Looking busy might kill you
Looking busy might kill you
Flight or fight, but do not freeze; for your life
What does not kill me, makes me stronger. What does not make me stronger, kills me.
Looking busy is not making you stronger. Tread with caution even if you need only a few hours for it, and spend the rest of the time studying. For two reasons:
Skills without proven experience may allow for independent value creation but may not help your employability. Beware of the theoretical confidence trap; build your confidence based on actions and outcomes.
To stay competitive, you need to acquire skills faster than the skills inflation in the market and the skills rot of your acquired skills. See the Red Queen principle. Getting distracted is easy when the paychecks keep rolling based only on busywork and looking busy.
“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
There is a slippery slope from quiet quitting to focusing on looking busy, all kinds of busywork, and eventually working 80 hours per week to look busy because there is nothing useful to do, achieve, and show up for your busyness and results in the past month, quarter, or year.
Be similarly careful with the “overemployed” approach. It may be one of the many diseases of “the death of productivity.” “Overemployment” may come at the cost of overfitting to a context that may vanish suddenly because it is too good to last. Unless you are overemployed and diversified (different industries, skills, and value propositions), in which case you are way beyond most mere mortals.
If you need any of the previous to survive, by all means, do it. But always keep in mind that it is a temporary solution and that you need to fix it as soon as possible before it results in a permanent disaster. After all, you do not want to specialize and develop a career with years of experience in looking busy or any other relatively useless skill, i.e., not creating value.
Ideally, you should aim to have both employability and the ability for independent value creation. Losing either of these elements significantly reduces your leverage and maneuverability in the face of future economic and labor market conditions.
It is not easy, but it is important. If you need help, get help. No excuses.
PD: I usually schedule my posts three months in the future. While this one was scheduled, I read about this: The Gen Zer who helped spark the quiet-quitting trend ended up leaving his job after all. He blames bad managers for a generation of disengaged employees.
Management is terrible, but quiet-quitting only leads to actual quitting. You must acquire skills and grow, especially when young and generally until you retire. Most jobs do not provide many opportunities for this, but looking busy, quiet-quitting, or being overemployed are likely to be more harmful than helpful.