There’s not one simple answer behind why you, your colleague or (more likely) your company leadership might be working fauxductively. Weterings shared five key drivers behind the fauxductivity phenomenon.

The pressure to appear busy

In many workplace cultures, there’s a general belief that busyness equates to value. Employees feel the need to constantly prove their worth through visible actions, even if those actions don’t drive meaningful results.

Unclear objectives

Without transparent goals or priorities and how these align with the bigger picture, workers may turn to low-value tasks or busywork that looks productive but doesn’t actually move the needle.

Fear of judgment

Employees may fear that they’ll be judged as lazy or uncommitted if they aren’t visibly working, especially in remote settings where visibility is limited to digital interactions. And the effect of workplace bias is real; with proximity bias and authority bias to contend with, the fear of judgment at work becomes even more pervasive.

Misalignment between incentives and productivity

When organisations reward effort over outcomes achieved, employees tend to engage in performative work instead of impactful tasks. For example, if your success metric is maximising your billable hours, rather than completing your client’s project most efficiently, you’re more likely to indulge in fauxductivity.

Digital overload

The constant and distracting influx of emails, messages and meetings can create a cycle of reactive, surface-level work rather than deep, focused productivity. Plus notifications like emails and Slack or Teams messages tend to disrupt you from deep focus or creative work, a state of flow that’s difficult to re-enter once interrupted.

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