That's exactly why menial tasks suck, they are a procrastination enabler vs unable to get into "flow" to accomplish more interesting/complicated tasks.
That is disingenuous. In any job/work, even if you love it, there are tasks that blow. Documentation, bug hunting, administrivia, the boilerplate crap that crops up are all examples of this. Some or all of them are required, and since they are not fun, it is easy to get distracted and procrastinate. Some people are just prone to such things. Is it not better that they figure out how to not procrastinate, or that they search for the elusive (possibly mythical) work that has 0% sucky tasks?
Meaningless make-work is the worst. Having nothing to do isn't so terrible. I can come up with plenty of useful ideas left to my own devices. It's when I have to do busy-work that's bad.
Sometimes the most productive people are productive precisely because they can pick tasks that play their strengths and manage to ignore the rest. If they're suddenly forced to take on whatever shit work pops up, some of them aren't going to be as effective anymore.
No, some people are a lot more productive across broad range of tasks. Often they are assigned tougher/critical stuff though because it doesn't make sense them do trivial tweaks.
It is very hard to empathetic when under pressure to get difficult stuff done by a deadline and some lazy person wastes your time by asking questions that they could have looked up instead of being a distraction.
Neglecting the person who fills the jigs will lead to less ur time in the long run though.
I'm guessing your issue is not with those that are fixated on productivity, but those that are just poorly educated in the complexity of how to calculate it.
They also tend to get done very quickly. Or aren't actually worth doing.
I've yet to find a job, as an IC or manager, where I had 8 hours worth of tasks worth completing.
Oh, there's usually -work- enough for 8 hours, every day, if I want, but it's actually a negative effect to try and do so. It means I'm getting involved in decisions I don't have all the context on, am not responsible for, and am not empowered to actually change (and thus just getting frustrated and probably pissing someone off), or I'm trying to work on something that requires buy in from other people, that hasn't been prioritized for them, so is going to die on the vine anyway (and, again, frustrate me and piss them off).
> Doing nothing is the most draining task there is. Not only it is really boring and mind numbing, but you pretty much have to pretend like you are doing something, which is way harder than actually doing it
Also, if you actually do something, even if it's for example some mundane programming, at the end of the day you gain a sense of accomplishing something. Even though the job performed is to the benefit of your employer and you'd be theoretically "better off" (less effort) doing nothing, getting the job done instills some sense of purpose and accomplishment, which are good for emotional well-being.
Years ago, I spent inordinate amount of time on that kind of thing. At some point I realised that while enjoyable no work gets done. Nowadays I don't have a work "flow". I just work which for me means reading and writing code or emails without interruptions. Any "flow" on top of that is a waste of time. My experince for whatever it's worth.
I'll go a step further and defend "busywork". Unfortunately we don't live in a perfectly efficient society so being able to learn and execute a formulaic task that might not seem valuable is a necessary skill for most adults. Especially since individual actors may not have all the necessary information to fully assess the value of a task within a larger framework.
This is rather unhelpful comment. People struggle with productivity, some suffer from chronic procrastination. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve one's productivity.
ps: this wasn't a joke, a lot of daily activities are 'chores' because of the context. You can almost always make it fun, more useful, more fulfilling. But society doesn't invest in that. Which leads to bore/burnout
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