There’s a big difference between like “working at a cash register with no customers, but you have to stand there looking attentive or management will yell at you” and “working from home, and I can read lemmy on downtime”

Companies are not stupid and will rarely ever pay you to do nothing, so if you suddenly find yourself with nothing to do at work and not being handed any new projects, they are probably thinking of letting you go and it’s probably time to look for a new job.

I’m getting both bored and anxious if I don’t have anything useful to do during work hours. I don’t think it’s my work ethics in the play, but self imposed expectations. When this happens too much too often, is when the work no longer feels “fun” and I have to find something meaningful to do again.

Now I’m very privileged in that my current employer’s been very good with the opportunities within, and I’ve always found another position (and promotion) to challenge myself again.

But I think many people expect their work to be interesting, feeling meaningful personally, and if it fails to do so it’s time to move. It’s crapton of your week anyways you need to spend on the “grind” it would suck if it felt wasted time.

As someone else mentioned, some jobs have micromanagers who get pissy if they think you aren’t working, and keeping up appearances is draining.

From a different perspective, however, is that when it comes to creative fields specifically, downtime means you aren’t improving your skills, creating portfolio work, etc. Due to the contracts creative jobs often have, anything you create on company time (and sometimes outside of company time, not that they can legally enforce it, but they’ll try) is typically owned by the company. As such, working on personal projects during downtime is a great way to lose ownership of a passion project you’re working on, and no official work means you aren’t improving or adding to your portfolio (not that creative fields typically have downtime, usually they’re the opposite).

It’s speculated that that’s why Valve had some major staff members leave the company a few years before Half-Life Alyx; they had nothing to do and were just sitting there spinning their wheels.

Doesn’t keep my mind ocupado

I’ve worked in jobs with plenty of downtime, but have never worked in one where I could just wander off to exercise or read a book openly. I was expected to be finding things to do or to at least appear busy and engaged.

I have more flexibility working from ~2 or 3 days per week now, but it still gets boring because I have to be “on call” and ready to re-engage with work quickly. I can’t go anywhere or get deeply involved in anything.

It gets boring as hell if you have nothing else to fill that time with. I work in IT and at one of my jobs there was literally nothing else to do if someone’s computer didn’t break. All social media was blocked, game sites were blocked (this was like 2013) and so were tons of other things. I worked in a basement so I had no cell service either. My time was spent figuring out what wasn’t blocked lol

I would love to read or something while sitting doing nothing every day. However, I get yelled at and constantly receive shit from my coworkers for being lazy… while they also don’t do shit.

So I sit… and stare at my screen… and press buttons occasionally.

I suppose it depends on a lot of things. My personal viewpoint is neurological. My brain and body dont work well in slow moving jobs, especially if they have surprise „hurry up and wait“ situations.

The other problem is that where I live you get fired if you read on the job, no matter if you dont have any work for 6 out of 8 hrs. You‘re supposed to get busy or at least look busy.

Thats why I usually work self employed. I can decide what to do with my time. I usually work a lot more than 8 hrs and I expect to be paid for the work I do, not the minimum required amount I am owed.

As long as you can keep busy that way it is fine to have those jobs with downtime! The challenge arises when, for example, the workplace doesn’t allow personal cellphones on site or in the work area. Or perhaps there is an expectation to look busy all the time so you don’t have the leisure to read or write. I’ve had the luxury to have a job where I can relax a fair bit and have some enjoyable free time with your pastimes listed above.

My previous job was at a workplace with no useable internet, poor cellular signal, and no phones allowed while working policy. Very strict to always be doing something to look busy but when there is nothing to do it gets dreadful.

Looking forward to others experiences on this!

What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone

The jobs people complain about tend to penalize them for doing those things instead of pretending to be busy.

Context switching is the reason why. There’s “downtime” where I work at because of the times I work (night time / I believe its called a “graveyard” shift). However, its never nothing for the whole shift, its intermittent. So lets say I decided to play a game (or work on a personal project, or any other number of things) I’d have to get into the mindset of whatever I’m doing, then see that a ticket has come in, switch my mindset back, answer the ticket and perform the work required for the ticket… and then switch back again.

As @toomanypancackes said in their reply, I honestly just either want to go back to bed, or not have to worry about work and do my own thing (uninterrupted). Those aren’t options unfortunately, so I’m just left to be in that weird purgatory of “There’s not a lot of work to be done, but there’s some every so often… so I can’t completely go away”. I prefer it over it being absolutely slammed with tickets because that’s just exhausting.

Every so often I’ll put on a rerun of a show since it doesn’t matter if I “get into” the show or not, but actually doing something significant isn’t usually an option unless its actually dead during my hours.

In the late 1980s, I had a roommate who graduated with a business degree and got recruited for a government contractor right out of college. She packed up her life and moved to the DC area. A month into her new job, the contract was pulled. But because she had a clause in the recruitment contract, they couldn’t fire her. But they had no work for her, either. So she had to come to work every weekday, 9-5. She’d sit at her desk with nothing to do. They didn’t ask her to look busy, just present.

She read about 3-5 novels a week. Over the next few months, we watched her get more and more depressed. She’d complain about her situation, but it fell on deaf ears. “Must be nice,” people said in jealousy. “Get paid to do nothing.” She became despondent in the lack of people’s sympathy. “Nobody understands how much this sucks!”

Eventually, she got a new job. Her mood vastly improved.

I’ll never forget that lesson. People need to feel useful, productive. Sitting at a desk with nothing to do, no purpose, no validation. It will destroy you.

I have a lot of downtime and I work from home. I gained weight. I nap more though. At times I have 4 hour stretches where I’m just on call so I take a nap with my phone on my chest. That or play video games.

Two main reasons;

1. The boring reason, I get paid because someone thinks they need me, and I need that money. Not being needed is clear sign that the gig is up and when they need to balance the books my job, very reasonably, would be the one to cut.

2. The exciting reason, even when I didn’t and don’t again need the money there is a satisfaction to being able to build something or help others as part of larger group. Without needing to work my hobbies would just turn into grander and grander projects until I am working with others all over again.

All sorts of jobs filled me with that sense of pride that video games and movies just can’t. The idea that I actually helped someone or made a difference for my community is just greater for me