We all work very hard in our jobs, right? Looking for ways to be more efficient and productive. Well, perhaps not all of us. Or perhaps not all the time.
The art of not working at work
Most work sociologists tend toward the view that non-work at work is a marginal, if not negligible, phenomenon. What all statistics point towards is a general intensification of work with more and more burnouts and other stress syndromes troubling us. Yet there are more-detailed surveys reporting that the average time spent on private activities at work is between 1.5 and three hours a day. …Even if the percentage of workers who claim they are working at the pinnacle of their capacity all the time is slowly increasing, the majority still remains unaffected. In fact, the proportion of people who say they never work hard has long been far greater than those who say they always do. The articles and books about the stressed-out fraction of humanity can be counted in the thousands, but why has so little been written about this opposite extreme?
It’s an interesting article, but I wonder if it really applies here in the UK. Take this paragraph, for example.
Many would say that the underworked should talk to their bosses, but that doesn’t always help. I spoke with a Swedish bank clerk who said he was only doing 15 minutes’ worth of work a day. He asked his manager for more responsibilities, to no avail, then told his boss of his idleness. Did he get more to do? Barely. When I spoke with him, he was working three-hour days—there were laws that barred any workday shorter than that—and his intervention only added another 15 minutes to his workload.
In this austerity-stricken land would the equivalent worker, who admits to only doing 15 minutes’ work a day, still have a job after admitting that? They’re admitting their post is superfluous and are asking to be dismissed, surely.
Miscellaneous Details 