A word I didn’t know

In the morning, while having some tomato soup and going through the news website on my laptop, as is my habit most of the days, I came across this interesting word- fauxductivity. There was an entire article on it. I was not aware of this word and I think it’s not that recognised, given the red line that has appeared under the word after I have typed it.



So, what is this fauxductivity? It refers to an act where one shows that he/she is busy but there isn’t any actual or effective productivity that the person is bringing to the table.



Faux and productivity are the words which have been used to derive this word.



While the news mentioned fauxductivity as being a new trend, I think it has been prevalent for a long time. Many have come across these individuals over the time, even my grandfather had mentioned people like that in his work place.



While in most cases today individuals who practise fauxductivity are removed from the organisations within a short period of time, but that is only mostly done in the private sector. When it comes to the government sector though, I think individuals like that are still flourishing well there, in fact I have come across people who wanted or want government jobs just for that purpose, earning well for minimal or in some cases no work. It can be one of the problems of a developing nation.



However, if there is one group of people we can agree upon, who have maintained this practice of fauxductivity throughout time, it would be politicians. Although I must mention not all of them, still a large percentage of them can be held accountable for it. Every time the elections approach, the opposing parties will turn all the stones to tell you about each other’s failures in the distant past as well as the recent one, while also highlighting how they themselves were busy doing a lot of work. Most of the people never get to see a lot of this work they claim to have been busy doing.



I personally have seen two people whom I think will remember for their fauxductivity.



First, Mr Ali, I met him during my second job of life as a junior editor at a publishing house. He was the librarian there, a distant relative of the owner of the company. From the morning right till the end of the day. He did exactly nothing. The whole day he would just sit there at the desk in the library, reading a newspaper, playing games or talking on his smartphone. The pile of books on the chairs and tables and even on the floors never reached their proper place in the shelves. The arrangement of the books on the shelf was a mess too. Sometimes I would arrange some of the books knowing they would never be done otherwise.



Initially we would walk to the library to get the book we wanted but to make Mr Ali work a little, the higher ups took the decision that we would call and ask him to bring books to us. I did advise Mr Ali to apply at a school for the post of librarian, feeling he might be satisfied from how little he had to do here, but then I realised later he actually didn’t want to do anything. I am sure he is still sitting there even now and doing nothing.



Second, it was Mrs Choksi. She was older than me. I met her when I was working as senior editor at another publishing house. Mrs Choksi was a senior editor there too, but I didn’t know why.



Mrs Choksi did work, much more than Mr Ali, but it was like 30% work and 70
% pretence most of the time. Since she couldn’t get the work done on time for the obvious reason, the entire department had to overwork to balance things out.



Like I said, I don’t know why she was made a senior editor because her editing skills were anything but average, editing something after she had done her editing felt like editing it for the first time.



Then, why was Mrs Choksi here? The head of the department Ms Goenka was a good friend of her and Ms Goenka was also good natured which also made her vulnerable to certain things such as Mrs Choksi’s constant reasoning of fatigue (which was actually laziness) for her lack of performance. Eventually Mrs Choksi left when Ms Goenka quit her job here and that is the last I had heard of her.



One needs to work, not just for money, but for a lot of things. Beyond any wealth, it’s the achievements which add meaning to our lives, they are the decoration over our capabilities which we hone for years. Things like fauxductivity may never disappear because there will always be that one person unwilling to work and also not realising a whole lot that he/she may never experience in life.

Written by Anuran Chatterji

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