The art of looking busy...

Quintessential to surviving the modern day workplace is the mastering of the art of being busy without much business. These are not my secrets, but from what I have seen around, I think office technology is increasingly enabling the practice. In fact it is no secret at all! I must admit that on occasion when there has been time to spare, I too have practiced the witchcraft of being 'very busy' or as the more common jargon stands 'out of bandwidth'.

One of the most central tools that has made the practice easy is the creation and perfection of the Alt + Tab function, especially when someone is looking or might sneak up to take a peek. Way too many times I have seen sports websites and gossip blogs disappear in the nick of time to hide behind  arbitrary excel sheets and the other enabler of justifying idling - Outlook (we'll get to that in a bit). Nowadays, with the increasing complexity (all for the sake of user friendliness) it is easier to search for the perfect window to switch to. So in case you are multitask idling (generally a combination of your favorite Social Networking site, some random flash game, your personal email and maybe even the instant messenger built into your email client), one no longer has to worry about switching to the wrong window as in the old days of non-tabbed existence.  All in one browser windows and inbuilt apps ensure you can just switch once. If you are smart enough to keep a dozen or more work related 'stuff' running in the background, the probabilities are completely in your favor to be able to evade detection.

Technology has taken care of the problem of policies and firewalls, those buggers that your system admins keep implementing to make your life boring and sad! (Internet, free air-conditioning and subsidized food is what makes bearing office worthwhile, after all. And the best part is that you get paid to leverage all the comforts that would cost a bomb in the out of control inflation around us.) Someone said that broadband could be mobile and you can connect everywhere you are. Isn't that nice!

Policies and Firewalls? In the words of the great Mr. Obama, "BFD!!"

Coming to the one evil that has affected and changed all our lives - if you have a fundamental understanding of what it means to have a life, this entity has definitely changed you life for the worse. There are those who swear by it but then there are always the Satanists! Outlook and the concept of email is what I speak of here; and God forbid you are considered a high performer and get handed a Blackberry, or for the blessed, an iPhone. You can hide from the world but email shall pursue you unto death. And maybe even after it in some time. But then, such a utilitarian tool too has its little loophole - at least one that I was taught of. You can actually compose your emails and schedule them for delivery in the middle of the night. "Oh how hard working John Doe is! It is middle of the night and he is still working!" Yeah! He did get a consistent out-performer for three years, not because he was efficient enough to finish what he had to early but because he was sending pre-scheduled emails at the middle of the night while drinking a chilled mojito! It is the equivalent of the times when getting good scores meant writing epics during the examinations and marks were proportionate to the mass of your script (in many places, I am told, this is still the case).


Well, BFD! I hear multiple pings so time to ALT+TAB to my OUTLOOK. 


Happy Idling.....