Idle time overrated?

September 6, 2005 8:45 AM

Is there a direct link between the amount of "idle time" on the job and job dissatisfaction/stress?

This may seem counterintuitive but I find the more time I have to think about what I don't like about my job and about the uncertainty of the future, the more stressed and unsatisfied I feel. I talked to a bioscience grad student who has the same issue, and we thought that maybe everyone with a lot of time to think on the job has these same issues. Any similar experiences, thoughts, empirical evidence?

posted by Idiot Mittens to work & money (18 comments total)

I'm with you there. I have a better job than I used to, but I find I'm more frustrated than before because of a simple lack of things to do during my workday.
posted by selfnoise at 8:47 AM on September 6, 2005

Argh. I'm going to staple myself to death. 3 minutes til hometime.
posted by lunkfish at 8:52 AM on September 6, 2005

I have what I consider a skilled menial job. It's repetitious and unchallenging. It doesn't occupy my mind at all. I'm fookin' miserable. I couldn't agree with you more, Idiot Mittens.
posted by scratch at 9:05 AM on September 6, 2005

I find that the busier I am, the faster the days seem to go, the faster the days go, the sooner I'm home, and the sooner I'm home, the happier I am.
posted by gwint at 9:11 AM on September 6, 2005

The most miserable I've ever felt was in the first 6 months of my current job, when I sat around with very little to do (due to an incompetent and inattentive supervisor and a poorly-defined job description). The positives of the job (good salary, benefits, easy 9-5 workday with few annoyances/interruptions) were very much outweighed by the negatives.
posted by justonegirl at 9:13 AM on September 6, 2005

Idle time at work? I thought that was what MetaFilter was for.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:19 AM on September 6, 2005

I think that there is a degree of compromise that one has to do in this regard. I frequently have little to do at work, which drives me nuts, however, the other side of that coin is that I have a brother who works like an indentured servant, often till 9 or 10 at night, and is busy the entire time. He has to struggle to schedule his vacations and can rarely make spontaneous decisions to 'work from home' or take a personal day. So, it's pick your poison. I would much rather have my job than his (although he makes about 2.5 times what I make), as I am home by 5:30 every night and have a great vacation package, etc etc.

I don't really believe (someone prove me wrong) that there is much middle ground out there. Does anyone know anyone who works exactly the right amount at work to make the day go quickly but who also gets home at a reasonable hour and is able to maintain good quality of life outside work? I don't.
posted by spicynuts at 9:25 AM on September 6, 2005

There was a recent article on job stress and boredom...which only proves out my anecdotal findings that Frederick Taylor was a sadist.
posted by jeanmari at 9:47 AM on September 6, 2005

That was a good article, thanks. I suppose it is asking too much to be engaged at work all the time, it would be nice some of the time though......

The only job that I can think of where you are as busy as you want to be is in sales. My father has been quite successful at selling mutual fund products and life insurance, and works "any 60 hours a week I like" he jokes. So, like everything else, it's a tradeoff. Every job has stress, just different kinds.
posted by Idiot Mittens at 10:14 AM on September 6, 2005

One thing I've noticed, is that if you're not working, there's no reason to get excited about going home. Like, I'm sitting here reading metafilter, and 10 minutes from now I'll be at home doing the same thing.

Depressing.
posted by delmoi at 10:32 AM on September 6, 2005

My own experience is that being busy keeps your mind off thinking about your job to some extent (and helps the time pass faster), but at some point, if you are dissatisfied with your job, you will become aware of it. Being busy might delay the realization, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. Mind you, a job with lots of idle time often means you feel like you're not accomplishing anything (because you aren't), which is in and of itself depressing.
posted by biscotti at 10:43 AM on September 6, 2005

Yes.

That's why I used my idle time to sell things on eBay, and effectively 'double-dip' my at-work-but-not-productive time for more money.

This was before someone coined the term 'lifehack'.
posted by Wild_Eep at 11:20 AM on September 6, 2005

It can be annoying when you have nothing to do at work... which is also often the case with me as well.. but I escape stress (other than feeling that I should do my best to hide what I'm actually doing every time someone walks past) by using my time to my advantage. I figure if they want to pay me, but give me too little work to do, that is their problem. I'm here to get things done quickly when I have something to do, so when there is nothing on my plate I work on my own side business, websites, or other personal online things. It works out pretty well. If I'm going to sit at my computer all day anyway I might as well get paid for it too.
posted by meg6212 at 12:55 PM on September 6, 2005

For me, it depends. The worst office job I ever had left me with nothing to do for 8 hours a day, days and weeks on end. I took to writing down lists, and then copying and re-copying them just to occupy myself. It wasn't that I had too much time to think about the job itself or the future that made me hate it; it was the watching the minutes tick by till the end of the day while thinking about the million other things I could be doing.

Now, at my current job sometimes we're too busy, sometimes we're not busy enough. And I don't usually mind the not busy times. It's a nice break from the busy times and since I have a computer, I'm able to entertain myself.
posted by geeky at 1:30 PM on September 6, 2005

...yes.
I'm in the position where I spend about.... 3 out of the 8 hours I'm at working actually working.
It leads to boredom, constant reflection on the state-of-things, endless hours of blogging, and a depressive feeling of stuck-in-a-rut. I've tried the "work on other things on the side" kind of thing, and it's successful in part - but most times it's too difficult to work on large personal projects. Blah.

...so yes - even if you sort of like your job, boredom creates a feeling of "I could definately be doing something else and spending my time better."
posted by itchi23 at 1:31 PM on September 6, 2005

Wow. Just about everyone on this thread talks like they've never experienced manual labor. Why don't you look for jobs bussing tables, ringing up purchases, or loading trucks? Compared to that shit, an office job with some down time is paradise. Count yourself lucky that you don't have to clock out for your two fifteen minute breaks and one thirty minute lunch every day. Those breaks go by pretty darn fast when they're all you've got. And then the assistant managers who come by, telling you to 'look busy,' or complaining that 'we're not paying you to just sit there.' There goes your precious ennui, all in a blink.

Here's a wild and crazy idea: maybe you have 'down time' because your employer understands that you are a human being capable of getting the work done without someone physically standing over you every second.

And here's something else: I think that getting 'bored' in an air-conditioned office with a comfy chair and a high-speed internet connection is just about impossible. That's the situation that I would want to be in if I wasn't at work. Don't you people have any personal projects you could be working on, any friends you could be catching up with, any books that you've been meaning to read? Excuse the fuck out of your managers for not depriving you of the opportunity to do any of those things on their time. And excuse the fuck out of them, too, for taking the gamble that maybe, if they treated you just a little bit better than they absolutely have to as required by law, that you would repay them by working just a tiny teeny smidgen of a bit harder than you had to in order to justify your paycheck.
posted by bingo at 5:19 PM on September 6, 2005

Here's a wild and crazy idea: maybe you have 'down time' because your employer understands that you are a human being capable of getting the work done without someone physically standing over you every second.

Maybe some do, but I doubt it. I don't think most employers realize how much time their employees are wasting. Look at some of the responses in this thread- I can't imagine any boss really being happy about their employee wasting that much time, even if the reason they are wasting time is the employer's fault.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:06 AM on September 7, 2005 [1 favorite]

I think there's a link, yes. My job is frequently feast or famine, which is normally fine by me. I appreciate some downtime after a lot of hard work. But lately there is more famine than feast, and I run out of personal projects to work on or websites to surf. Those are definitely the times I most dislike my job and am absolutely unable to motivate myself to get anything done, even if there are projects to be worked on.

The trick is finding that balance between having enough work to do and not so much that you can't get personal stuff done as well.
posted by widdershins at 9:08 AM on September 7, 2005