Are You Working Hard or Working Performatively?

When a colleague asks how you are, your answer is probably some variation of “busy” or “swamped.” This isn’t an accident. Research from Columbia Business School calls it the “conspicuous consumption of time,” where signalling a lack of leisure has become a proxy for high status and competence. We wear our overwork like a badge, but the data suggests it’s mostly performance. A 2024 Workhuman report found 38% of executives and 37% of managers admit to “faking activity” or “fauxductivity.”

The cost of this theatre isn’t just wasted time. Every time you jump into your inbox to prove your responsiveness, you trigger “attention residue.” It takes an average of 9.5 minutes to fully refocus after a single digital interruption. For a knowledge worker who switches tasks nearly 1,200 times a day, that can lead to a 40% loss in productive capacity. The environment encourages it. Harvard research on open-plan offices showed they led to a 70% drop in face-to-face interaction and a 56% increase in email volume, as people perform work for an audience instead of doing it.

For professional women, the pressure is amplified. A 2025 report notes 68% of women report higher stress levels than men, and working mothers are 15% less likely to be promoted. This creates a “flexibility paradox,” where many feel compelled to engage in “digital presenteeism”—keeping a Slack status active long after work ends—just to appear constantly available. A Deloitte report from the same year found 75% of organisations cannot accurately evaluate the value created by individual workers, so they default to measuring visible presence instead.

The quiz below is based on the behavioural angles identified in this research, from the impulse to CC for credit to the anxiety of an empty calendar slot. Eight questions. Under two minutes. You might not love the answer.

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What Your Result Means

Genuinely Productive
You scored here because your work habits are aligned with producing valuable outcomes, not just visible activity. You likely protect time for deep work and measure your day by progress on priorities, not message volume. The research by Cal Newport calls this “slow productivity”: doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and obsessing over quality. This approach directly counters the “ideal worker” norm that expects constant availability. The real-world cost of not operating this way is the burnout and stagnation that comes from a permanent state of semi-distraction. One concrete thing to do this week is to audit your calendar. Block a 90-minute “focus session” for your most important project and treat it with the same immovability as a client meeting.

Mixed
This result indicates you move between periods of genuine focus and performative busyness, often dictated by your environment or perceived pressure. You might use “schedule send” to appear online at odd hours, or feel guilty about a blank spot in your calendar. You are caught in what Harvard’s Leslie Perlow identifies as the “cycle of responsiveness,” where your own quick replies raise others’ expectations, creating a self-reinforcing trap of fauxductivity. This puts you in the “passing” category of professional identity management—you’re working to project an image that may not match your actual capacity or priorities. The cost is inconsistency—your best work is punctuated by stretches where you feel busy but accomplish little. This week, try breaking the cycle. For one day, batch your communication checks to three set times (e.g., 11:00, 14:00, 16:30) and close your email and Slack tabs in between.

Performing Busy
You land here because your work behaviours are optimised for signalling, not output. You may frequently narrate your busyness, reflexively check apps to keep your status light green, or prioritise tasks that offer immediate “proof” of work over substantive projects. This is a rational response to a broken system. Deloitte’s 2025 report found 75% of organisations cannot accurately evaluate the value created by individual workers, so they default to measuring presence. The cost to you is the cognitive tax of constant context-switching and the frustration of ending a “swamped” day with little to show for it. You may be “embracing” the ideal worker norm fully, or feel forced to “pass” to avoid penalties. This week, do one thing visibly unbusy. At 5:30 PM, set a Slack status saying “Focused work until tomorrow, 9 AM” and log off. The world will not end.

Moving From Performance to Output

Identify your identity strategy. Research on professional identity shows people use three main strategies: “embracing” the always-on ideal worker norm, “passing” as if they do, or “revealing” their true boundaries. Many women get stuck “passing,” which is exhausting. Decide which strategy you’re using and if it’s sustainable. If you’re “passing,” consider a small “reveal,” like stating your actual working hours in your profile. This manages expectations on the sender’s side and reduces your own anxiety about missing something.

Redesign your communication defaults. The “cycle of responsiveness” documented by Leslie Perlow shows that instant replies create the expectation for them. State your intended response time in your email signature or Slack profile (“I check messages at 11am and 3pm”). In her PTO experiment at Boston Consulting Group, mandating predictable time off actually reduced team work hours from 65 to 58 per week while improving client satisfaction.

Quantify the switching cost. Every time you stop a task to check a notification, you incur “attention residue.” The data is clear: it takes 9.5 minutes to fully regain focus. Use a simple timer. The next time you’re working on a report and feel the pull to check Slack, start the timer when you switch. Note how long it takes you to get back to the same depth of thought. Seeing the 10-minute loss in real terms makes it easier to ignore the next ping.

Reject the “ideal worker body” norm. This framework explains the pressure to have a body that is always ready to prioritise work, often at the expense of health. The alternative is accepting a “sufficient worker body.” One practical step is to schedule and honour a daily break that is purely physical—a 20-minute walk outside, without headphones or podcasts. This isn’t a wellness perk; it’s a boundary that recalibrates your capacity for deep work later. It’s as fundamental as choosing a practical work outfit that doesn’t distract you all day.

Conduct a “cc audit.” Before sending your next email, remove every name from the cc line that does not strictly need the information to do their job. Research on identity management shows we often cc managers to perform our commitment. This practice floods others’ inboxes and trains your environment to expect performative oversight. Send the email only to the person who needs to act on it.

Negotiate for “quiet” in an open plan. The Harvard study on open offices found they cause “social withdrawal,” where people wear headphones to signal “do not disturb.” If you can’t change the space, change the signal. Get a physical “focus” sign for your desk or monitor. A study by Ethan Bernstein showed that when employees feel constantly observable, they default to electronic busywork. A clear, non-digital signal can reclaim some psychological privacy.

Measure your week by outcomes, not activity. On Friday, instead of reviewing how many emails you sent, write down the three most important things you moved forward. Did you solve a core problem? Did you draft a key section? Did you clarify a process? This simple practice counters the “pseudo-productivity” mindset that Cal Newport argues favours visible action over valuable results. If you struggle to list three items, it’s a signal that your coming week needs more protected focus time.

Challenge the “mentorship tax” with visibility. Women leaders spend 40% more time than men guiding junior colleagues—invisible labour rarely captured by metrics. To avoid having to perform busyness elsewhere, you must make this work seen. One method is to send a monthly summary to your manager: “This month, I advised X on project Y, which helped them deliver Z.” This documents your contribution without adding more real-time performative behaviour. Think of it as building your professional reputation with substance, not just surface-level formality.

Sources

Bellezza, S., Paharia, N., & Keinan, A. (2017). Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol. Journal of Consumer Research. https://business.columbia.edu/sites/default/files-efs/pubfiles/19293/Conspicuous%20Consumption%20of%20Time%20JCR.pdf

Workhuman. (2024). Almost 4 in 10 leaders admit to ‘fauxductivity,’ Workhuman finds. HR Dive. https://www.hrdive.com/news/fake-productivity-at-work/725993/

Bernstein, E. S., & Turban, S. (2018). The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239

Reid, E. (2015). Embracing, Passing, Revealing, and the Ideal Worker Image: How People Navigate Expected and Experienced Professional Identities. Organization Science.

Deloitte. (2025). Reinventing performance management processes won’t unlock human performance. Here’s what will. Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends.html