avatarJesse Bramani

Summary

The article discusses the inefficiency and stress associated with pretending to work rather than actually completing tasks.

Abstract

The author reflects on the experience of working with an individual, referred to as "X," who excelled at appearing busy without accomplishing much, and contrasts this with the mental toll of avoiding real work in a software development job. The article emphasizes that while pretending to work might seem like a harmless way to pass time, it leads to increased stress, mental clutter, and the need for excuses, ultimately making the actual completion of tasks more difficult. It suggests that tackling difficult tasks head-on, akin to the concept of "eating the frog," is more beneficial for productivity and mental well-being.

Opinions

  • The author implies that appearing busy without being productive is a skill that can be observed and recognized in the workplace.
  • It is suggested that the act of pretending to work is more mentally exhausting than actually doing the work.
  • The author criticizes the practice of avoiding tasks and points out that it leads to a cycle of procrastination and increased difficulty in completing work.
  • There is an underlying opinion that professional ethics should encourage actual productivity over the mere appearance of busyness.
  • The article promotes the idea that confronting challenging tasks directly is more fulfilling and less stressful in the long run.
  • The author advocates for the efficiency of genuine effort and the mental benefits of completing tasks, contrasting it with the counterproductive nature of simulating work.

It Takes More Effort to Pretend You’re Working

When you’re the one expected to do the work, you’re not fooling anyone

Photo by Anna Mcphee on Unsplash

There’s something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk. — Drew Barrymore

In my college days, I held a restaurant job. Minimum wage, unpredictable hours, demanding customers…the usual.

At this gig, I worked with a particularly skilled individual. Let’s call him X, to avoid racial profiling in the current woke culture.

What was X’s skill, you might think? How much skill might one need in a restaurant job? For one thing, he wasn’t the cook. He didn’t bus tables on the dining floor. He was simply an assistant, a second pair of hands. If you needed someone to mop up a spill, you’d call on X. If you needed someone to mind the grill for a few minutes, X was your man. Oh, the linens just got delivered? X would put them away in storage.

X was the man. X was dependable.

Except when he was not.

His skill lay in always looking extremely busy. He hardly ever sat around and chatted during the lulls.

The rest of us had observed X many times from afar as he went about simply clanging pots around in the industrial sink in the back. Was he washing the pots? No, he would just bang them around the sink under the running water, making a lot of noise, transfer them to the adjacent sink, repeat, then transfer back again. Then, he would walk away to go “do something else.” When we would inspect the pots in the sink after he walked away, they were largely in the exact same level of griminess, and also now wet and a tiny bit sudsier. Maybe pots just weren’t his thing, and someone else usually ended up actually taking care of them.

Folding and refolding the already folded linens was another thing.

He would always take a peek into the grease traps as if to get ready to clean them. Though, he never did. Not once. Many times, we checked the traps ourselves and yes, they were ready to be cleaned.

The old adage goes “measure twice, cut once.” In those instances, X measured more than twice but never cut.

Another adage goes “do it right the first time to avoid having to redo it.” X did it, not necessarily wrong, but just didn’t actually do it at all. He was fine to redo it over and over…and again one more time, without actually doing it at all.

He looked busy. He was busy.

He was just busy doing non-productive work. He wasn’t gunning for a promotion. He wasn’t jonesing for the non-existent “Assistant II” position. Maybe he was just fidgety. But even so, he could have kept fidgety hands doing something real.

There were cobwebs behind the fridge. He could have fiddled with those.

There were probably some on the roof too. He could have fiddled there as well.

Looking Busy as a Software Developer

I had a close friend reveal to me a few things he did at his software job to appear busy, usually in the waning hours of a Friday afternoon when he was mentally drained and ready for the weekend.

Just to run out the clock, running low on mental fumes, he would:

  • Compile the project. Run a build. Add a comment or two. Build it all again. For the non-coder crowd, adding a comment does not affect the code build. This would be like starting your car, popping the hood to listen for strange sounds, taking a long meaningful look at the engine’s innards, and then closing the hood. Then, adjusting the mirror and going through the whole engine-hood-inspection routine again. The mirror is like the code comment — completely unrelated to the working operations of the engine.
  • Type a few search terms in Stack Overflow. Scrolling and reading through this website is very normal for a developer and coming up on this activity looks — and usually is — legit.
  • Open and close files in the project. Moving tabs around. Reconfiguring the layout of the IDE (the code editor)
  • Switch a lot between the IDE, the browser, the source control software….just a lot of window switching. Throw in Excel and Jira for good measure.
  • Search for stuff in the code. Just to search. Virtual pot clanging!

I totally get why my developer friend would just want to appear busy to run out the clock. Software development can be extremely mentally exhausting and draining. Professional ethics aside, he wasn’t doing anything egregiously wrong.

Obviously, it would be more appropriate to actually do the work, rather than only pretending to do so. The work didn’t get done. It was still there.

Going through additional rounds of faking the work is itself mentally draining. Avoiding the real work, for whatever reason, only adds more stress of knowing the work is still there. The feeling of fulfillment and accomplishment is put on hold for the sake of the temporary relief of avoiding a painful or difficult task.

Avoiding or putting off the difficult items on the to-do list, instead of eating the frog, you can easily elevate your stress and anxiety, which in turn, affects even the simple and easy tasks.

The unfinished work is mental clutter

It’s like your own stack of dishes accumulating in the sink. Or the bursting laundry hamper that has forced you to go to your stack of semi-clean clothes hanging on the back of the chair. Delaying the organization of the household clutter creates mental clutter.

Taking out the trash can to the curb is a minor chore with a weekly “deadline.” What’s the worst that could happen? Heavier garbage can filled with involuntary composting. You can keep procrastinating this weekly task until you can’t anymore. The garbage can is simply too full, swarming with flies and now takes more physical effort to wheel out to the street.

Avoiding the stories assigned to you in your scrum meetings forces you to dream up excuses and scenarios for why the tasks weren’t completed. You may initially convince the rest of the team that your blockers were valid, but guess what, come the next scrum meeting, you either need to have completed the task, begun work on the task, or come up with a whole new set of fake reasons why the task didn’t get completed. Of these three, the latter is more difficult to do and gets more difficult with each passing day. Also, the work is still pending and awaiting your actual effort adding to the mental strain.

Luckily, the accumulation of items in the task-management software doesn’t attract flies or mold.

No amount of fake window movements, smoke-screen word searches, or unnecessary builds and compiles will actually get the work done. Stop compiling code comments and actually write the code that gets you to mark the tasks done.

Don’t be like X. Instead of clanging around the pots, it would be a lot easier for you and everyone else, to just wash, dry, and put the pots away. Your brain and your blood pressure will be better for it.

Work
Productivity
Self-awareness
Learning
Brian Tracy
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