Is everyone else pretending they’re drowning in work?

[Shareadog]

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’m constantly listening to relatively senior people on the team claim to be “overwhelmed” and “snowed under”.

Meanwhile there are competent juniors on their teams who call me asking for work!!!

So, something is going on isn’t it? Either they’re not delegating effectively and / or they’re highly inefficient and / or they’re exaggerating their business to justify their existence.

And I also hear people say “not bad just busy” when I ask how they are!

I used to work in local government and the workload was insane. HTH

i work in fundraising, which by its nature means that there is always more to do than there is time for.

I often wonder this too OP. I used to wonder if maybe I was lazy but I’m on my third role in my current organisation and it’s all the same. Very manageable.

Reading with interest. Lots of viable theories suggested.

Inefficiency, procrastination (I'm guilty of that one), poor planning, slow processing speeds ... agree with all those.

Another very common phenomenon is people saying how busy/stretched/at capacity they are, not because it's true, but to duck out of being given anything else. I work at a law firm and lawyer productivity is very easy to measure in black and white because we have to record our chargeable hours. There have been people who did the competitively busy thing and batted back any requests to take on more work because "soooo busy". Imagine my surprise when I got to senior level and could then see everyone's stats. The soooo busy people weren't even meeting their daily targets. Others who didn't make a song and dance about being busy and stressed were way over target.

Another thing I've noticed since being a manager is that many people have a complete lack of ownership for their work and expect to be spoon fed. I very frequently get questions about rates for this client and SLAs for that client or a template for drafting a certain type of document, when I know they already have this information, often because I've given it to them previously or it's on the intranet. Often I'd be in a client meeting and couldn't get back to them for half a day and I think they just twiddle their thumbs waiting for me to (re)supply the info. I've now taken to saying "I know I've sent this to you before, go and look through your emails. Create some outlook folders so you know where to find the reference material. I am not a library."

These are very clever people with law degrees and a professional qualification but some of them just don't seem to be able to think for themselves.

I’ve never had a job where I’m really busy. I can think of a few days when I’ve felt totally overwhelmed but that’s it. I’m pretty quick though which helps massively. I wish we could all just go home once our work is done but of course some people would take the piss do companies can’t do that. I spend a lot of time staring at the walls.

My experience is there are different types of people. Quite a few of which do make extra work for themselves, some who are very loud about how much they have to do, but actually you struggle to notice a correlating output.

I think some people are good at focus their time on output rather than effort. Experience shows me that people can be very obviously and loudly making effort but their output can be low.

I think you have been lucky & don’t have a wide experience with different roles/sectors/types of businesses to make this assumption.

my company has gone from a startup to big corporation after being acquired by a large conglomerate. In the start up days it was hectic & insanely busy due to lack of good processes or systems, high expected output of work to grow quickly but also not having the right staff to cover all areas & everyone was expected to just ‘muddle in’ - job descriptions were loose/ambiguous.

now being part of a larger company a lot of the above has been resolved & it’s much more manageable from an employee’s POV.

conversely, my husband’s company is large & established but they are continually acquiring new companies & growing. This growth puts lots of pressure & resistance on back office employees because processes, systems & integration of systems cannot keep up operationally, which means to perform everyday tasks takes a lot of time & manual checking. Coupled with tight deadlines that are set externally (he works in finance/accounting) his workload & deadlines always seem bonkers to me, but he apparently doesn’t have much control in sorting these out.

My last job was too busy - they replaced me as a part timer doing 9-2.30 with a full time worker. My current role is only 4 hours a day but it's wonderfully manageable and autonomous. However as someone said - I am the Accounts Manager so there are pinch points in the month where I am flat out.

I don't really need to busywork. Part of my job is just being present in reception and my company knows this. They're not fussed if I listen to a podcast or whatever in-between.

I don't think you're the only one. I suspect there's a huge difference between being genuinely busy and having your day constantly interrupted by meetings, emails and little bits of admin that make people feel busy without actually producing much work. Some people also seem to wear being overwhelmed as a badge of honour. If you're getting good feedback, taking on extra work when needed and still have quieter periods, I'd probably just count yourself lucky rather than assume everyone else is exaggerating.

I'm public sector and literally drowning in work all the time, always have tight deadlines and too many pieces of work on. Often work late to catch up. But love my job as you don't have time to be bored!

I think sometimes when people get overwhelmed they feel busy but actually are very unproductive.

Same with burn out etc.

I'm EXACTLY the same! And I also don't understand how everyone else is apparently so busy.

I do a relatively senior role. Always get great feedback, people love my work - I regularly get praised for it. But, I only feel like I do maybe 2 - 3 hours of real work a day! Unless maybe there's an event or something.

I think like you, I'm just really efficient. I also don't really feel the pressure to work hard until there's a deadline. But I don't know if everyone is the same as me (says they're busy when they aren't) or I am somehow not doing enough work!

I think it's really about working style. I've worked with people who can take 4hrs over something I can do in an hour. However, my work will inevitably contain a few mistakes here and there. Their's won't. But that's what teams are for and knowing indivdual strengths.

Just like in our personal lives - you can have someone who on a weekend has a hair appointment, a supermarket shop, dinner with mates and a child to take to football and they'll describe it as 'hectic'. Another person can describe that exact weekend as a quiet on.

People in my work generally get shot down pretty quick if they constantly pull the 'I'm so busy' card. It's not seen as a flex to not be able to cope with your workload.

Peaks and troughs in my role. I can coast doing nothing for a very long time or fill my days with ‘training’ , then suddenly I’m under immense pressure working until 2am