Performative Busyness

While it was once considered “high-status” to have abundant free time, the emergence of modern capitalistic economic models have made the perception of being busy more of a high-class status marker, because within such systems (ostensibly, at least) those who are always on the run, always on calls and in meetings, always grinding away at something work-related, are also those we tend to classify as important and (at times) successful.

These perceptions sometimes line up with reality: many billionaires are always working, ignoring other aspects of life to focus exclusively on their work, on earning more money, on accomplishing some big new milestone, and that can be part of why they achieve their success.

This kind of fixation isn’t always healthy, though, and it’s relatively simple to mimic the outward signs of being busy and important, even lacking that assumed concomitant success.

Just as a pair of knock-off designer shoes or a fake high-end handbag can evoke the outward perception of having money, so too can the performance of busyness erect a facade of someone whose time is in high demand.

“Performative Busyness,” sometimes called “Performative Work” or “Productivity Theater,” depending on context, gestures at the practice of attempting to appear important, and as if we’re always hustling from one time-sensitive task to another, even if that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In some cases this performance is truly subconscious and we actually feel we’re more thinly spread than we are: maybe we’re not great at delegation or project management, maybe we’re going through some kind of personal crisis while also trying to perform job-related duties—all of which can reduce our psychological capacity to cope, and thus make us feel more strained than we might otherwise feel.

In others, we adopt this stance because peers in our social circles have already adopted it, and seeming just as harried and frantic (irrespective of how much actual work we get done) helps us fit in with a community within which we hope to establish ourselves.

Sometimes, then, “always busy person” is a persona we adopt and maintain to prove our value at work, to avoid criticism from our managers or employers, and/or to compete within a harried-seeming environment.

On that latter point, a 2023 survey found that more than a third (37%) of office employees surveyed “played productive” in order to “gain visibility” with decision-makers at their workplace, and that nearly half of them (49%) reported spending more than 10 hours per week on activities they considered to be “performative.”

The percentages of people admitting to this were lower for hybrid (sometimes working at the office, sometimes working remote) and completely remote workers (about 45% and 35%, respectively), suggesting that being in an office might raise the stakes or provide more opportunity for that kind of perceptually positive visibility.

Notably, many of the activities those surveyed said they engaged in to seem busy (like attending unnecessary meetings and sending superfluous communications) are not only unproductive for those engaging in them, they can actually increase the work-load of other employees, creating a second drain on employers who are already paying people to do these unnecessary tasks, and who, in some cases, may also be paying people to respond to those extra (unnecessary) messages and to hold those too-crowded meetings.

This effect is possibly being amplified by efforts on the part of employers and managers to essentially spy on their subordinates, tracking them with software and demanding they come back to offices so they can be watched; the idea being to cut down on slack-time and ideally (from the perspective of the employer, at least) to pay for fewer unproductive work hours.

But this surveillance seems to, in some cases at least, amplify the issue it’s meant to address.

Folks who feel they’re being watched will sometimes go even further out of their way to create busywork and engage in non-productive, but productive-seeming activities, and this can lead to even more unproductive paid hours, while also reducing the capacity of everyone involved to benefit from healthful non-productive time, which has been shown to increase the effectiveness of workers, even if they work fewer hours (some studies show that folks working 4-day weeks outperform those working 5-day weeks, while others show little difference in productivity, but a big difference in happiness and psychological thriving).

None of which tells us the absolute optimal way to shape our workplaces and manage our productive hours, but this body of research (so far) does suggest that in reinforcing the idea that busyness is desirable, we actually increase our costs of operation, put unnecessary strain on our systems, workers, and selves, and we maybe miss out on opportunities to be leaner, more efficient, and more effective by applying the “less of better” model to the time we spend making valuable things and earning money.