Anyone else not actually that busy at work?

[ButteredRadishes]

I work part time and probably half if it is spent not doing any actual work... Just mindless internet browsing, looking for holidays, searching Facebook marketplace, doing life admin. Etc.

I complete all my tasks and more, so I don't feel guilty.

My workload is variable too, sometimes it's crazy busy, others, I just keep things ticking along and diy. They balance out I think?

Productivity studies consistently show that we do about 3.5h productive work.

I spend 3.5h being very productive, then the rest of the day is spent in meetings or being available, and pootling through tasks.

Yes. And I'm bored, so bored!

I can’t stand not being busy for long periods as it affects my mental health (as weird as it sounds).

This is very definitely me. I've been in the same role for decades and it was always very busy and I loved it. I'm with a different company now and the work has just dried up. I can rarely fill a day. There may be people who are happy to sit reading a book (and I LOVE reading) or scroll through their phone at work but I'm not one of them. When I'm at work I want to work and earn my money. It's starting to have an effect on my already not brilliant mental health but I'm too old and scared to look for something else 😔

thats the other thing about using the companies wifi is the digital logs, i can see why pen and paper are the better options or brochures etc

Ours log internet, but don't monitor it. So like if there were concerns over productivity etc , they can look into it. But generally they actually refuse.

Interesting question. I am likely to be entering a period where I won't be very busy (I think) but this is after several years of being very busy doing complex stuff. I can already feel it slowing down and one part of my brain goes - at last I can take my foot off the pedal and the other part of the brain is terrified of being bored.

I notice colleagues who are in similar position are creating work that doesn't need doing or over engineering work that does need doing. I find that more annoying.

I have a lot to do at work but the kind of work I do means I can only do so many different tasks a day before I run out of usable equipment and then I run out of things to do and get bored and usually end up cleaning to fill the time, but now I have a trainee to do the cleaning for me so I just have nothing to do for periods of time during the day. Usually walk around seeing what other people are doing, or go say hello to the dog next door.

Doesn't at all. Have you ever read Bullshit Jobs? David Graeber talks about the negative impact of feeling bored and underused at work at length. Some people really struggle with it.

Im either insanely busy where an 8 hour day extends into 10/12 and i havent stopped to eat, or its slow and im internet browsing after all jobs done.
There doesnt seem to be an in-between.

I notice colleagues who are in similar position are creating work that doesn't need doing or over engineering work that does need doing. I find that more annoying.

My mat leave cover drives me BONKERS with this.

At first when I returned I was slightly intimidated by the volume of documentation he'd produced in my absence. They'd struggled to recruit, and I was marked by a few comments from some quarters about "we don't need you back, haha".

But once I settled in, I realised how much sheer bloody gumph he was producing. Our work is in compliance, and I'm really keen that you don't use a sentence where a bullet point will do, and that we don't unnecessarily tie people up in red tape. His approach is... The opposite. If the question is how many cases this will create, he'll write four sentences instead of one number range.

It's really turned people off our work stream - but gratifyingly, I've noticed that he's now been instructed to copy my work.

I work for a charity, it’s always busy, there is no down time and always a waiting list.

I'm on nights (public transport worker) and though I HATE having to work when most sane people are sleeping, actually there's not much work to be done at my location right now.

During the day, as with all service industries, there's never enough staff and we do get extremely busy.

Yes, I understand what you mean. The job I am in basically means I am the most senior person onside. I report to a board of six directors offsite rarely.

Most of them are very inefficient and judge my job by their standards and the standards of the previous person. They think that I do overtime to finish a certain set of reports as I submit them the day after I can access the data I require. They expect them within a month.

I spend a lot of my time doing online course and mumsnet.

I've had some underemployed jobs, which I found quite stressful! In both cases I tried to find more i could help with but for various beaurocratic reasons I want able - I left one and the second was made redundant.

Current role is usually busy but it does have some quiet bits I feel better about that because the busy parts make up for it and it's quite mentally taxing too.

Yes and no- some days its wildly busy and others it's fairly quiet. I will say part of what they pay me for is my experience though, and my experience is often why I can complete tasks pretty quickly.

People who’s rent busy what do you do for a job? Just out of interest ☺️

Me.
I just sign whatever is put in front of me.
In bigly letters,
Although, methinks all these beautiful ideas are mine, all mine, they just flow outta my mouth like Dysentery, so my staff say.
I don't know who Dysentery was, some Greek philosopher, I spose?

I’m with you! Teachers are never not busy, currently covering lessons Willy nilly where other subject teachers are moderating work or on trips!

AI has reduced my workload massively, and I'm bored!

I was in a ‘front line’ NHS job and it was utter chaos; a combination of overwork, understaffing but probably the biggest issue was my team over 5 years veering 💯 from competent to 💯 ‘developing world’ trained. No one knew what they were doing, no organisational skills, poor communication skills, limited English. I could handle any amount of busy when it was the nature of the job, but once it became chaotic due to the nature of my fellow workers, nope.

I quit. I’m now doing (a fair bit) of ‘bank’ in a private place and it is a different world. If I am honest, it can get a bit boring, but by and large we don’t have to pretend to be busy when there is no work! There are 3 to 4 of us doing the work there’d be 2 of us doing in the NHS. And I’ll sit around quite a lot for £30ph!

In my last job working for a start up I was lucky if I had two hours worth of work a day. The rest was just talking literal nonsense (everyone spoke in wank corporate speak) and ‘strategising’. I hated it. I need to be busy at work or I get demotivated very quickly. On the upside it was wfh and the house had never been so clean. But I felt a fraud.

Me. Gone down to very part time and now instead of having my own projects I now cover colleagues when they are off or busy. But people rarely are so can do all work (allocated by LM) in about an hour. If I wasn’t so close to retirement (later this year) I would go mad.

I used to be a lot more busy. I used to spend a lot of time travelling, or even just moving from meeting to meeting. And having to attend face to face meetings meant that I couldn’t get on with other work while in the meeting. I’ve got a really good system for organising emails so I’m totally on top of that. No one calls now, which also makes things easier as I have a written record of what is being asked as it comes via message of email. I’ve got quicker at reading things on a screen rather than printing stuff off. All these things do add up. My computer works better now, so less time spent having to sit on the phone to IT. In my line of work it’s easier to get hold of people now they primarily work on their computers or are contactable on their mobiles. There has also been a bit of a change in expectations which is welcome - I’m possibly better at negotiating now so people getting 80% of what they need instead of 100% but the last part took ages to do properly.
Outside of work I’m also better organised (because of my phone) so the time I have at work I have I can focus better and get things done more quickly. I should probably try to get a more challenging job but it’s a bad time at the moment so I’m enjoying my slacking - I am very experienced in my role so it makes sense that I can do things more quickly than I used to.