Time moves slower when I’m sitting around doing nothing. I’d rather get stuff done and see things getting built; it’s satisfying. If I’m sitting around with no projects it just seems like a waste of time, and I personally don’t like being inefficient.

Other guys? They love just shooting the shit.

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

What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone… and going home to enjoy your hobbies fully rested?

I tried doing these sorts of things and was punished for it. If I can’t find work to do, then the only thing I’m allowed to do is stand (not sit) at my station until something happens.

A lack of responsibility and feeling like your work is pointless is pretty much the biggest drive of depression

There is anxiety associated with feeling like you’re not working as hard as you think you out should be.

I see a lot of posts about people becoming depressed because they feel like they have nothing to do and therefore feel useless, but I just can’t relate. My last job pushed harder and harder to make sure we were busy at all times and the constant rush along with it never being enough for middle management to be happy was what made me depressed. I would have killed for downtime to actually breathe.

I used to be bored at work as I had too much downtime, so I decided to just accept more duties. Was nice to be able to solve problems learn new things and it made the time go faster. But you just keep getting more and more work and responsibilities heaped on you for doing a good job, and absolutely nobody notices it until you start falling apart. Then all of a sudden people you’ve never heard of are ‘concerned’ about you. At this point I am burnt out and do even less work than when I was bored, but the difference is that it also drains me.

The lesson is to never try to work at or around full capacity. Don’t fall into the trap of being bored and deciding to take on more work.

I know work bad but if I don’t keep busy, time crawls. Also, theoretically I would have bosses find me shittier jobs to do if I’m not engaged in the main thing I’m there to do.

I’ve never had a job that there was a lot of downtime except that time I worked for a landscaping company. My boss was chill and we smoked a ton of weed between jobs

I used to have a job with a lot of downtime and if I wasn’t doing real work I had a permanent sense of anxiety and guilt because I knew there were people in the same building as me in manufacturing roles busting their asses for the same pay while I sat and watched YouTube videos, and it also made it seem like I wasn’t developing myself to move anywhere higher, just spinning my wheels making money.

That attitude did get me to ask for more work, but not more of the same work, new tasks, tasks that I then added to my resume and made me look much more appealing to jobs I later got instead.

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