Vergaderziekte

Something we’ve often overlooked in New Escapologist is that people might actually like their jobs, or rather the core duties of them.

What often gets people down is the culture of work: above all, the inefficient expectation that we commit no less than 35 hours per week to a job that could be done in 10; and to maintain an atmosphere of manic busyness throughout or face accusations of laziness.

Schumpeter in praise of laziness in The Economist:

office workers are on a treadmill of pointless activity. Managers allow meetings to drag on for hours. Workers generate e-mails because it requires little effort and no thought. An entire management industry exists to spin the treadmill ever faster.

and:

[A survey last year] found that more than 80% of respondents continue to work after leaving the office, 69% cannot go to bed without checking their inbox and 38% routinely check their work e-mails at the dinner table. This activity is making it harder to focus on real work as opposed to make-work.

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