It’s just gone 10am and you’re already bored. You’ve had three cups of coffee this morning and you are fighting the urge to make a fourth. But then it will become too obvious. Your boss will realise you’ve been wasting precious company time.

Sound familiar? Well never fear, with this tried and trusted list of  seventeen “How to look busy at work” tips !!

1. Always have multiple projects going. That way if your boss starts to wonder why you’re falling behind on one project, you can tell him that you’ve been catching up on another.
2. Create the illusion of furious activity whenever possible. Never have a clean desk. Fill your work area with several projects that you are in the process of doing (or not doing, as the case may be). Cover your desk with open binders, highlighted reports, and sticky notes all over the place—make your workspace look like a war zone. Remember to keep your wastebasket full, too, preferably with work-related debris.
3. Emphasize the tremendous amount of work you’re accomplishing. Talk about your work in dramatic, but plausible terms. Rather than referring to something as “that small project”, call it “the epic quest” or “the gargantuan struggle.” Preempt unfavorable discussion of your progress by reporting every little advance you make as though it were a large step. Never miss a chance to communicate how busy you are.
4. Ask a lot of questions. Think up complex questions about tasks you have to do and ask them of your boss or coworkers. Ask questions frequently enough and everyone will think you’re really wrapped up in whatever task your asking about. Be careful what questions you ask, though: you don’t want to sound incompetent.
5. Fabricate major obstacles or developments that require you to go back to the drawing board. Every once in a while report to your boss that you had nearly finished a whole project, but then you realized that you had to scrap all that you had done because you figured out a better way to do it. This gives the impression that you’re constantly thinking about ways to enhance your productivity in the long run. It also shows that you can overcome any obstacle. Both of these are preferable to saying that you spent too much time writing personal emails.
6. Open several of the applications you normally use for work and have them visible on your computer’s desktop. The applications, of course, vary depending on the nature of your work. For example, if your task is data entry, you should have one or more databases up and running.
7. Be alert. Not working is like playing a sport or game. You’ve got to always be on your toes and ready for anything. Try to anticipate your opponent’s next move—for instance, does your boss always stop by at certain times?—and pay attention to clues (if you hear footsteps approaching, a chair creaking, or a flourish of activity nearby, it could mean trouble).
8. Watch out for Big Brother. Most large companies now monitor their employees’ computer usage. Learn about your company’s policies on internet usage, and learn about their monitoring efforts (it helps to make friends with someone in the IT department). If you can’t run afoul of the company’s policies without making sure you won’t get caught, don’t risk it.
9. Trick the watchers. There are a variety of tricks you can use to fool those who might be monitoring your computer usage. On the frontline, there are free programs you can install that will allow you to have two active desktops on your computer (one for work, one for play) that you can switch between at the touch of a key when you hear the pitter-patter of supervisory feet. You can also defeat this sort of monitoring by positioning your computer in such a way as to block someone else’s view of the screen (blame the unusual positioning on glare or ergonomics, if you need to explain it). Sneakier IT personnel, who monitor usage on the backend, are harder to fool. Use proxies to surf the web, or use cached Google pages of a website instead of going directly to the site. There are also a variety of programs you can get (many for free) specifically designed to help you avoid detection. Search for them on the internet, or check out the external links.
10. Slack off a little bit at a time. If you spend one whole day a week doing nothing, you’ll get caught. But you may be able to waste the same amount of time without getting caught by spreading out your “leisure time.” Take a few minutes here and there to write emails, check the football scores, or surf the net, and then get back to work for several minutes. Rinse, repeat.
11. Place a pencil or pen behind your ear to give the impression that you are writing down so much important information that if it were possible, your hand itself would be a writing instrument. Remember, if your boss walks by your desk on the left side, place the pencil behind your left ear or the effect is lost.
12. Take a stack of industry magazines with you to the bathroom. Mark them up with sticky notes and wrinkle the pages. Once in private, stick a mobile video player (with earphones, of course) in between the pages and watch something more fun. The low-tech version of this trick—hiding your favorite magazine in the pages of a work-related publication—is a schoolboy classic and can work effectively even at your desk.
13. Visit friends in different departments, leaving your workspace very “busy” looking. However, make sure that you have a work-related topic to initiate the conversation and return to if a supervisor walks by. For instance, tell the person next to you that you are going to double check something with someone from a different department. What you’re really doing is providing yourself with an excuse if your boss wonders where you were for a little while. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wanted to double check and make sure both of our departments were on the same page about the new ad campaign, I know it’s an important issue and I would hate to have any mix-ups.”
14. Drink lots of water. Not only is water good for your health and can combat certain types of cancer, it makes you have to use the bathroom a lot. Bathroom trips can take up a lot of time and are a legitimate way to waste time while still looking busy.
15. Create meetings in Outlook with realistic sounding names. These can buy you a good chunk of time, and if your boss asks, you can say you went all the way to the meeting and no one showed, so you just worked on some paperwork since you had the conference room.
16. For a good catch-all, open a couple programs that you use daily. Make sure that all are visible and fill up your screen so you look busy. Then, take a screen shot using the “Print Scrn” button, open MS Paint, paste the image in, then save and set that image as your desktop background. You may also want to hide most of your desktop icons, as this could be a dead giveaway. Even if your computer is on the desktop, it’ll look as if you are deep into work!
17. Always, always carry a backup prop. If you’re going to be away from your desk doing something other than work, carry a document you might have been reading with you. It’s best if it’s a “long term project” that you can convincingly say you were finally getting to.

If you have any more then share them with the rest of the class by leaving a comment.

Ranger, out.