How to deal with extreme boredom and pretending to be busy at work
Having little to no work to do while forced to sit in an office all day leads to severe mental health strain, loss of confidence, and stagnation. People end up wasting their days secretly trying to fill time, which causes them to feel less capable than they were a year prior.
Core Friction Pattern
Analysis of 4 peer accounts across online developer and community forums reveals that “How to deal with extreme boredom and pretending to be busy at work” repeatedly surfaces due to edge-case mismatches between standard defaults and real-world environments. Standard troubleshooting frequently falls short, compelling practitioners to develop custom workarounds.
+5 alternative community-tested workarounds cataloged below.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- People have been saying this in most months since September 2026.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
How to deal with extreme boredom and pretending to be busy at work
- 1taking free online courses related to the fieldDid this help you?
- 2reading books on a phone using a stand and web browser to appear busyDid this help you?
- 3trying to proactively ask for involvement in projectsDid this help you?
- 4Switching to an industry role with a standard 40-hour week.Did this help you?
- 5Transitioning into tax accounting or fraud investigation.Did this help you?
- 6Focusing entirely on the paycheck rather than looking for interesting work.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“It's 10 PM and I'm bashing my head through a wall trying to request PBCs from the clients so I can tick it off Excel.”source ↗
“There sure is thrill going to some industrial town in BumFuck Nowhere and counting steel beams. Eating McDonalds or whatever slop you can find.”source ↗
“I couldnt hack it in public. We never meshed well.”source ↗
“I have to go to the office every day and just pretend to be busy while I'm actually bored to death.”source ↗
“sometimes it feels like this situation could be just as harmful to my mental health, just in a different way.”source ↗
“I feel like I'm just wasting my days and sometimes I feel less confident in my work than I felt a year ago”source ↗
“The worst part is the boredom from waiting for something to break in industrial maintenance”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 4What to do when your child is bored in kindergarten
- 22How to handle severe work burnout and zero motivation
- 6How to handle severe depression and isolation at work
- 13How to get HR to approve an ergonomic standing desk for back pain
- 8What to do while supervising independent play
- 4How to survive the long school stretches without breaks