So what are these time-sapping but not particularly useful tasks that workers are using to perform their productivity? The classic examples are responding to emails or Slack messages as quickly as possible, rather than getting on with any bigger tasks, keeping laptop screens awake even when you’re not actually there and attending endless meetings. Austen suggests that a performative worker might also spend time “red lining time blocks in [their] diary so everyone knows [they’re] busy… sticking Post-It notes all over your screen that mean nothing, setting your Slack to ‘busy’ when you’re not… or drawing attention to your working lunch, when you’re mainly just having lunch”.

Our obsession with performative work, she says, might stem from the fact that “the dialogue around the working day has increased significantly in the last three years”. The pandemic sparked discussions around hybrid and remote working; now the concept of the four-day week is slowly becoming more widespread, and an endless cycle of workplace behavioural buzzwords like quiet quitting have also pushed conversations about work to the top of the cultural agenda.

“This has intersected with an explosion of marketed ‘showing off’ online,” Austen adds, like TikTok videos showcasing productivity hacks or chronicling a perfect day in the life. “The mark of success has become ‘how much can you do’”, she says. “It’s a more is more mentality.”

Perhaps the biggest factor in the rise of productivity theatre, though, is economic uncertainty. Visier’s survey “found that a general fear of job security has made employees want to appear more valuable to their manager and colleagues”, the company’s EMEA North director Ben Harris explains. With potential redundancies looming, workers are “feeling the pressure to ‘impress’ leadership and ‘prove’ their overall ability in order to counter the perceived threat of job loss,” says Leeson Medhurst, Head of Strategy at workplace consultancy Peldon Rose. This often results in “a bigger rise in physical attendance” – aka presenteeism – as many senior leaders still “feel that visibility of colleagues equals productivity, and that absenteeism is indicative of low performance”.

‘Productivity theatre’ is draining your energy – here’s how to beat the performative work trap