A recent, candid confession on Reddit has sparked a widespread conversation about a silent epidemic in modern Indian workplaces: the art of pretending to be busy. A young intern's detailed account of his meaningless workday has resonated with thousands, putting a name to a common but rarely discussed phenomenon – task masking.
From Real Work to Theatre: An Intern's Story
The intern described a jarring shift in his routine. His initial weeks at a pharmaceutical plant involved tangible, physical work outdoors – fixing equipment and accompanying senior staff on site walks. However, after being moved to an office, his role transformed into a performance. "I sit there for 8 hours and just pretend to be busy," he wrote. His days are now filled with sorting files, opening and closing Excel sheets, and waiting. The moment managers perceive his idleness, he is assigned "some unnecessary task that nobody wants to do."
For him, quitting is not an option due to financial needs, so he endures the heavy boredom, counting down the minutes. His central dilemma is not the idle time itself, but the exhausting act he must maintain. "How do you pretend to work without getting caught?" he asks, debating whether to raise the issue or simply tough it out for the remaining month.
A Visible Pattern and a New Term
Scrolling through Reddit reveals this is not an isolated case. Another employee observed corridors full of frantic but unproductive motion: people staring intently at screens, flipping through documents, pretending to be on calls, or walking purposefully with serious expressions – all to project an image of busyness. This begs a tragicomic question: Is this laziness, or a workplace culture where looking busy matters more than doing useful work?
This behaviour now has a formal label: Task Masking. It refers to the act of appearing productive without generating meaningful output. It manifests in seemingly harmless activities: unnecessary meetings, repeatedly opening and closing documents, or carrying laptops between rooms. Its prevalence suggests a structural issue, not merely individual employee flaws.
Even Leaders Admit to the Charade
Strikingly, this pretence is not confined to interns or junior staff. In an episode of the WTF podcast, Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath openly discussed his own workday. "I've realised that most of what I do is pretend to work," he admitted. He recalled a former CXO who confessed to appearing busy for set hours simply because his bosses were present. Upon analysis, Kamath found only a small fraction of that time was genuinely productive.
This admission rings true for many professionals. The expectation of constant, visible effort often clashes with the natural ebb and flow of meaningful work, forcing employees to fill the gaps with performance.
Why Task Masking Thrives and Its Real Cost
Task masking flourishes in environments where visibility becomes a proxy for value. With the push for return-to-office mandates, the performative aspect of work has intensified. Sitting late is misread as commitment, while leaving on time is unfairly seen as disengagement, regardless of actual output. This breeds fear and uncertainty, leading people to optimize for the safest option: being seen.
This is fundamentally a management and cultural problem. When employees pretend, it often signals they don't know what good work looks like, or they don't believe it will be rewarded. They learn that admitting to completed tasks can result in punishment with pointless work, as the Reddit intern experienced. The lesson is clear: finish early, and you pay for it.
The consequences are severe:
- Inefficiency: People are trained to slow down and stretch tasks.
- Erosion of Trust: Employees hide or inflate effort, while managers lose sight of real capacity.
- Human Toll: Pretending is mentally draining, creating anxiety without purpose, leading to unexplained fatigue.
The solution lies not in demanding harder work, but in asking clearer questions: What defines success today? What output truly matters this week? What happens when someone finishes early? Until these are answered, offices will remain filled with meaningless motion, and countless professionals will continue the exhausting performance of pretending to work, just hoping not to be noticed.
