Obsessions taking over my work time

As you say, NTs are good at what is sometimes labelled "displacement activity". Huge amounts of work time are wasted on social chat, and on socially based skulduggery (as in the comedy series The Office for example).

The thing is, with office social networks it is hard for managers to find out what is going on, as all the little "cogs" in this social machine protect each other. Individuals time-wasting are easier to spot, and particularly any mis-use of computers for external chat sites, porn, sport or video downloads.

I've had terrible trouble with "reading up" over the years - so many jobs involve reading the explanatory manuals, or using computer based self-training sites, or reading up component or system specifications. These can be so boring I was often in the position of being on the same page at the end of the day from when I started, through day dreaming and switching off. However nobody seemed to notice.

My way out of this was to structure my time to achieve certain objectives by the end of the day, and I would try to find different angles to the work to make the assimilation process more interesting.

One of my worst experiences of this was during a period of low business. I was working in a systems management house (this is in my R&D rather than teaching years), and company rules required we had to appear to be doing something, even if we had nothing productive to do - so no reading fiction or magazines, unless you could hide it in a manual. To make matters worse, one of the Directors, a rather short character, would sneak round the office jumping on anyone he perceived insufficiently engaged. The numbers going sick through stress was considerable, but the Directors were too stupid to realise this pretend doing something approach wasn't practical.

In that same company, one bloke was managing a wine importing business on the side, using the phones and company paper, and photocopying, and they never noticed. You see he looked busy.

I think you just have to remember that collective social time wasters are more efficient at avoiding being caught. If you are on your own you have to take safeguarding measures to ensure you have a good story if challenged.

As you say, NTs are good at what is sometimes labelled "displacement activity". Huge amounts of work time are wasted on social chat, and on socially based skulduggery (as in the comedy series The Office for example).

The thing is, with office social networks it is hard for managers to find out what is going on, as all the little "cogs" in this social machine protect each other. Individuals time-wasting are easier to spot, and particularly any mis-use of computers for external chat sites, porn, sport or video downloads.

I've had terrible trouble with "reading up" over the years - so many jobs involve reading the explanatory manuals, or using computer based self-training sites, or reading up component or system specifications. These can be so boring I was often in the position of being on the same page at the end of the day from when I started, through day dreaming and switching off. However nobody seemed to notice.

My way out of this was to structure my time to achieve certain objectives by the end of the day, and I would try to find different angles to the work to make the assimilation process more interesting.

One of my worst experiences of this was during a period of low business. I was working in a systems management house (this is in my R&D rather than teaching years), and company rules required we had to appear to be doing something, even if we had nothing productive to do - so no reading fiction or magazines, unless you could hide it in a manual. To make matters worse, one of the Directors, a rather short character, would sneak round the office jumping on anyone he perceived insufficiently engaged. The numbers going sick through stress was considerable, but the Directors were too stupid to realise this pretend doing something approach wasn't practical.

In that same company, one bloke was managing a wine importing business on the side, using the phones and company paper, and photocopying, and they never noticed. You see he looked busy.

I think you just have to remember that collective social time wasters are more efficient at avoiding being caught. If you are on your own you have to take safeguarding measures to ensure you have a good story if challenged.