How much of your job is bullsh*it?

That mellowing period after the summer holiday is always a great time to reflect. It’s notoriously, together with the Christmas holidays, the best time to cast the nets of a recruitment campaign.

Why? Because people enjoyed some time away and reflected.

Now, those who are fellow over-thinkers know the grave danger of having time and not much to do. Those who never have a worry on their mind, are even less prepared when they find themselves with a cocktail in hand in a comfy chair on a foreign beach.

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A friend of mine recommended me to read the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Because clearly, I don’t overthink enough. (Kidding! or am I?) In fairness, I loved reading it as it made me think, assess and evaluate. I’d like to urge you to do the same.

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Part 1: what is a BS job?

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“A bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of the employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that is not the case.”- David Graeber?

I’d like to think I’ve contributed something positive during my tenure here at RevoData, however, there are definitely parts of my job that match the definition.

One of the examples provided by the author is that of interviewing a candidate, hiring them and then asking to rewrite their resume so it incorporates all the phraseology that procurement has dreamt up, to pass the requirements of the hiring software. Anyone who has ever worked with a broker in the Netherlands, knows this exact pain.

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It begs the question: why are we filling countless hours with BS tasks? I’ve never asked a painter to provide me a portfolio of each and every customer they have ever worked at, ordered by the exact date. Or to write a motivation on why they would like to come paint my house. Why not? ?Because painters are busy, and they would (probably) laugh, and/or never call me again.

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Bold statement there, I know. The alternative was to write “maybe we aren’t busy enough”. You see, Graeber writes about the interesting phenomena of paid time and the time we work for the boss. We have moved from working towards a goal (building the pyramids asap) to working during an allocated amount of time. In addition, society has brought upon us the expectation that during said time we keep ourselves busy and if we must, we simply find things to do.

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Do you ever find yourself doing things that fill time, yet are really not that important?

Here’s a list of 10 things in my job that are utter BS:

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1.??????? Formatting CVs for projects we have already won

2.??????? Writing motivation letters that nobody will ever read

3.??????? Changing the font or colour scheme on a ppt that will be used once

4.??????? Deciding which protein powder we order for our office smoothies

5.??????? Manually approving 20 people’s expenses (in nearly 2 years I’ve not declined one)

6.??????? Approving the holidays that 20 people are entitled to have

7.??????? Getting a sales certificate just to prove I’ve watched 4 hours’ worth of videos

8.??????? Replying to every unsolicited and random e-mail, because I’m polite

9.??????? Rewriting our website entirely on my own, in case one person might read it

10. Attending meetings without agenda (shocker, right?)

Initially I thought it would be hard to come up with 10, once I started writing I found it hard to stop. All of these are things I used to do regularly before my holiday, and I’d wonder why I was always so busy.

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With that we have the main consequence of a BS job: we are terribly busy, but doing what? We work 60-80 hour weeks (for those who don’t remember, here’s a funny article about what that brought me), yet are left feeling unsatisfied. Have we made a difference? Have we done something that matters? Have we really accomplished something?

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People get burned out because they work hard doing things that they don’t feel matter. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve read all day?

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Part 2: the antidote

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The solution to remove all BS in your job might be found in the famous Barack Obama video about getting stuff done:

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When we naturally focus on finding solutions, fixing things and making things happen or getting stuff done’ we are filling our time with things that matter. Either to us, or to others. We contribute something positive.

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That is why we feel better helping out a co-worker, than watching Netflix at the office. Why we look for meaningful things to do, rather than sort paperclips by colour. As Graeber points out: as humans we are looking for meaning in life, purpose in our day to day and an overall sense of accomplishment.

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Part 3: eliminate the BS from your job, post-holiday

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Now I’m a good 2 weeks back from holiday, I’ve established a lot of things I will stop doing and have thought of an equal number of things to add more value, spend my time sensibly and derive more meaning from my job.

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Working in a tech company, I can’t write a line of code and fairly, there’s little point in me learning more than ‘SELECT’, but what I can do is make Revo an awesome company to work at, hire great people and listen to their ideas when they come back from their holidays.

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Especially if they are over-thinkers like me. During my countless IG scrolling I saw a great quote that said something along the lines of “if an over-thinker says something can be done, believe them, for they will have thought of every reason it can’t”, and I very much relate to that.

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Let’s have fun in our jobs, do those activities that bring us closer to our goals rather than those dreamt up by someone who has too much time on their hands. Let’s try some more new ideas, who knows where they might lead us?

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Somewhere in history we have moved from working towards a goal, to working a certain set of hours. Anthropology fascinates me and part of me wonders whether we got the system to work within the structure we created for our lives, or whether we have structured our lives to fit the system. Asking the question, might be answering it. Who knows, perhaps I should read George Orwell next. However, what has never changed anthropologically is the innate need for a sense of purpose. That, I find fascinating.

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So, assess the tasks you’ve been doing as to whether they actually brought you forward to achieve your goals and gave you a sense of purpose? If they didn’t, rethink them.

If you can’t, maybe rethink some more than just the tasks? (and if you're in data, reach out to Leah Cullen who will always happily soundboard and tell you all about the job openings at RevoData ).

Whats the point of life, if risk is just a board game? - Music & Lyrics?

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We spend an awful lot of time working in our lives, let's make sure that the awful in that sentence constitutes the amount of time and not the job itself. ?

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