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.
Id say the one thing I kind of disagree with here is the emails. If I’m at my computer and the email says “Are you able to handle this 15 minute job for me by EOD?” I respond immediately “Yeah, I can fit that in.” and then go back to whatever it was I was doing and handle it later.
If someone is asking me to do a big job I dont reply immediately and go do some prep work for the big job and email them an hour later. “Not a problem, Ill get on it ASAP.”
If you respond and get tasks done immediately sometimes it makes them think you must be in the middle of something when you dont. When someone gives you a big task that will take 4 hours and they check in on you 3 hours after you reply to the email and you’re almost finished, it puffs up your ability.
But in general I agree, responding to emails is a great tool for managing perceptions and expectations.
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
I Remote Desktop from my personal computer into my work computer. All personal stuff happens on the personal computer, the work computer is work stuff only. There is no way for my work to know I am “goofing off” while working.
There is. Viva insights doesn’t even track keyboard and mouse activity as far as I know. It’s about teams usage, meetings, calls, chats, etc.
Oh I definitely still do plenty of that, I’m doing my job after all.
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
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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
Find a boss who doesn’t care. So far I’ve never had a boss that insists that I look busy all the time. As long as I’m getting my work done they don’t care what I do. I spend a lot of time at my desk reading books on my phone. If your boss is being an ass about you using your downtime how you want when all of your work is done then that is not someone you want to work for.
It’s not that my boss cares per se, but I still think people form a subconscious image of your work ethic, and I think it’s always better to be seen as a “hard worker” when it comes to promotion time
I worked with a guy that if he slept in or ran late for work tossed his gym gear on instead of his work clothes and ran into the office apologising and went to the bathroom to get changed.
People thought that he was a fitness NUT and he always stayed back to make up the time so he was called dedicated. In truth I knew he trained after work and regularly stayed up mega late playing COD and slept through his alarm.
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.
I used to work in a large manufacturing complex and two of us would walk around with clip boards pointing and taking “notes”. If anyone would ask what was going on, we’d say we were carrying out random health and safety inspections.
Your pace of walking definitely has a huge impact on people’s impression of you.
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.
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.
One of my prior roles was moved from a proper office to an open office and one of the “selling” points was “you can work from anywhere in our cool new building!”. So, I spent most of my day anywhere but my desk. I got my work done and half my time was spent in meetings either way, but if I didn’t have somewhere to be, I’d be in the quietest spot I could find in the building (cafeteria mid-morning/afternoon, conference area when there were no meetings, outside, the lobby, etc.). I was regularly commended for adopting the new culture.
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.
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.
Compile arch
Leave. Go for a walk, or a coffee, or go home. Nobody knows you aren’t in a meeting room.
If your co-workers are into it, have a LAN party. I used to work at a place that had a daily management-approved kill session. It was good.
I take a 30 to 40 minute walk (2 miles) every day at work. Sometimes it’s to clear my head. Sometimes it’s to think about work. Sometimes it’s to think about not work. No one cares, and if they did, I’d argue it’s time well spent for the company. I can’t get anything done if my brain is overflowing with crap.
Man, a work LAN party would be pretty cool.
