How to Slack like a Pro

So I came across this presentation about how to be a slacker at work. This is something I take very seriously. With 24 hours in the day, 7 hours sleeping, 1 hour to get ready in the morning, 10 or more hours at work when you include lunch and commute, 1 hour to eat, 1 hour to take care of miscellaneous bullshit in the house, you’re left with 3 or 4 hours of leisure time in the day, and it seems like a lot less than that. If you watch one or two TV shows, congratulations that takes up the remainder of the time.

The beauty of slacking is that it allows you to get more done in less time by multitasking, sort of. You can take care of the bullshit tasks like paying bills, making phone calls, dropping stuff off at the cleaners, going shopping, etc all during that big 10 hour black hole we call work. Some people feel guilty about this, but I do not. Time is going by so fast and I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and be 50 years old wondering what I’ve done for the past 30 years.

This ‘Slacker@Work’ article shares my philosophy beautifully. The author (Connelly) believes Slackers have the gift of being able to stop at “good enough,” and go home unburdened by what was left undone. And to quote my hero Peter Gibbons from Office Space, “It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that I don’t care.” Slackers are phenomenal at achieving things that are important to them. Aside from that, they don’t give a fuck. It is this efficient use of their mind that sets them apart from the standard over-achiever. While the basic intelligent work horse will stress out and blow up their mind with trivial details and pleasing the boss, the Slacker frees up his mind to use in more important areas of his/her life.

In the book “The 80/20 Principle,” a German military officer is quoted that he sees 4 types of soldiers in his army: stupid & lazy soldiers- they don’t mess up anything and are ok to keep; stupid & hard working soldiers- they boggle things and should be fired immediately; intelligent & hard working soldiers- they do a good job and are apt to run lower level positions; and the intelligent & lazy soldiers- are suited for the highest level of offices. They have enough laziness to cut out the extraneous shit and advance themselves.

I should state here that I don’t advocate the useless, lazy, going nowhere in life type slacker that gives us real Slackers a bad name (yes I didn’t capitalize the first one on purpose). Real Slackers have motivation and drive, it’s just that we’d rather do what we enjoy than do crappy work.

Back to Connelly’s article, he suggests that you figure out who the most influential people at work (the gossipers, the people who everyone tends to believe, etc NOT necessarily your boss) and befriend them. Give them the impression that you’re a hard worker. Talk about how many hours you supposedly worked at home the night before.

Here’s a nice trick he lists to get a half day and still seem like a hard worker: Call in the morning to your boss and to the aforementioned influential people and let them know that you’re sick and won’t make it into work. Then relax for a few hours. Drive into work around 12:30 and say that yes you’re sick, but you just had to come in because you have so much work to get done. You will look like a hero! A half day of slacking and you come out seeming like an extra hard worker. Note that this doesn’t work if you come in in the morning and then leave home mid-day. This will make you look like an extra slacker.

Connelly also has other suggestions that aren’t particularly interesting, but here’s a trick to take a nap I thought of once when I was really tired at work but never had the balls to try: Find a desolate spot that hardly ever gets any traffic. Drop a coffee mug (half full) on the ground, along with some papers maybe. Lie down face down on the ground and go to sleep. Hopefully no one finds you. If they do, claim that you must have fainted or hit your head on something, whatever (hence the coffee and paper props). They wouldn’t dare to think you were napping, you poor thing.

Here’s a computer tip that every slacker needs to know: ALT+TAB. If you’re surfing the internet at work (and you should be), it is very obvious if your right hand races to the mouse and starts closing down windows while your face turns white in panic mode. The solution is Alt+Tab. Hold the Alt button with your left thumb, and tap the Tab button with your left index or middle finger. Doing so brings up a little window that shows everything you have open. Keep hitting Tab until you get to the window you want, then let go of Alt. Presto, you’ve gotten to a different screen without using the mouse. Note that the order of the windows is the order that you last visited them, so the trick is to have actual work (a spreadsheet for example) be the last thing you were looking at before you go on the internet. This way you just hit Alt+Tab once and it will immediately bring you to the spreadsheet since that will be the first icon in the window. Try it out, you’ll get it.

Another good thing to do: take on work in bunches. Have a list of let’s say 10 things you need to accomplish, and knock out some easy fast ones first. Then slack. If your boss comes by to check on you, hold up your finished accomplishments, or ask him/her a question about one.
Here’s a link to a page that has all sorts of great tips and tools for slacking: Don’s Boss Page. It includes fake spreadsheets to switch to and fake typing noises (scroll down to see the whole page).