I read posts about people quitting jobs because they’re boring or there is not much to do and I don’t get it: what’s wrong with being paid for doing nothing or not much at all?
Examples I can think of: being paid to be present but only working 30 minutes to 2 hours every 8 hours, or a job where you have to work 5 minutes every 30 minutes.
What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone… and going home to enjoy your hobbies fully rested?
Am I missing something?
What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone…
Ask your manager. They’ll probably say something like “it looks untidy”.
I see a lot of posts about people becoming depressed because they feel like they have nothing to do and therefore feel useless, but I just can’t relate. My last job pushed harder and harder to make sure we were busy at all times and the constant rush along with it never being enough for middle management to be happy was what made me depressed. I would have killed for downtime to actually breathe.
Ya there’s definitely a minimum and a maximum for “being busy”. You don’t want nothing ever, and you don’t want things all the time.
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I’ve worked in jobs with plenty of downtime, but have never worked in one where I could just wander off to exercise or read a book openly. I was expected to be finding things to do or to at least appear busy and engaged.
good point, this changes the calculus
There is anxiety associated with feeling like you’re not working as hard as you think you out should be.
As long as you can keep busy that way it is fine to have those jobs with downtime! The challenge arises when, for example, the workplace doesn’t allow personal cellphones on site or in the work area. Or perhaps there is an expectation to look busy all the time so you don’t have the leisure to read or write. I’ve had the luxury to have a job where I can relax a fair bit and have some enjoyable free time with your pastimes listed above.
My previous job was at a workplace with no useable internet, poor cellular signal, and no phones allowed while working policy. Very strict to always be doing something to look busy but when there is nothing to do it gets dreadful.
Looking forward to others experiences on this!
I would agree with this, but I would add something. If you ever get to a point in your work where you have ownership over your tasks and production and aren’t just a tiny cog in a big machine, it can be really fulfilling (at least as much as any paid job can be). I speak with experience only coming from the non-profit side though, so I’m sure a lot of people may not feel that way about corporate jobs. So if you have experienced that kind of fulfillment, and something changes (either your role or your workplace or your manager or whatever) and it’s not fulfilling in the same way anymore, it can be really frustrating, even if you could feasibly fill your time with personal stuff.
Also, sometimes being forced to be somewhere chafes when you’d rather be out in the world or at home. Napping, hiking, checking out a book at the library — hard to do when you’re stuck in a specific place.
This is me. I want a different job because I’m always bored.
It feels meaningless. I’m pushing papers because someone needs papers pushed. Part of my job is actually incredibly useful, but 90% of it is it just me pretending to work by watching YouTube videos so my screen doesn’t go dark and I can make sure I’m not showing as Away in Teams.
It’s a government job too, so it’s unlikely I’ll be replaced by AI despite AI being perfect for replacing me and my colleagues.
I don’t know if you’re complaining but if you are, I don’t understand you. I want to be you.
earning money doing almost nothing is meaningless? You earn money for doing nothing! and you cannot be fired, so…
Yeah, but at that point it’s not your time. You’re essentially selling your life to someone else… and they’re not even using it.
You say you can spend your time writing poetry or reading books… but that doesn’t scratch an itch for everyone. Being stuck to a desk or other work station means your options are extremely limited. You can’t go out and work on your kit-car, or practice a golf swing, or practice monologues for a one person play… or many other things that require a little more activity than being stuck in a chair for nine hours allows.
Money can get you a lot of things in life… but as yet it can not give you time back in your life.
but 90% of it is it just me pretending to work by watching YouTube videos so my screen doesn’t go dark and I can make sure I’m not showing as Away in Teams.
Get a hardware mouse jiggler! I bought one for my partner as a gag gift during the start of the Pandemic, but it’s seriously improved their mental health. Taking naps, reading books, and writing all became possible with next to zero risk. Just get Teams to ping your phone when you get a new message.
I have a lot of downtime and I work from home. I gained weight. I nap more though. At times I have 4 hour stretches where I’m just on call so I take a nap with my phone on my chest. That or play video games.
I’m still in the beginning of my programming career (maybe also the end, looking at how AI is going, lmao) and at my previous job I had fuckall to do. I spent nearly a year without a project, working basically 30 minutes a day. I quit mainly because I was afraid that when I change jobs I will have say 5 years experience on paper, but the knowledge for 1, because I’ve barely done anything.
Work isn’t always about money, you also want to learn stuff so you can make even more money in the future. You can’t really do that if you get paid to watch Youtube all day.
That’s a big thing for tech jobs, especially with the relatively low security. If you’re not working you’re not learning, and if you’re not learning you’re behind the curve and seen as “less valuable”.
Especially with how specific job postings are, if you don’t have the right combination of experience, you’re worthless. So if you’re bored maintaining some ancient irrelevant stack, you’re worse off.
I had a job that was kind of like this. I spent pretty much all of my down time writing a web game that later got me a software job.
I wasn’t bored, though. I miss working on that thing.
I do machine repair in the evening shift. If nothing is broken, I generally don’t have much to do. They don’t bitch too hard because they know if shit goes down, I’ll work 16 hrs on a Saturday to get it working. I have access to a metal mill and lathe and spend a lot of down time learning and creating personal projects on it. Hell, I built a wooden bedframe and no one said a thing.
I used to be bored at work as I had too much downtime, so I decided to just accept more duties. Was nice to be able to solve problems learn new things and it made the time go faster. But you just keep getting more and more work and responsibilities heaped on you for doing a good job, and absolutely nobody notices it until you start falling apart. Then all of a sudden people you’ve never heard of are ‘concerned’ about you. At this point I am burnt out and do even less work than when I was bored, but the difference is that it also drains me.
The lesson is to never try to work at or around full capacity. Don’t fall into the trap of being bored and deciding to take on more work.
Personally? Sitting around too much makes me anxious and antsy, not to mention it makes the time go by really slowly. It’s hard to enjoy pastimes when you’re stuck somewhere you wouldn’t be if you had the choice. (Also, as others have mentioned, not everyone can do those leisure time activities while at work).
My work is actually a little abnormal, but we have plenty of days where we are mostly just waiting around doing nothing for 10hrs and then working really hard for two. Sometimes I do like those days, but more often than not, I enjoy keeping busy with work stuff because sometimes those 12hr days are even longer. If I sat around for the majority of that, I’d be bored out of my skull. Yeah, I can read/do a few things you mentioned, but not for that long.
I also sort of get to live inside my head while I’m working idly with my hands. It’s a little freeing for me mentally to take the load off of my “leisure” brain. I listen to music and kinda pass the time doing my job. And I actually like my job. So that’s a huge benefit.
I used to have a job with a lot of downtime and if I wasn’t doing real work I had a permanent sense of anxiety and guilt because I knew there were people in the same building as me in manufacturing roles busting their asses for the same pay while I sat and watched YouTube videos, and it also made it seem like I wasn’t developing myself to move anywhere higher, just spinning my wheels making money.
That attitude did get me to ask for more work, but not more of the same work, new tasks, tasks that I then added to my resume and made me look much more appealing to jobs I later got instead.
do these jobs you got later pay you better?
There’s more to life than just wanting more money or time to consume the content and products of others (obviously with the major caveat that we need some amount of money to live)
Most people gain existential joy from making some form of impact on the world, and for many that comes in the form of their work.
Being able to look at something, whether it’s a building you helped build, a website you made, or a contract that you helped get signed and having the knowledge that it wouldn’t exist in the way it does without your effort is a feeling I think is critical for most people to be happy.
Obviously this fulfillment doesn’t have to come from work, and if you can find enough satisfaction in writing poetry or a hobby like that to fill that need then you’re lucky for it, and maybe can look into pursuing a career in that.
I personally have unfortunately never been able to feel like I’m making enough of a mark on this world with my hobbies alone and have pursued work that makes me feel like I’m contributing to society or improving myself
Technically they don’t pay me much more, though it is higher, but I did move from California to North Carolina, with a much lower cost of living and a much lower minimum wage. Comparatively in California I was living paycheck to paycheck, now I own a house.
More importantly the array of skills I could put on my resume was impressive to three or four different jobs I had afterward and showed that I had skills and versatility beyond my previous roles
Literally this for me. Also a lot of times I can get into a focus state with a problem for some hours, and with that time passes fast, compared to just doing nothing and faking being busy.
I’m getting both bored and anxious if I don’t have anything useful to do during work hours. I don’t think it’s my work ethics in the play, but self imposed expectations. When this happens too much too often, is when the work no longer feels “fun” and I have to find something meaningful to do again.
Now I’m very privileged in that my current employer’s been very good with the opportunities within, and I’ve always found another position (and promotion) to challenge myself again.
But I think many people expect their work to be interesting, feeling meaningful personally, and if it fails to do so it’s time to move. It’s crapton of your week anyways you need to spend on the “grind” it would suck if it felt wasted time.
For me, waiting for the phone to ring was torture, because I could be interrupted at any time. It was draining and stressful. If you’re actually able to relax, that’s different.
