'Goofing Off' To Get Ahead?

theodp writes "His old day job at Gawker entailed calling BS on tech's high-and-mighty, but Ryan Tate still found things to like about Silicon Valley. In The 20% Doctrine, Tate explores how tinkering, goofing off, and breaking the rules at work can drive success in business. If you're lucky, your boss may someday find Tate's book in his or her conference schwag bag and be inspired enough by the tales of skunkworks projects at both tech (Google, Flickr, pre-Scott Thompson Yahoo) and non-tech (Bronx Academy of Letters, Huffington Post, Thomas Keller Restaurant Group) organizations to officially condone some form of 20% time at your place of work. In the meantime, how do you manage to find time to goof off to get ahead?"

Comments

Re:Goofing off

[bickerdyke]

By always looking busy, never telling the manager what I'm working on until it's done, and reporting I'm capable of doing less work than I actually am. Then, when I exceed expectations, my manager loves me, and when I deliver shiny new toys, the rest of the department loves me.

Don't we all do this shtick?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9SVhg6ZENw

Re:Goofing off to get ahead?

[girlintraining]

Well if that's all it takes, I have a former coworker who's about to be elected President of the United States

Your former coworker believes god lives in a nearby solar system, wears magical underwear, that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, and that when he dies he's going to become a god?

I'd love to be a consultant selling this

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Oh the many ways I know how to slack. I knew it'd come in handy some day, or I wouldn't have trained it so much.

It's not that I'm lazy...

[operagost]

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.