Wally was right all along! The world of work is just set up to make you fail, or in the best case scenario piss your life away on meaningless paper-pushing. Usually the best bet is to keep your head down, look busy, and avoid getting anything substantial pinned on you. But how to do that?
This easy, three-step tip will keep you “working faithfully” while freeing you to have a good time. Well, if you’re literate anyway.
Steps to do at home:
- You need to find a lengthy text file you want to read. An e-book, a webpage, whatever. If you search “Public Domain Books” you’ll find a lot of classics online for free. Pick a book or article with few or preferably no illustrations.
- Get a spreadsheet work file. Your best bet is something long and complicated, that you could plausibly spend hours looking at. Any kinds of work “lists” are usually good
- Insert a blank column into the middle of the work document. Then you edit>paste special>paste as text, and dump your text from step 1 into the new column. Then, shrink the column so that it’s practically invisible. Save onto a USB key or floppy disk
Now at work, open the file from your USB key/floppy disk. Arrange your desk to have papers or other materials associated with the work file.
Using the arrow keys, move your cursor into the hidden, super-thin, almost invisible column where you pasted your reading material during step 3. In the part of the screen where you can edit cell contents, you will see one line of your book. Scroll up and down to read. If you hear or see someone coming, hit left or right arrow key and get out of the column. Now you’re safe. But maybe alt-tab to something else if you have time.
Next week: how to spot trendy sounding but vague jobs that look good on the resume while demanding minimal tangible work.
Edit 2012-05-28: Fixed the link in Step 1.
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Oh man, you had me wondering there until I noticed the date! Haha. Nice one.
What about the date? Ive done this for years at work. I do hardly any work but always look busy. Busy reading that is! Tapping the keys as I read so I look hard at work. I found that since I started doing this I have lead a fulfilling life at work enjoying so many good reads and the bonus is I get paid at the same time. Now of course some may be angry at this but the way I see it, you live but once. Why waste my time pushing paper for someone else when I can enjoy the great works out there. It also means I can spend my personal time out of work doing other things freeing me up to enjoy more leisure time as I dont need to finish reading anything on my own time. I personally just copy the contents of a book into a text file stored on my phone which is plugged into my work computer and as soon as anyone approaches my desk I unmount my phone in the windows task bar and continue my work which hides behind my chosen book.
The date holds a special meaning for some. The cynicism of the Wally-esque teaser for next week and the particular link in Step #1 also played into this.