Is it normal to have so much downtime during work?

[Jon Carter]

I work two to three times slower now than when I started three years ago because after learning so much, I became much more of a perfectionist. I wouldn't want to look at my work from 2015 today. Maybe you'll be like me and end up using all eight hours for something you used to do in four?

 

[WeAreStarStuff]

Very normal. I use the time for grad school studying.

 

[ElectricKaibutsu]

I kept asking for more stuff to do so I'm usually crazy busy. But I'm also doing stuff that is way more interesting than before. Hoping it pays off. I have a coworker who effs around on the internet mostly so yeah, some people have free time.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

I've worked a bunch of office jobs and have never had all that much downtime, but those jobs consisted of accounts payable or accounts receivable, so it was working with money all day. Current job is more project based, so sometimes I find myself with less to do, but when that happens, I just badger my boss for something to work on.

I do get to use photoshop/premiere at work as part of my job, so there will be days when I load up some youtube tutorials and just learn things about those programs. it feels like downtime, but it's still work. Kinda.

 

[Jesse_and_the_rippers]

I have very little downtime at my job of three years, but have been in positions like that before. Frankly I think environments like that are not good for your career development. Two companies ago I was at a giant publicly traded company, and basically everyone screwed around half the day. It was fun, but I got bored and wanted something more challenging. My friend stayed another 5 years - looking at memes, browsing FB, taking long lunches - and when he got laid off, it took him over 18 months to find a job because he hadn't learned or advanced enough for the jobs in his income level.

Everyone at my current company works hard because we are motivated and happy to be here, and the energy is contagious. I love it. I have learned a ton and feel proud of what I've been able to accomplish. Days go by faster too LOL.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

I am similar to you OP in that I am extremely efficient so I tend to get quite a bit of downtime now and then. A ton of career jobs are like this.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Gotta crank out them loot boxes.

 

[Gaf Zombie]

It depends.

Some just tend to have some slack. (Looking at many of my fellow marketers here).

Some jobs are cyclical (white collar energy industry jobs, hospitality)

Some jobs are client-dependent (management consulting, law).

It just....depends. Nothing beats the amount of free time I had while in the military though.

 

[Deleted member 4034]

Until my job got more adamant about time clocking, I was averaging about 4 hours work. 4 hours doing whatever. Good times.

Marketing.

 

[iksenpets]

It's normal for office work. I've seen several people who run websites note that traffic is highest during work hours because the amount of time that office workers spend reading online. The company needs to be staffed to handle the busiest times, but those times aren't all that common, and when they'll happen is relatively unpredictable. So during the rest of the time they get a workforce that's kept pretty happy by having decent amounts of free time.

Of course, none of this applies to non-office work, where things are pretty constant.

 

[PlantedUnicorn]

There are days where I'm at my desk for about 2 hours straight where I have absolutely nothing to do. Not even mundane busy work to keep my occupied.

 

[BassForever]

CPA never really have downtime, at best I might be on some non chargeable work like stuffing envelopes or cleaning out our old back ups.

 

[Biske]

I'd say at least like an hour and a half maybe 2 of down time or bullshitting with coworkers. There's no reward for working 8 hours a day like a chump.

 

[funky]

We where kind of like this. It came in waves. Downtime followed by busy weeks.

Then upper management decided to "streamline" and cut 1/3rd of the team and now we are working all out and still have a month + backlog of work that is only growing and they are wondering whats going on.

 

[JeTmAn]

I'm a web developer at the same place for 13 years and I've basically never run out of work. If higher priority work gets slow there's always "nice to get done" work waiting for me.

 

[tommy7154]

You should feel lucky if you can browse the web half the day. I work about 3 hours out of 8 but have no internet aside from phone at breaks. I'm bored silly most of the day. At least I'm getting paid I guess.

 

[ErrorJustin]

I'm a games journalist and lord no it is flat-out ALL THE TIME.

 

[captive]

Wow, you actually work 4 total hours every day? You sound busy.

 

[Masquerade Overture]

Yep.

I'm at work now. HUGE swaths of downtime. Only reason why I've been able to work on my TV pilot script.

 

[KillLaCam]

Yeah. It's a great thing

 

[catalina wine mixer]

Yes. There are weeks where I literally have 0 work to do, even when I ask if there's stuff that needs doing. Gets boring fast TBH.

 

[Yinyangfooey]

My work is highly client dependent so there are definitely times where clients don't have any requests or I'm just waiting for the client to get back to me on something.

It's extremely frustrating sometimes because the job has metrics but I can't control when the client doesn't email us.

I'll end up on Era maybe or go on my phone.

 

[peppermints]

Depends on the job. As a programmer, previously on corporate with long-term iterative products and now self-employed, there is no such thing as down-time. I always have a backlog.

Click to shrink...

Also a developer. I have a backlog (my team does, I should say) but nothing goes to production without QA (yay) and product buy in (boo) so I end up having a lot of down time.

We are typically very conservative in how many stories we pull in for a sprint which doesn't help.

I feel especially bad browsing here or listening to podcasts since I work remotely while the rest of the team is in the office. But sometimes there's just not much left to do in a given day.

 

[chironex]

Also a developer. I have a backlog (my team does, I should say) but nothing goes to production without QA (yay) and product buy in (boo) so I end up having a lot of down time.

We are typically very conservative in how many stories we pull in for a sprint which doesn't help.

I feel especially bad browsing here or listening to podcasts since I work remotely while the rest of the team is in the office. But sometimes there's just not much left to do in a given day.

Click to shrink...

It's not to say I'm 100% go all the time, that's just unsustainable. I do my fair share of browsing and staring out the window and right now I'm even considering spending the last 20 minutes of the day playing Path Of Exile. Do you work in a large team? At the moment there is just me and one artist so if I finish everything I have In a sprint early I just start pulling other things forward, or planning the next one, or doing non-dev business side stuff.

Mostly I've worked in smaller teams where we have been less rigid about methodology, for better or worse.

 

[ronco2000]

Yes. Look at Trump.

 

[shazrobot]

Haha no. Sometimes I hit the floor running at 5:30am and don't take a lunch until after 1pm. On the rare occasion, I do get about half an hour of down time where I'm not fucking hustling. Factory style work btw.

 

[NCR Ranger]

It was common at all the jobs I have worked so far. Pretending to look busy after my work was done for the boss was one of the things that annoyed me the most as well. It did come in waves though and for every slow day I had I probably had one where I worked my full shift.

 

[zeioIIDX]

I'm dealing with the same thing. I finally landed an IT tech position and I share an office with my supervisor. We're literally the only two people who do IT work in the building. The two of us are the IT department. And even still, I can't tell you how many days have gone by where I do nothing more than sit on the internet for 8 hours or maybe fix a printer here and there. Of course there are days where I walk in to work and the network is fucking down and people aren't getting emails or able to make phone calls and faxes and nothing is going right. But mostly, I just sit around waiting for someone to alert me of a computer issue they are having. I sometimes feel a bit guilty about it and other times, I feel like "Holy shit, what if they one day just decide to let me go just because there isn't a lot going on around here?!". I don't think that's gonna happen though, my supervisor is basically training me to be his replacement when he retires in 2 years. He keeps telling me "One day, all this will be yours!" lol. At the end of the day, I enjoy the slow days because I know there are also days where it's so busy, I have to skip lunch or go drive 2 hours to a different office just to unplug an RJ-11 cable and plug it into another outlet. Besides, my last job as a web developer for a startup company was mostly chaotic as fuck so this is a nice change of pace.

 

[MopDog]

Don't know if I could ever work at an office again for that very reason. I was literally bored to sleep every single day.

Waiting tables, by contrast, was much more fun and mentally stimulating for the very fact that the work seemingly never stopped.

 

[Deleted member 1726]

I would've said no based on all my previous jobs, but in my current job as a web dev who is at a small place I would say yes it is.

I use the time to learn though and keep up with what's going on in the industry

 

[Deleted member 14663]

I had to give up a very good job around 2012 for this very reason. There was not enough to do, a lot of the time.

 

[Orpheum]

Same with me. Sometimes i drown in work but at them moment we have this sort of "Summer hole" i don't have that much to do. Downside to that...my motivation takes a dive as well, the few tasks i actually have on my hands are all getting finished last minute.

I'm more of a fan of actually having a lot to do

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

Yes. And you are getting paid for it.
Not like that gaffer who quit after like two hours.

 

[Irnbru]

CPA never really have downtime, at best I might be on some non chargeable work like stuffing envelopes or cleaning out our old back ups.

Click to shrink...

You gotta come to the sweet sweet corporate gig my dude

 

[Durger]

Yes. Constanza ING. It's an art. Look busy. Do everything asked. Welcome to cooperate life.

Click to shrink...

Just make sure you seem annoyed by any questions.

 

[gosublime]

Teacher here - currently on Summer Holidays so at the moment I've had 6 weeks off. But then during the term itself there is little to no downtime - a 6 lesson day with a lunch club, parents' evening, marking and planning to be done makes for a pretty long day...

 

[NoblesseOblige]

I sleep, read comics, or play games for about 6 hours of my 10 hour shifts.

 

[Temp_User]

Yep. Slacking on one's desk is part of the job. When your workload is cyclical or client-based there ain't much you could do but wait.

 

[Mendrox]

We where kind of like this. It came in waves. Downtime followed by busy weeks.

Then upper management decided to "streamline" and cut 1/3rd of the team and now we are working all out and still have a month + backlog of work that is only growing and they are wondering whats going on.

Click to shrink...

Oh that reminds me of my company currently lol Just that some people left and they won't get replaced now. Yesterday I was also asked if the problem is inside of me or if it's really outside. I complained that I want to do good service, but we are not able to anymore because there is too much workload for us and I get stressed by that. Nothing will change! New job here I come. :)

 

[Skade]

In office work it's becoming increasingly prevalent.

ahh, the subtle art of the alt+tab...

Click to shrink...

Alt-tab is nice but i have a better technique :

Basically, you keep at all times something work related in full screen. Outlook in my case. And you do the procrastination on a smaller window set over the work stuff in full screen. So when comes the moment you need to quickly hide your procrastination, you just click outside of the smaller window and the big window then hides the small.

So all you have to do is a little wrist movement and a click, nothing conspicuous at all. And the result is guaranteed.
Alt-tab works, but on a panic you can fumble and choose the wrong thing to display (happened to me a few times).

 

[Chaeotic]

Another to the pile, working front counter sales. We have some absolutely considerable downtime, like, I'd say perhaps 75% of my day is between. Sure, there are little things I can do here and there to fill a portion of that in but nothing to see a 8hr day through. Times we do though, we're short staff and/or busy periods. It comes and goes - I just always remember it's work first and foremost, slacking second. If there's work to be done, do it before procrastinating, something I think a lot of workers can struggle with when you spend extended periods being relatively quiet.

 

[Deleted member 9838]

Remember that guy who quit because he had nothing to do at work?

 

[Papercuts]

Office jobs are loaded with pretending to something more often than actually doing something.

My old job at a store was so much more difficult.

 

[DBT85]

Sounds like work to me.

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

It's why I don't believe anyone when they say they worked their ass off. Lol

 

[LTWheels]

Work in the legal profession. No downtime at all. So much work that you can never get ahead. There is always something else to do. Never get to finish my to do list as something urgent will always pop up. Going away on holiday for even 3 days is extremely stressful when returning to the office.

 

[gilded_Pb]

Being in retail, it sounds like heaven to have that much downtime (or any at all really).

 

[ishan]

I know very few ppl who can work a solid straight 8 hour on full concentration and effienciecy in the long run . And even the ones I know did it short term. Everyone takes breaks its kind of factored in by your company/boss/univ etc. No one expect absolute work with no distractions of thought etc.

 

[Jombie]

I have too much of it, to the point that it's made me lazy and complacent.

 

[yepyepyep]

I do emergency teaching so I only really have downtime during the breaks but even then you sometimes get double yard duties. The hours aren't super long but when you are teaching you can't really do nothing. Anyway, time goes fast when you have to teach and manage a class. It was pretty intense in UK, here in AUS most schools are pretty lax if you do the marking or not, so there is not a lot of pressure to mark all of the work. In UK, you have shorter breaks but are expected to do all the marking at the end of the day, and the class sizes are bigger as well which means more work to mark. On the worst days all my breaks was just power marking and shoving food in my mouth during the last 10 minutes of break and then having to mark sometimes to 5:30pm.