I don't even know how to start unpacking this, but I just need to vent about it. I am late self-diagnosed audhd afab, gen X who has learnt a lot of unhealthy hustle culture and looking busy brainworms over the years. Been down the burnout path a few times too before I realized my neurotype around 2020.
I am currently working in a client facing, but also laptop touching position where I am constantly "out of work". I am always on top of the things I should do, because I always do them right away or otherwise I know I would forget them. I have constant "impostor syndrome" and question myself on whether I am doing enough, because I always end up with all this downtime. The work has no set structure and we very much manage ourselves. I have secretly compared my calender to my coworkers and I tend to have more client appointments than most, yet for example this week I have just been bored out of my mind for days. And questioning if I am somehow doing this wrong.
I am having a remote day today and am just here posting. I don't know why I feel weird about it when rationally I know that I very much earn my wage and just do the work differently than others. I for example write very fast. And solve things very fast.
But my question remains, do neurotypicals just fake it? Or do they think they are busy all the time? I for one do a lot of remote work and at the office I introvert it. I am always about the work, not socializing much, so my worktime never goes to those things.
I eat at my desk while I work too, I tried the neurotypical style of taking breaks, but it just doesn't work for me mid-task. My breaks are the bus drives to clients houses or slacking in the morning pretending to be online in Teams.
But I am having to do a lot of pretending and I think that is the part that is draining me. I actually really like my work and am probably pretty good at it, but this keeping up appearances stuff is exhausting and causes all kinds of self doubt.
I did teaching previously and the daily structure in it with the shorter day was a lot easier to handle. But I can't find things to do for eight hours in my current work. And I know nobody works eight hours in the office, but why is the pretend so hard for me? I feel weird listening to audiobooks in my worktime and I want to stop feeling that way, but I think it's the autistic lawful good that makes me feel kind of bad about it.
I had a job as a QA testing phone apps and the test cases were all mind numbingly boring and mostly made up steps that were way to tightly set, where we were supposed to test if the same button turned red on click for every release, but completely arbitrary in what was considered to be important.
So I just kind of did what I thought best, because after a while you know what needs to be tested based on what the devs had done, and the rest of the time I was watching 8outof10cats or taskmaster or some lib documentaries on youtube. Often while testing as well it was that boring.
Always kind of felt bad for getting paid to do fuck all while downstairs the salespeople in the bakery were busting ass for less pay. I often staggered checking of test cases, long after I had tested them to make it look like I had done more work as well. So yeah from my perspective I was definitely faking it. And based on the shit that got sent to us I bet a lot of devs were as well.
You owe the bosses NOTHING, take care of your needs. Micro-sabotage rules.
Yeah I felt bad because of how unfair it is, "guilty" is maybe a better word for it.
Good to know it's not just me. I also struggle with the way my coworkers constantly love to bring up how busy they are/how difficult or taxing the work is and I always feel like a full outsider on that too. And it makes me wonder if I am somehow doing less without realizing it or failing my clients somehow. I keep asking for more work and have no idea what is a lot or enough. Full disclosure I do social service work with a strong interest in siding with the client.
It feels like there is some mystical code built into the discourse of being oh so busy and yet when I was learning the work side by side with other workers I noticed they often finished maybe two cases or solved a few things max per day, I do tend to accomplish a lot more than that and still it isn't enough work for more than maybe 4 hours per day. I rationally know this, but this feeling of "am I failing" or "am I slacking" does not leave me alone.
Oh yeah you can't talk about what's good, you gotta whine. You constantly need to project an aura of being overworked or stressed to signal what a good workerdrone you are since the metrics the bosses go by are very much vibes based. Someone who says that they have downtime is expected to fill it, like you gotta love your job so much you can't ever have enough and keep unwittingly overburdening yourself by taken on a bit too much because you just find your work so gosh darn interesting.
It gets so ingrained and blinds you to what is genuinely enjoyable as it seeps into other aspects of ones life. If I feel the urge to whine in order to make my life seem so much harder than it is I make it a point to say how great it actually is. Unless Im at work ofcourse or I suspect the other of being a chronic whiner themselves.