(Un) Productivity at Work

“From ten to eleven, have breakfast for seven,

From eleven to noon, think you’ve come too soon,

From twelve to one, think what’s to be done,

From one to two find nothing to do,

From two to three, think it will be,

A very great bore to stay till four”

Thomas Peacock

I did not write those very true words, though Mr. Thomas clearly understood the mentality of the office drone. This is a poem I want to print out in large, beautiful letters, frame and hang up on my desk. I shall not do this though, because the modern IT manager has no concept of sarcasm or irony. It is all just a game of numbers, reporting, mindless data entry into excel sheets and power-point decks for the higher ups. But enough about the inadequacy of managers.

Just like most people my age in my circumstances in my country (too many qualifiers I know, yet there are millions of us), I too work for a big multi-national IT firm doing a mundane day job (No it is not technical support. I may be Indian but not everything is a stereotype).

I have been in this job for not a very long time. But the attitude described above does exist and persist in all facets of modern office life. The real fact of the matter is, you do not need 9 hour shifts to get your work done. Most of your time in office is wasted in checking unnecessary e-mails, talking to people who are not necessary to the job you’re doing, status calls where everyone talks and no one listens and too many awful meetings. In reality, work gets done in about a 3–4 hours and the company then proceeds to waste half your time for the rest of the day. This is not just one man’s opinion. It is the collectively known open secret that exists in all organizations. For instance, when I have worked from home I have seen a dramatic improvement in my productivity and concentration. And I have been able to do a lot more work in a fraction of the time it would have taken me in office. I didn't need the rest of the day to finish up because I was basically done by lunchtime (I spent the afternoon napping — it was bliss).

It is pointless and unnecessary but it is the way the system has been designed to work for large firms and it is the ecosystem they have based their whole existence on. Even if they wanted to disruptively change their precious work culture (which they wouldn't dream of doing in a million years), they would not be able to think fast and move with the tune of the times.

It is simply criminal that companies assertively get to own your time (and by consequence huge parts of your life) because they pay you a wage for the work you do for them. If the transaction is to be boiled down to its essence, the equation is like this:

Pay you get = Work you do + Lots of unnecessary crap invented by firms to keep you engaged in all the useless hours you waste at the office

This is part of the reason freelancing and companies with a completely flexible work culture have hit it off so well. People just need to get paid for doing a certain amount of work in a certain specified period of time. For this, it should not matter if they were stoned for half the time or vacationing abroad. I hate the fact that people offer up their time to firms in a very matter-of-fact way. It is appalling and a sheer waste of a priceless non-renewable resource.

Time is the only thing we will utterly regret losing in the end. Time we didn't have to do this or go there or meet her. It has become the norm rather than the exception to lease out your life from the companies that pay you. It is perhaps the main reason why most of us are sad, hate our lives or our jobs and don’t feel happy.