Is everyone else pretending they’re drowning in work?

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I’ve worked in office jobs for about 25 years, and I’ve always wondered: do people in self-directed, knowledge-based roles actually spend 37-40 hours a week actively working?

I almost never have, the only exceptions have been during major pitches. However, I’ve consistently received strong reviews and positive feedback. I was promoted last year.

In my current, fairly senior role, I’m regularly praised for both the quality and speed of my work and I definitely don’t avoid taking on extra work or projects. Maybe I’ve just been unusually lucky with manageable workloads, but after this many years that seems unlikely.

I’m not off doing anything exciting—I’m available and responsive—but there are decent stretches when I just don’t have much to do.

Everyone else around me constantly complains they’re drowning, overworked etc.

Am I the weird one, or is everyone else stretching the truth about how busy they are in these type of senior roles?

I don't think I am ever drowning in work (academic). I have busy times, and less busy times, but I stay on top of it. I am very time-efficient and good at saying no, though. There is a bit of a competitive busy-ness thing going on among academics I meet, where people love to complain about how overworked and exhausted they are. I don't really see that they are tbh, it is more a culture of complaining about it.

I’m howling at this - one pt worker being replaced by 5 FT’ers. Can you pause time??

I am senior and I am swamped right now (I work in a field adjacent to politics so it’s all quiet there!)
I have responsibility for party conferences and this is taking time taking away from my day job. I am also taking leave soon - so am losing that capacity as I very much do not want to be checking emails when we’re away.

I am not paid to sit behind a desk from 9-5 - but I’m currently just running out of time hence me working this morning (and yesterday almost all day when I don’t work on a Friday.)

Needs must - I’ll have some incredibly ‘light weeks’ to follow though!

I think it depends. Most of the time it's good. Not too busy, but not with nothing to do.

However there are times of year when it's manic, plus also if there have been reasons why things are disrupted then it can go into manic. I've had a week of annual leave, my colleague has also had a week of annual leave, and I've done 3 days worth of courses in the last month, and currently, although the work at this time of year is slightly less than most other points, I do feel somewhat overbusy at work.
But I know it will pass and then we'll have a quiet August and be back to normal in September.

I think it depends on the role. If you work in a reactive role you are going to feel stressed and busy in a busy job. If you can manage your own time a bit more then you can usually manage it.

I find loads of people work really inefficiently, have meetings that could have been emails, don’t plan projects properly at the start… then they end up busy and stressed.

in my last job, this person left who said they were highly busy, could never take on a new task and was always deflecting attending meetings. When they left I temporarily covered their role, I was fully prepared to die with stress and discovered I could do all their tasks in 30 minutes or less per day!

Now I’m a bit suspicious of people who say they are busy all the time.

No, in the course of a month I'll have some really full on days where it's near on impossible to get even a break. However this is interspersed with probably 2/3 of the time where I'm WFH and doing tasks linked to the full on days but the foot is off the gas.
I no longer have an unmanageable ongoing workload.

You're making a big assumption that people who WFH don't actually work? Why?

I am not. I do know that lots of people working from home work, and plenty.
But I am drawing conclusions from those who doubt others are really busy and say that others are pretending to be busy. And then they are the actual ones saying "oh, really busy to others" when they are asked. So, they arethe actual fake ones. Those people damp tasks on others, that is why they are not that busy. And it is particularly those who can cover up their iddleness by not being in the same site or working from home. Zero respect to fake people like this.

I plod along keeping busy in an autonomous role. I could be a lot busier but I refuse to work harder when empty positions aren't filled. The waiting list can grow as much as it does, I don't worry.

Eh? This is nonsensical!

No, it is not. You do think that others are pretending to be busy. While it is you that pretends to be busy, by replying with a fake answer, instead of saying the truth and taking a bit more of the work. Many people like you leave tasks for others, making them unfairly busy, even overworked. You should be ashamed, to be honest. If you are efficient, then perfect. But just say to your organisation that you could take a few more tasks. Be flipping honest.

I think you’re just either lucky or better/ more intelligent/ better at organisation than you think. I was always drowning at work but it’s because I always prioritised wrong, starting with tasks that should have been done at another time. My friends are mostly organised people and regularly are bemused/ sigh over the things people get wrong. The thought of ever working with them terrifies me!!

I have peaks and troughs but don’t draw attention to the troughs. Highly paid role, but they’re not paying for my day to day work, but rather the direction and efficiency of my team. If I can do that and have long breaks or slide off early, then win/win.

My role is very "un-senior" (and also PT). I have periods of being incredibly busy and periods when things are a bit slower. I'm never twiddling my thumbs though, I deal with A/R so it's ongoing and neverending.

My manager is genuinely swamped and her manager even more so. It seems the higher up the food chain you go, the more that is expected of you. But they have the pay to match the responsibilities.

This I agree with. You do not need to kill yourself for a job. And you will put the effort in when needed, so it balances up.

But there are people who are always busy, to fit in, as OP says. Leaving others to drown, in the undone tasks. MN seems to have one of these threads every month or so....

Yes, I'm always extremely busy now, mainly due to increased regulations, red tape and meetings.

We used to be staffed my mature, full time introverts, who quietly and efficiently got on with things. They slowly left and now we're staffed with young, extrovert, part time people, who constantly want encouragement and help - pep-talks even.

Everything needs a Teams meeting or in person chat, there's a lot more friction and bickering between people and the Directors are nowhere in sight (work from home while staff are office based).

There are umpteen systems in place now which you need to engage with - One Drive, CRM, email, Teams, intranet, logs, Sharepoint and everything is a portal with ten steps to gain access (which logs you out after three minutes). It's exhausting.

The meetings are the worst though, nine times out of ten, it could have been an email.

Some people are much slower than others and there are different attitudes to the standard of work people are happy to produce.

My ex and I did exactly the same job but he always felt overwhelmed whereas I could easily have done my job in four days a week. The differences were that I can speed read and get the jist of something quickly while he’s a VERY slow reader and can tell you the detail of every word. My work was ‘fit for purpose’ - it answered the question it was supposed to answer and it did it well - but my ex would spend three times as long producing a piece of work that arrived at the same conclusions and with the same recommendations, but it would go all round the houses to get there and was very detail oriented. We were both good at the job, but brought very different skills to it (and no, I wasn’t sloppy or throughother, but I didn’t take longer than the task needed.

I certainly think work is very unevenly distributed - in two out of my six office jobs (my second and my last job) I was underemployed. In both cases they were new posts and in both cases I tried to get more to do but workplace bureaucracy meant it wasn't feasible. The first one I left - I wish I'd had the guts to tell them 'really there's about one week of work a month, you just need to hire a freelance editor to do that week', but I was too young and awkward to say it. Second one I was made redundant after 18 months, which didn't surprise me as there clearly wasn't enough work.

ah, performative busyness. My previous role was exceptionally busy but current one, not so much. Much more manageable but I’m now in a team that has half the work of my previous team but the other manager will regularly say “I was working until 10pm last night!” And I struggle to keep a poker face because my brain is screaming “doing what?!”

my role is now a mix and I have busy and quiet days. I don’t necessarily let on I’m quiet on those days as it’s helpful thinking time as a manager but I never imply to my direct reports I’m drowning. To be honest, it’s really not as impressive as the other manager thinks. Just tells me her time management sucks.

‘Tell me you’ve never worked in a senior office role managing your own clients without telling me’ springs to mind here….you’re just not understanding how these workplaces and roles operate. I am not contributing in any way shape or form to others being more busy. So stop accusing me of things that aren’t accurate and stick to what you know.

100%. Someone the other day said ‘a reminder that an end of the day deadline is technically midnight.’ Implying he was working till then. And I thought like you, doing what?

I work in a kitchen so I'm always busy. I sometimes won't get chance to go to the toilet until it's time to go home.

Work in an accounts department of any business, and you have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual deadlines all of which have to be met, with no exceptions and no extensions. So when you are busy, you are damn busy because things HAVE to be completed by a specific date. There is absolutely no getting out of it.

Apparently my colleague had to do all of her management role out of hours… 90% of our management role is supporting the people on our teams so I’ve no idea how she did that without them working during that time. Signing off annual leave and expenses takes 10 minutes 🤷🏻‍♀️

I barely respond or react now, just change the subject.

I work in marketing and according to my planner, I have 113 live or planned projects to complete by the end of this year. Yes, I am officially drowning 🤣

But I am currently a team of one so that’s the real problem.

Yes ditto. More work less people. In the rare event I manage to get more on top of things I spend the time sorting out all the non urgent e mails I’ve not even opened yet 🤣
However, because of this, the time goes quickly and I have a great manager so I’m happy in my job.