Finally, a question where i can shine. You don’t have to do anything specific. Just do things.
Use a headset with your phone or laptop: You are on a call. Most people don’t speak much at online meetings.
Take a little nap? Thinking.
Want some time alone? Go to a meeting room. Works even better if the room has glass walls since you can see them and they can see that you are “busy”, but no one sees your screen.
Have multiple monitors. There’s always something work-related on at least one screen.
Have fields of interest that blend in. If one of your hobbies is vaguely related to work you are golden. You can totally read something unrelated to work during working time if it seems most your attention goes towards work. (See multiple screens and some switching back and force.)
Shift your working hours slightly from the norm, i.e. come 5 min earlier than others.
Don’t hide windows with non-work stuff when someone sees them. Too late. Act as if you have nothing to hide.
Do a reasonable work-life blend. Work overtime occasionally at odd hours and make managers know that you solved an emergency in your free time. Gives you an excuse to leave early or slack off the next day and any other day.
React to emails with a resonable delay. Of course, you can help, but not right now. You are busy.
Block your calendar and decline invites.
Don’t hide windows with non-work stuff when someone sees them. Too late. Act as if you have nothing to hide.
i’m sure someone will pop up here with these fake reddit things where it looks like you are browsing emails
Microsoft Viva Insights will really fuck you on this plan. There’s just no escaping it anymore.
what does viva insights do exactly?
It’s a workplace monitoring tool dressed up as a workplace wellness tool.
You know that table that shows the risk of employees who might burn out, given their meeting frequency, teams interactions, email rate, work hours etc.? If you flip the sorting order, you can measure who isn’t doing enough (by whatever metrics the employer decides).
Viva la gone freedom
At my last company, we would walk around with our laptops. People would just assume we were looking for a meeting room or had something important to do.
I can’t quite remember what we did at our desks specifically. However, I do remember a guy I worked with used to browse Wikipedia and Tinder.
Co worker and I would book meeting rooms then close it up and play coop bloons
We used to play UNO. It started with 2-3 people and ended up with being 5-6 people playing and more watching. It was loads of fun
Use the buddy system. Years ago I had a work-friend, we’d just book meetings with each other a couple of times a week, go to a meeting room and just hang out, I taught him to juggle, or we’d watch an episode from a series etc.
It was fun feeling like we got away with something, but realistically nobody questioned it because we both got our work done and it was a good company where that mattered more than time spent at a desk.
Their reasoning being that their employees were using unethical behavior while the company itself has been in multiple lawsuits for unethical behavior
What does one call that again? Fucking hypocrits
Terminal -> vim with syntax hilighting -> some source code. Passerbys won’t know what your code is for or what it’s supposed to do, but it’ll make you look busy and you can tinker with your own projects.
A friend of mine has a highly complex spreadsheet open at all times at work. He’s a D&D DM and uses that sheet to easily calculate price fluctuations in finished goods based on changes in resource price.
Bingo, that’s what I do
Im the sole IT guy at a non profit. I could probably have a movie playing, but if power shell is open I’m covered. It’s hilarious and glorious.
Even cleaning up junk from your OS Filesystem looks like you are working, and you discover things you forgot you had
That’s what I do, well I don’t clean the Filesystem of the OS my company decides, but I hook up my phone or sometimes my own SSD and just start organizing.
Back in the day, I used to grab any piece of paper, and then walk around the entire office with a slightly angry and urgent look on my face as if I was going to talk to someone important. Do a lap. Back to your desk. Job done.
Your pace of walking definitely has a huge impact on people’s impression of you.
Have a look at online courses. w3school, udemy, coursera have IT related courses if that’s your thing, there are other sites that have online courses too. Free ebooks at gutenberg.org that you can download or read online. Do a search for “text only news”, find a site you like, catch up on the daily news; just looks like a page of text from a distance.
Microsoft has loads of free stuff that you can use to learn a variety of things that are useful for IT at least.
Seek more work. Find tasks you can help on, earn brownie points, don’t offer to do anything extra that takes more than 30 minutes to get done. Don’t overdo it, and make sure to also use the downtime to grab a federally required break, stretch, drink water, meditate, do some calisthenics.
The first part boosts how you’re perceived by others: your bosses will take note of your enthusiasm, your coworkers will appreciate you more; this is why it’s important to not overdo it—you don’t want your extra effort to be the new baseline expectation.
The second part boosts your health, mood and productivity.
If you find you have more free time than these fill, consider asking your employer to sponsor certifications/continuing education in your field to further your career, or just talking with your boss about taking on more responsibilities for a raise. But still make sure to “leave room on your plate” to do the aforementioned breaks. If the money/career growth isn’t an issue, consider negotiating reduced hours so you have more free time.
I go from one place to another, greet people, talk, drink coffee, have a snack, go to the toilet, etc, etc. They are pushing working from the office more and more saying it’s better for connecting with colleagues, so I go to and do that.
I think once I saw a web browser that made websites look like its code. So you were looking for bugs while browsing.
There was certainly a plug-in or something that made Reddit look like an Excel spreadsheet, so reading Reddit made you look like you were doing important calculations!
I mostly wfh so not really a problem anynore. However, I had a trick from before covid. My companies av is trash, it scans any new files created with a single thread, there’s a exception for the directory we compile in (although it’s frequently failing and scanning anyway 🙄) but I keep a repo outside that directory for when I want make my compile take 6hours instead of 10minutes. I also have this as my screensaver
Gawd I’m so glad I work in a factory.
Y’all’s jobs sound fucking awful lol
It’s highly dependent on the job, the employer, and the employee.
Some love highly monotonous work and some hate it.
There is also a higher physical risk with factory work that should be considered.
True, I’ve lost consciousness due to the heat before so it’s not a safe work environment.
I guess I’d rather die than be bored.
That’s a weird choice but whatever works for you I guess.
When you’re bored every second feels like an hour.
When you’re dead time just flies by!
Fair enough.
You really have to find a job where you are not bored if you are able.
keep typing