By Mister Mooks
I’ve started an experiment at work this week. Actually, “experiment” is probably the wrong word. That implies I’m testing a hypothesis, unsure of the results that will follow. In this case, I know exactly what the conclusion will be. Namely, this:
Out of the several hours I spend at my desk in the office each day, only about thirty minutes in total could be considered true “work.” This week, I’m cramming all of those isolated minutes into one complete half-hour (is “complete half-hour” an oxymoron?), which means – that’s right – I’m going to conscientiously abstain from doing my job for the rest of the day.
I know this is not a novel idea. I’m certainly not the first to do this. And yes, I’m ripping it straight out of the pages of Tim Ferriss, that efficiency douche who also claims you can get jacked by working out for only four hours each month. (Actually, I don’t really think he’s a douche. But it’d make me a douche if I didn’t give him shit like everybody else does. Right?)
So here’s how it works. After arriving in the office, I log in to Skype so my colleagues know I’m “here.” Then I look at how many new emails are waiting for me, ignore them, and then…that’s it. Until noon. Then, in a mad rush, I send off all the necessary responses and do the bureaucratic robot processes that make up my job, and go to lunch. Then I come back and don’t do anything until 4:00, when I repeat the procedure, and then get the fuck out as soon as the clock hits the mark.
So now we’re talking about something like seven hours of “free time,” Monday through Friday. That’s 35 hours a week, 140 a month, fresh for the pickin’. In theory, I should have The Next Great American Novel written in no time. All those half-written screenplays of mine should practically finish themselves. Oh, and I’ll finally get through all the lessons on Codecademy, read the complete works of William James (Henry, too – why not?), and do all of the other enriching, educational, and worthwhile things that I’ve been putting off for…well, years.
Right.
Instead, I’ve been catching myself reading articles about the heaviest woman on the planet losing weight through “marathon sex,” waiting for friends to answer me on Gchat (come on, guys…guys?), and watching Youtube videos of shit like a politician shooting himself in the middle of a press conference. And here I am, acknowledging the problem, fully aware not only of the real disservice to myself but also of the simple solution to the issue, and yet…not doing anything about it whatsoever.
This smacks of the worst kind of bullshit, and this self-deprecation crap smells even worse. Excuse me while I spiral into a recursive vortex of variations on hating myself. Or, better yet – join me!
Because I know I’m not alone in this. After all, some of those friends on Gchat are actually responding, which means they’re not doing their work at work either. And it means they’re certainly not doing the “Good Work” at work. And how many times have we had that old conversation: “Hey man, you know what we should do? We’re all creative types…we should get together and have some kind of, like, salon, like Gertrude Stein and shit.” “Yeah!” “Great, I’ll write something.” “I’ll write something, too!” “Awesome!” And then you high five and shake hands and bro-hug and go your separate ways, only to find yourself remembering that conversation months later, when you’re at work watching all the trailers on apple.com for the second time, and you haven’t written a single goddamn word of that one-act play you were gonna have everyone read aloud while sipping whiskey and smoking cigarettes and listening to Django Reinhardt.
Christ, even this piece (of shit) of writing is meant to appear on one of those “collaborative blogs,” and if it does, it will be the inaugural entry in an otherwise barren wasteland of abandoned ideas. More time was spent on theorizing what the blog could become than on the actual production of content – and by “more time,” I mean infinitely more time, since no time has been spent on actual writing at all.
But enough bitching. There’s gotta be some optimistic way out of this piece, and I intend to find it. Hell, I guess I could say, “Well, look, I’ve spent these morning hours well, and now I’ve got a whole750 943 words to show for it!” And then I could end in that call-to-action voice, saying, “You, too, can turn your ideas into tangible content – won’t you join me in the crusade for self-improvement by contributing to our collective blog as originally idealized?”
I dunno, maybe that’s too hokey. Here’s the more accurate version:
All I did was throw a bunch of words together, without thinking too much about it, and somehow got you to read all of them. And that’s pretty satisfying. So maybe the real ending to this is a threat. If you don’t contribute, then mine is the only voice you’ll hear coming out of this place, and that’s not gonna be good for business. That’s not gonna be good for anybody. But I’ll be having a ball, and feeling good about how I spend this newfound free time at the office. Plus, it looks a lot more like work when I have a Word document up on the screen instead of the Wikipedia page for Frotteurism.
For now, I gotta get back to being a mindless drone of bureaucracy. Don’t worry - I’ll be back in a half hour.
Out of the several hours I spend at my desk in the office each day, only about thirty minutes in total could be considered true “work.” This week, I’m cramming all of those isolated minutes into one complete half-hour (is “complete half-hour” an oxymoron?), which means – that’s right – I’m going to conscientiously abstain from doing my job for the rest of the day.
I know this is not a novel idea. I’m certainly not the first to do this. And yes, I’m ripping it straight out of the pages of Tim Ferriss, that efficiency douche who also claims you can get jacked by working out for only four hours each month. (Actually, I don’t really think he’s a douche. But it’d make me a douche if I didn’t give him shit like everybody else does. Right?)
So here’s how it works. After arriving in the office, I log in to Skype so my colleagues know I’m “here.” Then I look at how many new emails are waiting for me, ignore them, and then…that’s it. Until noon. Then, in a mad rush, I send off all the necessary responses and do the bureaucratic robot processes that make up my job, and go to lunch. Then I come back and don’t do anything until 4:00, when I repeat the procedure, and then get the fuck out as soon as the clock hits the mark.
So now we’re talking about something like seven hours of “free time,” Monday through Friday. That’s 35 hours a week, 140 a month, fresh for the pickin’. In theory, I should have The Next Great American Novel written in no time. All those half-written screenplays of mine should practically finish themselves. Oh, and I’ll finally get through all the lessons on Codecademy, read the complete works of William James (Henry, too – why not?), and do all of the other enriching, educational, and worthwhile things that I’ve been putting off for…well, years.
Right.
Instead, I’ve been catching myself reading articles about the heaviest woman on the planet losing weight through “marathon sex,” waiting for friends to answer me on Gchat (come on, guys…guys?), and watching Youtube videos of shit like a politician shooting himself in the middle of a press conference. And here I am, acknowledging the problem, fully aware not only of the real disservice to myself but also of the simple solution to the issue, and yet…not doing anything about it whatsoever.
This smacks of the worst kind of bullshit, and this self-deprecation crap smells even worse. Excuse me while I spiral into a recursive vortex of variations on hating myself. Or, better yet – join me!
Because I know I’m not alone in this. After all, some of those friends on Gchat are actually responding, which means they’re not doing their work at work either. And it means they’re certainly not doing the “Good Work” at work. And how many times have we had that old conversation: “Hey man, you know what we should do? We’re all creative types…we should get together and have some kind of, like, salon, like Gertrude Stein and shit.” “Yeah!” “Great, I’ll write something.” “I’ll write something, too!” “Awesome!” And then you high five and shake hands and bro-hug and go your separate ways, only to find yourself remembering that conversation months later, when you’re at work watching all the trailers on apple.com for the second time, and you haven’t written a single goddamn word of that one-act play you were gonna have everyone read aloud while sipping whiskey and smoking cigarettes and listening to Django Reinhardt.
Christ, even this piece (of shit) of writing is meant to appear on one of those “collaborative blogs,” and if it does, it will be the inaugural entry in an otherwise barren wasteland of abandoned ideas. More time was spent on theorizing what the blog could become than on the actual production of content – and by “more time,” I mean infinitely more time, since no time has been spent on actual writing at all.
But enough bitching. There’s gotta be some optimistic way out of this piece, and I intend to find it. Hell, I guess I could say, “Well, look, I’ve spent these morning hours well, and now I’ve got a whole
I dunno, maybe that’s too hokey. Here’s the more accurate version:
All I did was throw a bunch of words together, without thinking too much about it, and somehow got you to read all of them. And that’s pretty satisfying. So maybe the real ending to this is a threat. If you don’t contribute, then mine is the only voice you’ll hear coming out of this place, and that’s not gonna be good for business. That’s not gonna be good for anybody. But I’ll be having a ball, and feeling good about how I spend this newfound free time at the office. Plus, it looks a lot more like work when I have a Word document up on the screen instead of the Wikipedia page for Frotteurism.
For now, I gotta get back to being a mindless drone of bureaucracy. Don’t worry - I’ll be back in a half hour.
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