22 Mar 2015

How to look busy

Everybody working in some company needs to look busy. For several reasons. If you don’t look busy, people will either ask you to do other things or fire you. In any of these cases, it’s something you want to avoid.

So you need to look busy at all times so people think you are being productive and can’t handle any more tasks.
Here are the tips to look like you give a damn:

1.       Always put that concentrated look on your face: even if you’re surfing the internet looking for some new Nike sneakers, you need to look like you are doing actual work. And you can concentrate in this task. Concentrate in prices, in colours, in shoe sizes, find where is the nearest shop…
2.       Surf the web carefully: you can go in the internet during working hours, of course. The lesson to learn is to always avoiding people from seeing it. In that sense, it’s always better to see pages with more text than image. And preferably with light background colours (reading text with pink as background colour, even if you look concentrated, will not fool anyone). Wikipedia is safe. Blogs depend on the interface. Pictures are very easy to spot. Avoid. Plus always keep one tab with some working related search in google. If you sense people are coming, you just need to switch tabs and you can argue that you were searching for Incoterms 2010.
3.       Move around papers and office supplies in your desk: even though you are not advised to have many papers lying around (cf. howto organize your desk), you should always have the necessary. That said, you should grab it, scribble something on it, put it down, clip the papers, grab a pen, switch by pencil, write, erase, etc.  You know. Just keep the rhythm. People will look at you and pity you. They will not have the courage to ask you for help.
4.       Complain to your colleagues/boss: of course the most easy way to look busy is to say it. If you talk to your mates and complaint about the emails that don’t stop coming, the customers that are always annoying you, the colleagues that don’t reply quick enough, you will be taken seriously. This is one of the most important points of how to look busy and one of the easiest ones. Say it.
5.       Take a moment to look desperate: given my experience with very busy people, I realized that there is always a moment where people break. A moment when they stop looking at the computer and look down, put their head in the hands and breath heavily. The common translation for this is that people are getting to their breaking point. They are so full of work, they need to stop to think (to think if they should quit and if it’s really worth it sometimes). So if you do this, people will for sure believe that you are reaching your limits. And you are. Your limits of boredom.

Below the usual picture summary for really busy people:





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