#BusyBees 🐝 Have you ever felt like most salary jobs make you feel unproductive? 🤔
Hey there! So, I recently started a new job, and let me tell you, it's a whole different ball game from what I'm used to. I'm used to working with my hands, getting things done, feeling accomplished at the end of the day. But now? I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels, barely making a dent in my to-do list before it’s time to clock out.
Do you ever feel like this in your job, too? I mean, is this normal for salary jobs? Or am I just missing something here? 🤷♂️
Let's chat about it! Drop your thoughts below, and let's figure this out together. 💬🤔 #DailyGrind #ProductivityWoes #WorkLifeBalance
Not sure what kind of work you’re doing but that’s not typical in my experience though it can happen when you are first ramping up.
If you need more to do, let your manager know. You can frame it positively and come out looking like a hero. Just say something like “I’m really starting to get the hang of things and feel like I can contribute more. Feel free to send the next project my way or let me know where else I can help.”
Varies, may just be because you are new or the workplace may have ups and downs. My work fluctuates between very busy and high stress, and more dead when we are in planning periods.
Some jobs like this aren’t about workload either, it’s about the responsibility. There is more riding on your work being correct and being executed correctly than there is on being flat out every single day. Like my work, sometimes it may be slack but if the project or solution is not delivered to a client correctly and within set timeframes then you have failed your job. Up to you to manage that time and have the right ideas and take responsibility for it.
Ive had two salary jobs, both engineering roles. One had me so busy I was working 50+ hours a week and my current one has lots of downtime. My current role was painfully boring for the first couple months cause I was so used to being overwhelmed non stop. I still get bored occasionally but my quality of work has gotten so much better.
Completely depends on industry and company.
F&B director I worked 6 days a week and 14+ hours a day almost every week and walked 10+ miles a day if my watch was accurate.
Then I got smart and stopped with that nonsense.
Umm this is supposed to be a secret 🤫
Don’t let them know or you’ll get more work
No, not in my case I’m crazy busy but work for a not for profit.
Depends on how much value you create.
Progress? My job basically has no progress, it is just a constant flow. Kind of bothered me a bit that there is no real satisfaction from having completed a project or something similar but I got used it it. You get some days where you feel like you have literally gotten no work done because you’ve spent most of it dealing with BS and or people being stupid.
Some jobs or industries have slow and busy periods. My boss at my current job told me at the beginning, while I am hourly, I am paid to deliver my work in a given time frame and be available to work 40 hours a week. If I don’t have much to do, and I’m cleaning my house while available to work, that’s still available to work. I’m getting plenty of cleaning done now. Other weeks I’m struggling to find a stopping point after 45 hours. Just depends.
Pretty much since you’re not seeing physical results everyday, but working in an office setting with many different projects has various little tasks sneak up and things can add up. If they have similar deadlines, you can end up having some long busy days. I split between both manual labor and office and they both have their charm but when the balance tips to one or the other it gets brutal
Some jobs do have much slower progress – rather than seeing results daily or weekly, you’re Shasta building to something larger, or working on future strategies. It can be unnerving if you’re trying to get used to it, coming from something more results driven and actionable every day.
Look for stuff that seems broken and inefficient and start improving it. You will never be without meaningful work again.
Go fix shit dude!
In my experience these jobs have waves of work. There are busy times where you are doing more work than is reasonable. There are quiet times where you get to chill a bit more.
This unevenness is most salaried peoples number one complaint. It is up to you to set boundaries about how much work you do. If you keep working the boss will keep giving you work.
When you start a new salaried job, they don’t expect you to achieve anything right away. You are expected to learn how the company operates. You’ll slowly get involved in more and more tasks/projects until you reach capacity.
It takes a while to get used to this. Particularly if you’ve come from labouring or hospitality. Two fields where you are expected to be doing the whole job within an hour of starting.
I’m only really balls to the wall once a year for 2.5 weeks. I’m in that period now and I hate my life
No. I pull 12 hours+. Started at 7 AM and working at 10 PM.
It comes and goes
For one thing you are new to the role; some things you are not yet expected to do, some things you do t yet know to do. Comes with time.
Sometimes it’s an easy day, sometimes you work a 12. If you are fortunate enough to have good days enjoy it.
It takes a long time to get comfortable with the office role. Allow some time to adapt and remember you deserve good things so you deserve your new role!
I’ve had variate degrees of workload, even on the same job. I’ve had day (especially during covid) where I’d maybe one hour of actual work, then other days where I’d have to do extra time to finish the work.
Depends on a lot of things. Sometimes I’m burned out, other times I feel like I don’t deserve to be paid lol.
As long as you competent and your boss likes you, you’re fine.
I either work 20 hours a week or 90. Feels like there is no in-between. Lol
I’ve (eventually) learned that if I feel like I don’t have enough to do, I need to start being proactive and prepare for upcoming things because in the blink of an eye I can be drowning.
PM for a commercial interiors company. I have two major clients, each with countless projects that need managing/coordinating. I do my best to calculate my workload by week, plotting all my known medium-to-large projects on a calendar, and have two lines (one for each client) to catch all the “small stuff”.
I then assign a % to all projects to estimate how much of my time I will be spending on a specific project, to find where I am over-geared or under. Then I use those slow weeks to do everything in my power to make the tough weeks easier.
It works decently well for my role, but what it boils down to is “maximize your productivity during your downtime so you don’t have to kill yourself when it’s full-throttle.”
Typical. Don’t say anything. Just find a side hustle to make extra dough while making dough.
Yes, work in cybersecurity and end up sitting on my ass watching YouTube 90% of the day.
In my experience, with the one salaried position I’ve had in life, it’s a great excuse to exploit people.
I too would go home feeling like I’d barely accomplished anything but, hey, some jobs aren’t the “I created 24 widgets today!” kinda job. Sometimes if you’re managing a situation/department/shit show the accomilishment is “Did everyone make it through the end of the day and the client was happy? Well done, team”.
Depends on your job. I’m a salaried teacher and I have never felt that feeling lol.
I went from being a quality tech being judged on how many pieces a day I could audit. I am now an engineering lead for a category. When I first started this role I felt useless and felt like I wasn’t getting anything done. Although slowly but surely my plate started filling up. It’s a huge change going from say piece work to sitting in 4-6 meetings a day just giving your opinion. Although I am 2-3 years in now and I have more things on my plate than I ever had as a tech. Unfortunately they aren’t things I can do with my hands but more using my brain, mentoring, putting in test requests, tracking those tests, etc. I will say though that coming from being the guy working on test requests to being the one submitting them it’s HARD. When they tell me it will be 2 weeks I can’t take it. I feel like fine I’ll come down and do it in 4 hours.
All in all, it takes a while to get used to the change but eventually you will have your hands full. Although instead of actually being hands full it will be your mind. Which if you’re not careful can cause a ton of after hours stress.
I left my highfalutin white collar career largely because I felt like I contributed nothing to the planet, or to humanity, or to myself. My days largely lacked purpose.
It can feel great to make a nice salary for yourself, but it can also feel meaningless to be just a highly-paid, slowly-turning cog in someone else’s machine.
Remember that part in Office Space, where Peter’s talking to the Bobs and he says, “Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.”
That’s been the last 20 years of my life.
I’ve gone from Financial Services to manufacturing to IT to Retail (corporate) to transportation. Industry to industry, company to company.
I used to think I was lucky…then I thought maybe I’m lazy. Then I swung back around to lucky. After all this time I just realized that a lot of jobs and companies are just people doing things to appear productive and you’re either part of the charade or you’re not. I just happen to always be part of the charade.
Like most people have said, it depends!
But honestly when I had my first office job I felt the same way — it’s almost stressful to not constantly be DOING something.
It picks up, and the stress and activity is just different. It takes some adjustment.
No. It varies a lot depending on the role, company, and even the week. Slow progress can be typical, especially while you’re learning.
It will eventually get busy but you’ll never get any sense of accomplishment because none of your output is tangible
As a corporate office worker, there is a weird transition period where you go from being paid for output and being paid for knowing the right button to push every time.
I’ve had to mentor workaholic coworkers through this… you don’t need to rationalize 40 h lol it’s if work a week; you have hit a point where the company is keeping you on tap when it matters. Find other ways to stay busy and grow the business, but don’t feel like you need to grab a broom because you have 30 free minutes. Learn new things and tackle non-urgent problems.
I’m a lawyer and I’m always busy as fuck even on salary. If you want to do nothing but send emails get a mid level executive job or something, plenty of us work for our pay.