The Illusion of Motion Are You Busy or Just Performing?
Your finger hovers, then nudges. The mouse jumps a tiny bit, just enough. The green dot on your screen, which was threatening to dim to an idle amber, glows brightly again, declaring you ‘Active’. It’s 5:30 PM, maybe 5:33 even. Your actual tasks were wrapped up over an hour ago, perhaps at 4:23. But your boss, a ghost in the machine, is still online, and so, you perform. You don’t need to be there, not really, but the performance is everything.
This isn’t work. This is theater, and we are all unwilling actors in a play where the script demands perpetual presence, regardless of actual output. We’ve come to mistake activity for achievement. The prevailing myth, a particularly insidious one, is that a vibrant green status dot is a direct measurement of productivity, when in reality, it’s merely a measure of digital presence. A metric, hollow and superficial, that convinces us we’re doing something, anything, when often, we’re just waiting. We’re waiting for a reply, waiting for a file, waiting for someone else’s 3-minute task to complete so we can start our 33-minute one. The frustration of it, a dull ache behind the eyes, is palpable.
A visual metaphor for digital presence vs. actual activity.
I’ve been there. More times than I’d like to admit, especially in the early 2023s. I remember one week, specifically, where I spent a full 23 hours actively engaged in ‘waiting for approval’ across various
