★ tvN's "Knowing Bros" strongly recommends Professor Kim Sang-wook!
★ Highly recommended Danish daily newspapers such as Politiken and Daily Börsen!

“Why do we work 8 hours when we created a society where we only have to work 4 hours?”
Why do we feel proud when we say we're busy?
Are you doing real work most of the time during the day?
There is something wrong with our work!

“Humans are still constantly creating work due to the compulsion to work.
The profits from time and efficiency savings are simply being used to do more work.
This book addresses just that question.”
_Professor Kim Sang-wook, from tvN's "Knowing Bros"

The era of 'fake labor' where people don't work
The Real Reason We Do More

"Fake Work: The World of Burnout We Create" delves into what "fake work" is—the busy, pointless, and time-wasting work that has been taboo in our society—and how it has led to our overwork.
In addition to practical statistical data, you can uncover the distorted reality of labor through conversations with labor experts and candid interviews with people who realized their own fake labor in various organizations.

In this book, Dennis Nørmark, the author of some of the most cited works in Danish anthropology, and philosopher Anders Fogg Jensen present a new philosophical perspective on labor, drawing on their extensive knowledge of labor, culture, politics, history, and society.
The book is divided into three major parts: "Lost Time," "Lost Meaning," and "Reclaiming Time and Meaning." It not only sheds light on the various problems that anyone working inevitably faces, but also presents courageous alternatives that can help people break free from fake labor, do real work, and rediscover the essence of labor and the meaning of life.
Through this book, we will have the opportunity to dispel the distorted perceptions and doubts we have had about labor.

The COVID-19 crisis has been a strange kind of trigger.
It has become a catalyst for us to reevaluate what we do all day long during a time we considered 'normal.'
But reflection on such fundamental questions as what we do should not be a flash in the pan when a pandemic rages.
We need to engage in meaningful reflection like this periodically.
A life without reflection is blind and foolish.
Not only is it a waste of time and resources at work, it's also a waste of our precious lives.
I hope this book will be of some help in leading that process of reflection.
---From the "Preface"

We needed an alternative to the concept of "empty labor," which encompassed work that was not at all difficult but extremely stressful, work that could not be explained to anyone, and work that no one could understand even if explained to them.
So we came up with a suitable term: 'pseudowork'.

Fake labor encompasses a wider range of situations.
This includes tasks that are ordered, tasks that are paid, tasks required by the organization, and tasks that look like labor but are not labor.
Fake work keeps us busy without us feeling like we're doing any real work.
Or, if there is any work among the things we know that we suspect is meaningless, that is fake labor.
---From "Chapter 3: The Nature and Change of Labor"

For example, if you assign a large project that everyone knows is a waste of time to a relatively young employee just to give them something to do, that's fake labor.
Meetings where you hear about things you already know are also fake labor.
A presentation that is forgotten as soon as the projector is turned off, or supervision or management that fails to prevent things from going wrong, are also fake labor.

Also, doing things like redoing all your paperwork to cover up the fact that you have nothing to do or to maintain your self-esteem by maintaining the feeling that you are a working person is also fake work.
---From "Chapter 3: The Nature and Change of Labor"

Some people have come to see through the false formation and its alienating nature, and they recognize that what they were doing or are doing is fake work.

We decided to find these people and ask them what they actually do in the workplace.
Such people were surprisingly easy to find.
When they contacted us after seeing our ads on social media or just happened to run into us, they were delighted and rushed to us.
He was openly frustrated, knowing full well that much of his work was a waste of time, a pointless spin on the plate.
---From "Chapter 3: The Nature and Change of Labor"

If people are given 10 hours to do something, they will use those 10 hours.
But if you were given 25 hours to do the same thing, surprisingly, it would end up taking 25 hours.
It's not that people are lazy, deceitful, or intentionally trying to deceive, it's simply that "the tasks we have to accomplish grow in importance and complexity in proportion to the time we have to devote to them."

No one wants to be left behind.
Therefore, working hours must be used for something.
So people work as slowly as possible, triple-check, and distract themselves every now and then.
---From "Chapter 4: People Who Don't Give Up Fake Labor"

If any of you reading this book are hearing about Parkinson's Law for the first time, you've been missing out on one of the most fascinating and important theories about how organizations operate.

Parkinson's law was discovered and developed by British maritime historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson.
He summarized his thoughts in an article published in The Economist in 1955.
The series of ideas and hypotheses presented in that paper included concepts that would live on for generations and bear his name.
"Work expands to fill the time allowed for its completion." What does this mean? Parkinson was referring to the infinitely expanding capacity of bureaucracy.
---From "Chapter 4: People Who Don't Give Up Fake Labor"

In many ways, Toke's way of working is a reverse version of Parkinson's Law.
“Traditionally, lectures are held for four hours, and no one raises questions.” But after three hours, students lose focus, making the last hour pointless.
So he rebelled against the norm and shortened his classes to three hours.
But other instructors fight the opposite battle.
It's about allocating more time to your subject.
“That’s because it matches the number of PowerPoint slides they’ve designed, and it’s difficult to reduce that,” Toke thought.
---From "Chapter 4: People Who Don't Give Up Fake Labor"

“We were submitting way too much, way too much.
Since the management actually only needed the core information, we were able to reduce it to about 10 pages.
The management team was also well aware of this fact.
“In fact, one of their regular tasks was to edit the large reports our team submitted to the board and create a summary of about 10 pages.”

In other words, the 60 pages of the annual report that Kirsten created were never seen by the board.
“Nobody told me that one-seventh was enough.
They always complimented our work and said it looked really cool.”
---From "Chapter 6: Stop Imitating Others"

“Most people have a lot more room for maneuver than they think.
You'll often find that questioning seemingly strange directives can garner more support than you might think.
But if you openly point out that it's fake labor, people don't know how to react.
I am speechless, anxious and don't know what to do.
Because I'm afraid of being demoted or cut off.
But that's not the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that many people actually like fake activities.
Because fake activities are aesthetically pleasing and comforting, and they're cool.
It also allows us to ignore the real problem.”
---From "Chapter 7: Returning to Earth from Space"

It is very dangerous for an organization to lose its ability to communicate clear messages to its employees.
Mats Alvesson, a professor of management at Lund University in Sweden, says that in such cases, employees become accustomed to a world of superficial glamour, where what is said or done on the outside is different from what is actually meant.
Then people don't really care what's good or bad, as long as the words and actions of those around them seem persuasive.
In such a world, situations arise where one has no choice but to do fake labor.
---From "Speak clearly and avoid nonsense"

One of the reasons we have so much fake labor is that companies don't pay employees for the value they create, but rather for the time they invest in doing it.
This has created an incentive structure that, as a result, encourages people to work longer hours and demonstrates that they can fill longer hours.
Not only that, they also exaggerate the hours they work.
The people most responsible for exaggerating working hours are consultants.
When I was working as a consultant, one client asked me to calculate how much time it would take to create value for his company and write a report on it.
Many consultants, including myself, would first figure out how much the client could afford, then work backwards from there and divide that by the hourly rate.
As a result, we told the client that it took 30 hours to complete the task, which was just a number pulled out of thin air.
---From "What is Agile?"

The important thing is that managers themselves become role models and go home and rest after work.
I repeat this several times in this book.
Fake labor can only be eliminated if management takes the lead.
The same goes for an organizational culture that is busy without any meaning.
Because of this, managers should ask themselves whether it is okay to go home and rest after work.
If a manager is leaving work at 2 p.m., instead of saying, "I'm going to do the rest of my work at home," he or she should be able to say, "I've done all I had to do today, so I'm going to leave now."

This is quite a difficult task for many managers.
I've actually talked to a few people who have done this, and they said that when they did it and left, most of the remaining employees felt liberated, which brightened the atmosphere in the office.
---From "Don't be busy, don't say you're busy"

Apple's Steve Jobs invited 100 of his top executives to a meeting once a year to discuss the company's top 10 priorities.
At this time, he would ask the people attending the meeting to rank each issue and then personally delete the bottom seven issues.
When asked why he did so, he replied, "We can only achieve a maximum of three things."
---From "Setting Limits to Your Work"

On the other hand, backstage work, that is, work related to knowledge and innovation, actually decreased in quality when rewards were promised.
Performance-based pay, performance contracts, and other related issues show that we are still stuck in an industrial-social mindset.
Some employees are compensated more for putting in more time, even though the work is ultimately not good.
They even invest a lot of time in measuring, recording, and formalizing that time.
And then managers adjust, normalize, and discuss this with each other, and then they pay bonuses that may actually harm employees rather than make them more competent.
The reason for this is that we are stuck in a culture where we have been taught that financial incentives always lead to better performance.
---From "Let's break free from evaluation and take more risks together"

Sanne's story was very interesting.
Because it wasn't she who 'created' her role.
It was her colleagues who pressured her to find a meaningless niche in a project that had nothing to do with her.
But Sanne knew full well that it was nothing more than fake labor, and that it was not only a waste of his time but also a waste of the citizens' taxes.

Nonetheless, my colleague's individual suggestions sound quite plausible.
Because they continue to create countless evidence that can be found within the organization.
But Sanne tried to focus on reality.
She wanted to be honest, but most members of the organization tacitly accept it because they have no benefit in revealing uncomfortable facts, and those who honestly expose them are often seen as traitors to the organization.
---From "A Critical Attitude and New Concept of Value to Separate Fake Labor from Real Labor"

She's not alone in challenging the perception that managers want to save time and money and use their positions wisely.
My inbox also contains letters from employees asking their managers to reduce their work hours, claiming they can easily complete their assigned tasks within a 30-hour workweek.
However, the boss rejected the employee's request, saying, "We'll have to wait and see, as there will be a lot of work for the rest of the year."

Of course, that can be done in any way.
However, it is not reasonable for a manager to not respond to an employee's request.
Moreover, this is far from my original idea that every boss would be happy when an employee suggested specific cost-cutting measures.
Perhaps, more than Nina hints, a boss's vanity can be a major distraction from doing real work.
---From "A Critical Attitude and New Concept of Value to Separate Fake Labor from Real Labor"

I once met a man who, while on summer vacation, had set up a simple auto-responder on his email account.
His auto-reply email read:

“Hello, I’m on vacation until August 5th.
When I return from vacation, all emails I received during that period will be deleted.
If you are still interested after August 5th, please email us again.”

And as soon as he got back from vacation, he deleted all the hundreds of emails he had received while on vacation.
But not a single person asked him to reply again.

---From "Setting Limits to Your Work"