The Benefits of Performing Busyness

The open office plan is "the devil's floor plan," says Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The idea behind the term performing busyness is that we are measured less and less by discrete measures of output, a field that we have plowed or a number of widgets that we have turned out at the end of the day. Things like how busy you look and how much time you spend in the office start to become proxies for productivity, for commitment for professionalism. And taken to an extreme, we all know people who have mastered the art of looking busy more than they have mastering the art of actually doing stuff.