriage problems etc....or maybe they just have no hobbies or other interests...so goofing off on the work computer is the same as goofing off on your laptop at home.

I think these are the same people who linger in a conference room for half an hour after the meeting has ended.  Me, I'm halfway out the door as soon as the person leading the meeting says "thanks for coming."  I want to get back to doing something productive, be it work related or not.  I think this is the reason I can get my sh** done without working crazy hours.

[Daisy]

Interesting thread. I guess I have inadvertently mastered the art of not working at work at various points in my career. My job is project-based with project lengths going from 3 months to a couple of years. This leads itself nicely to working in spurts just as mini-deadlines appear throughout the schedule. I do tend to work better under pressure and a deadline, so I tend to space things out at first and then as the deadline approaches I focus a lot better and get the job done. I suppose during those times of "spacing out" I am thinking about the work that needs to be done and am sort of organizing it in my head. However, during this time I get mad at myself for wasting so much time and waiting for the approaching deadline to actually start producing stuff of value.

I suppose that's better than the alternative of having someone micromanage me every day to make sure I am producing consistent work. Unfortunately, this is the trend going in software development these days with the new Agile processes. We have daily meetings to discuss status. It's annoying because it's taking me away from my working-in-spurts preference. Oh well, at least I can show some progress on a daily basis by spacing out my updates or making something look like it is progressing when all I did was send one email on the topic the previous day.

FIRE-ing will be a way to get out of this new mode of working in software. It's driving me nuts.

[Daisy]

Another point...having FU money and being so close to FIRE allows me to reject or ignore work that is unimportant so that I can spend more time perfecting the art of not working at work.

For example, I just moved back into a software development position after working in architecture for a while. There had been an initiative in our department over this past year to get developers tested for certain programming skills. Of course, it was disguised as an effort for people to self-diagnose their programming weak spots and the test scores would not be used for ranking or layoffs or anything. However, if you didn't pass the test, you had to keep retaking it until you did. All of my coworkers continually complained about all of this. Luckily, the architecture group I was in was not required to go through the testing.

However, now I am a developer and my new manager openly mused about whether I should be exempted from going through all of this testing now that I am back in the group. I just sat there and listened. He thought I could get a waiver. Recently, I thought I could use the slow time during the holidays to catch up on some of that retraining (I should already know the stuff) and take the tests while everyone is out for the holidays. I then slapped myself silly and thought why should I even mention this to my boss? Nothing good would come out of me taking these tests after others complained heavily about them. So I will just wait till mid-year next year when they realize I haven't taken the tests. At that point, I will be knee-deep into a project I am leading and they won't want me to spend time taking the tests. I call that a win-win. ;-) That will also be about the time when I can truly assess my very near FIRE date and see how far away from it I really am.

I have a few more PTO days to take before they roll over but I was thinking of taking them in January when everyone is back in the office, and work during the holidays when the office is empty...you know so you can leave early and goof off most of the day. However, the very eager project manager was asking for people's vacation plans over the holidays so that he could see who to assign stuff to while everyone is gone. Solution - I will not be the sucker sticking around with all of the extra work so I will take my days off over the holidays.

[lielec11]

Sheeeeettt

anyone ???

[Luck12]

Timely thread.  So this tiime of yr is supposedly the busy time of year, year after year.   Yet I'm coming in later than 9 and leaving 4:30-5 every day, and being productive/finishing up everything necessary.  Meanwhile others are complaining of having to work so late (like past 8-9PM) and having so much shit to do.  I'm wondering what the hell these people do all day that makes working 12 hours a day necessary?  Are they just inefficient and/or do they just don't know how to say "no" to extra projects?    This has been going on for years. 

Sometimes I wonder if they secretly hate me for working 6.5 hour days and leaving hours earlier and coming in hours later than they are.    Whatever, I enjoy my long lunches and being able to keep up with my exercise routine and hobbies whilst they are toiling away for the masters. 

[Dr. Doom]

... two posts

Ahh, Daisy.  I enjoyed both of your posts -- yes, Agile and SCRUM (or any other impl of Agile) are going to make the industry more difficult for employees to be happy.  They're micromanaging techniques masked in a methodology which promotes ever-increasing productivity and faster release schedules. 

For folks that need constant guidance, it may help keep them on track.  For self-motivated people who, as you say, prefer to work in spurts, it simply makes work less pleasant, because most of us don't like or need the unceasing supervision.

I also engage in holiday work-avoidance vacation scheduling.  One of our teams is doing a big appliance upgrade between Christmas and New Years this year and the work is scheduled to start at 2AM on 2 different nights.  They needed a resource from my group.  I immediately put the days on the calendar to protect myself from being assigned.  Because: I can. 

It's so good to be FI.  You can construct a work environment that's more pleasant for you (whatever that happens to be) without any fear whatsoever of repercussions.  For me, more pleasant = less work off-hours work and most importantly, fewer meetings.

[dude]

Brilliant, utterly true article.  This applies to many people I know.

[dude]

Maybe they have never thought of it?

I have thoughts along these lines frequently, too, and I think the above question hits on the most likely answer.  If you know FI is a life choice, and this occurs to you while you're still young enough to do something about it, you can plan to get out or at least semi-retire, downshift your career, or move to something else entirely that may pay less but you'd be happier doing.  All it really takes is a good handle on your finances and being consistent over time in hitting your savings rate goals.  Bam!

The problem is that the top level default financial decision most people make is to blow through everything they earn, in one way or another.  Although the concepts around FIRE are not that difficult to pick up, it does require conscious spending and saving.  if you're aimlessly buying stuff, you will not 'accidentally' achieve FI unless you hit the lottery or get a large inheritance.  (And indeed, even those rare events are not enough for many people to sustain living indefinitely - a lot of people will just tear through ever larger piles of money until they're broke again.)

So here's how things develop for most people. Nearly everyone reflexively builds habitual spending into their lives until they are trapped by a need for their current level of income and must therefore keep grinding it out at work.  This produces a paycheck which, in turn, continues to (barely) fund the life they've architected for themselves.  People are capable of spending outrageous sums of money, particularly on cars, houses (multiple houses!  Or upgrading houses! Or remodeling houses!), and private schools.  Thing is, these things generate obligatory monthly outflows: mortgages, leases, contractors, landscapers, tuition.  And people convince themselves that those outflows are impossible to put a stop to, for one reason or another.

Let's say you're 50 and you're in the above situation (feeling financially trapped) and you've just found out that FIRE is a possible life option by reading an article about early retirement on Yahoo!  At this point in your existence you are much more likely to leave a comment like "THIS ARTICL. IS CRAP, IN AMERICA U WORK 4EVR" than you are to alter one iota of your lifestyle. 

And you'll leave this comment while at work, with an 11AM posting time, immediately prior to seeing a CW in the hallway and explaining for the Nth time how incredibly busy you are, now and forever, even though you've done nothing.

Oustanding, Dr. Doom, and I think exactly right.

[libertarian4321]

I now work at home full time and can usually get all of my work done for the day in about an hour. 

Dude, don't ruin it for us.

All of us "work from home" types know that we can do as much "work" in 2-3 hours as the average schlub in a cubicle can do in 8.  Toss in another hour or two of pointless mandatory meetings, which for us "work at home" types means we have the audio blasting in the background while we work out, cook dinner, contemplate world domination, watch Oprah, masturbate, take a nap, whatever.

But if the corporate types ever figure this out, it will be over for all of us.  For them, it's better for us to be at a desk 8 hours a day "cramming" in 1 hour of actual work (while looking harried/stressed and frazzled all day) than be at home doing 3 hours of actual productive work in a relaxed, hassle free environment.

Remember, in corporate America, the APPEARANCE of doing work is far more important than actually doing work.

Back in the day when I was doing the "bright eyed and bushy tailed at the office at 8 AM" drill, I once went three weeks, looking busy as Hell, without doing a lick of actual work.  It was the high point of my career.  To this day, I still look back in amazement at my ability to look productive for such a long period of time while actually accomplishing nothing of value.   I'll never have that sort of youthful vigor again...

[pbkmaine]

Ah yes, face time. When I was in the big accounting firms, what got you recognition, promotions and big bonuses was coming in before the partner and staying until after he or she left. So I used to leave for a few hours in the middle of the day to take long walks and run errands. I drew the line at coming in on weekends, though. I would "take work home" and finish it on the train. For the past 2.5 years I have been mostly remote, working for a consulting firm. It is amazing how much I have been praised for being incredibly productive. Yes, I have been. With cooking, laundry, cleaning, gardening, swimming and riding my bike. I have to force myself to wait a few hours to send in a document or spreadsheet after editing it. It took me much longer to get stuff done in the office because of constant interruptions. People were always coming by wanting to discuss breaking up with their boyfriends/girlfriends, the weather, the commute, local sports teams, the boss, coworkers, politics. One thing they never complained about with me was their financial situation. With other things, I was polite. With money, I was blunt and to the point. "Did you bring your lunch today? Do you have cable TV? If you can't do some really basic things to save money, then I don't want to hear about it."

[soccerluvof4]

In our business it goes nuts certain hours of the day so if you can multitask you knockout what the not so efficient ones take to do in half the time. Its nice to be able to take pause, catch up on some reading and or do some research for more business. Helps the type A personalities from burning out.

[fh2000]

I now work at home full time and can usually get all of my work done for the day in about an hour.  I do have to attend many web-ex meetings where I multi-task and/or stare out the window--so that eats up another 3 to 4 hours a day.  I make $140,000 a year and work for a huge corporation.  I learned a long time ago to play the "I'm busy, busy, heads down" game.  For 20 years I have always really wondered if everyone else was also simply pretending to be busy too.

Early in my career, I was often told to slow down and quit finishing projects so fast.  When I was in the office, I learned the art of the "double lunch" which means you go to the gym at an odd time--maybe 10:00 AM or 2:30 PM and then take a second lunch break to actually eat lunch at your desk while reading a novel you downloaded to your desktop.  I also would take a daily walk around the huge corporate headquarters for an hour or so with a file folder in my hand.  These things made me look busy and killed time. 

I love working at home full time and think all companies should work this way.  It should not matter how many hours you work--you should be graded only on the quality of your work and getting it done on time and on (or under) budget. 

But I will soon be trying to orchestrate my own lay off . . . so that should be fun!

Mrs. K.
We may be working for the same company with the same arrangement.  So, do not tell the management about our secret, OK? :-)

My career path has been in IT. There are times that I worked more than 50-60 hours a week.  But more often than not, the down time seemed to be longer than actual work for most of the companies that I worked for. 

I would say that this is quite common to software engineers.  Project Managers sometimes ask the software engineers to provide estimate and oftentimes the same task can be estimated anywhere between 3 days to 2 months, for example.  No one would challenge the estimate as long as you provide it with an authoritative convoluted detail technical explanation.  Projects would sometimes get delayed without assigning extra tasks to your portion, so you have more time to wait.   Software engineers would then spend their time to do self-study for new skills preparing for their next job.

[Daisy]

I now work at home full time and can usually get all of my work done for the day in about an hour.  I do have to attend many web-ex meetings where I multi-task and/or stare out the window--so that eats up another 3 to 4 hours a day.  I make $140,000 a year and work for a huge corporation.  I learned a long time ago to play the "I'm busy, busy, heads down" game.  For 20 years I have always really wondered if everyone else was also simply pretending to be busy too.

Early in my career, I was often told to slow down and quit finishing projects so fast.  When I was in the office, I learned the art of the "double lunch" which means you go to the gym at an odd time--maybe 10:00 AM or 2:30 PM and then take a second lunch break to actually eat lunch at your desk while reading a novel you downloaded to your desktop.  I also would take a daily walk around the huge corporate headquarters for an hour or so with a file folder in my hand.  These things made me look busy and killed time. 

I love working at home full time and think all companies should work this way.  It should not matter how many hours you work--you should be graded only on the quality of your work and getting it done on time and on (or under) budget. 

But I will soon be trying to orchestrate my own lay off . . . so that should be fun!

Mrs. K.
We may be working for the same company with the same arrangement.  So, do not tell the management about our secret, OK? :-)

My career path has been in IT. There are times that I worked more than 50-60 hours a week.  But more often than not, the down time seemed to be longer than actual work for most of the companies that I worked for. 

I would say that this is quite common to software engineers.  Project Managers sometimes ask the software engineers to provide estimate and oftentimes the same task can be estimated anywhere between 3 days to 2 months, for example.  No one would challenge the estimate as long as you provide it with an authoritative convoluted detail technical explanation.  Projects would sometimes get delayed without assigning extra tasks to your portion, so you have more time to wait.   Software engineers would then spend their time to do self-study for new skills preparing for their next job.

Thanks for bringing up MrsK's post again. Her description sounds eerily familiar to my work environment -  from the on-site gym disappearance act during off-peak gym hours (another bonus is you have a mostly empty gym with no wait lines), to walking around inside and outside of the building, to orchestrating my own layoff in the next year or two.

Orchestrating the layoff is a little more tricky because I do value a good work ethic and would do my best to do my assigned tasks well (part of my perfectionist tendencies, I guess). I wouldn't sabotage any work projects, just the useless training and testing parts that don't add to the company's bottom line. So I will have to see what layoff opportunities open up when I feel comfortable to pull the plug on my 25ish or so year career and enter the FIRE. I don't want poor work performance to be the trigger for a layoff. I consider that "bad karma". I may ask for some extended time off or something to test the waters with management. With any luck, planned workforce reductions will favor in nicely with my scheduled FIRE. I expect a sizable severance package whenever that happens - enough to live on for a year. That year will be my FIRE-training-wheels time to get me used to living off of savings.

Procrastination does work well in software development. With the changing scope and requirements that happens on all projects, starting too much development too early on in the process usually means a bunch of rework when the requirements change. ;-)

[Daisy]

... two posts

Ahh, Daisy.  I enjoyed both of your posts -- yes, Agile and SCRUM (or any other impl of Agile) are going to make the industry more difficult for employees to be happy.  They're micromanaging techniques masked in a methodology which promotes ever-increasing productivity and faster release schedules. 

For folks that need constant guidance, it may help keep them on track.  For self-motivated people who, as you say, prefer to work in spurts, it simply makes work less pleasant, because most of us don't like or need the unceasing supervision.

I also engage in holiday work-avoidance vacation scheduling.  One of our teams is doing a big appliance upgrade between Christmas and New Years this year and the work is scheduled to start at 2AM on 2 different nights.  They needed a resource from my group.  I immediately put the days on the calendar to protect myself from being assigned.  Because: I can. 

It's so good to be FI.  You can construct a work environment that's more pleasant for you (whatever that happens to be) without any fear whatsoever of repercussions.  For me, more pleasant = less work off-hours work and most importantly, fewer meetings.

I've enjoyed your posts and blog as well. I haven't had such dreadful work environments as you seem to have had, but the tides-are-a-changing in my current work environment and it may soon get to the point where I will want out. I am more of a self-motivated person that doesn't like constant supervision. I have to balance that with being a lazy person that needs deadlines (whether externally or self imposed) or else I would just think about stuff and not act until the last minute.

The main reason I want out though is because I am done with my 25ish year career in software which was never what I had really planned to get into. It has been interesting, creative, and prosperous - but I've got to move on to my other interests in life.

I will miss the great group of people I work with. I've made a lot of lifelong friends by working at mostly the same company the whole time. Ex co-workers do tend to stay invited to parties, trips, and happy hours so I don't think it will be too bad. Plus, I have a whole lot of other friends/acquaintances in the non-work activities in my life as well.

[Daisy]

Thanks Cathy. I'm pretty sure I've read his article, but it's been a while. I'll have to go take a look.

I don't think it will be too hard to engineer my layoff, as it seems to be a continuous thing going on in my company for the past two years. I just need to make sure I am ready for FIRE, then try to figure out a politically correct way to phrase it to my manager(s) (don't we all have multiple managers in software?), without divulging the size of my stash or desire to no longer be in the rat race. No sense in burning any bridges in case I need to come begging for a job in the future. ;-)

I've got elderly parents that need help and other budding interests that some are aware of, so I will try to use those as my reasons. I'm known for taking all of my vacation time and doing exciting sports related things during my time off, so I can try for a leave of absence to go on a long long hiking trip or something like that. Then they may say...leave of absence - are you nuts?