The startling rise of busywork

I sometimes wonder what could be collectively accomplished if offices were a little happier. Representation Pic/iStock

This may be my approaching dotage talking, but I have begun to find a lot of corporate work amusing rather than merely annoying. This wasn't the case in my youth, when I could be as serious about a PowerPoint presentation as the next person, but I suppose it's the cloud of doom hanging over all our heads these days that makes me feel as if those years spent climbing up some corporate ladder were trivial pursuits. Why did I do it, I ask myself.

I have spent a lot of time in many offices over the past couple of decades, primarily because I was always warned about a regular income being necessary and critical for my well-being. I agree that it was to a certain extent, which is why I'm not typing this out from a homeless encampment, but I often question the nature of that time spent in those windowless rooms. Nothing I did there added anything of value apart from money in a savings account. I can't recall anything that was discussed in conference halls, or during meetings that stretched into the night, ending only when everyone present felt as if some problem had been solved. I don't remember the problems either.

This isn't a new complaint because busywork has been discussed for a long time now. It's the ubiquitous nature of it that startles me though, and the way in which few jobs are safe from it unless you're lucky enough to be a creative person who doesn't need to work for a CEO or COO. Naturally, I blame managers, because life must have been more meaningful before the MBA was invented. That is when the rot must have set in: the rise of endless tasks dreamed up to fill in eight hours of every employee's day, to make them feel worthy of a salary. I couldn't imagine what offices must have been like before. Did people just do what they were hired to, and go home when they were finished? The mind boggles at the thought.

As I get older, there is a measure of sadness associated with how I view busywork. This is because it makes me think of people just starting out in their careers, ignorant of how large portions of their lives will fizzle out while they stare at Excel spreadsheets. It is naïve to expect places of work to be good for the soul in a country where the concept of a ‘work-life balance' is unheard of, but I sometimes wonder what could be collectively accomplished if offices were a little happier.

A study of 600 workers conducted a few years ago revealed how more than 60 per cent of their workdays were spent on things that had nothing to do with their real jobs; it was just emails, meetings, and status reports that needed to be filed because someone had asked for them. I have yet to come across an office in India that trusts employees with simply completing tasks, without worrying about what the rest of their working hours are used for. What could that kind of freedom unleash, if we were to stop assuming that everyone is fundamentally lazy and incapable of working honestly without being monitored?

Busywork may seem like a harmless thing, a side-effect of late-stage capitalism that reduces us all to units of productivity. What worries me is how dangerous it becomes when it affects every other aspect of our lives, from how the bureaucracy functions to how elected representatives make decisions about public policy. I like to believe that happy people think about the happiness of other people which, in turn, prompts them to empathise more while going about their work. Imagine what a smiling bank teller would look like, or how it would feel to walk into a BMC office without the feeling of dread that currently accompanies that exercise. Imagine meeting a smiling government employee!

This won't happen, obviously. This is not a country that invests in happiness. It's why India ranks 126 out of 143 nations cited in the World Happiness Report for 2024. Our neighbours fare a lot better: China at 60, Nepal at 93, Sri Lanka at 128, while Pakistan ranks 108. I try and break the cycle by allocating an hour of each workday to something that brings me joy. Music, for instance, or reading something other than a blog. I hope managers in India do this a little more too, but I won't get my hopes up just yet.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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