I ask because I’ve never been really really overworked. Ever. But I’ve often been really bored and done all my work with an hour to spend everyday. At the moment, because it’s a quiet period for everyone in my workplace, I can have whole days with practically nothing to do. During these times I surf the net (surreptitiously, cos I’m meant to act busy) and do some writing practice. But even so I feel very depressed and worthless and I think I’d much rather have far too much work to do, even if that would be stressful. Does anyone have the same experience? Any overworked Dopers out there who would kill to have my job?
I prefer having no end in sight - but that’s just me.
A little down time at work is a good thing but if I had to spend 9 of my ten hours at work glancing at the walls or looking at the clock I would go bonkers.
Thankfully, that never happens. Of course, we also go through spells where we have enough work to choke a hippo… like now.
And no… I’m not at work.
Too little work to do is deadly because that means there’s too many horses pulling the wagon. In this downsizing-happy world, you’re much better off being an overworked member of a too-small team than part of what management might see as resource-consuming excess capacity.
For me, too little is horrible. I can’t abide being bored.
I do about 1/2 my work the first week of the month, then little dribs and drabs the next three weeks.
I find too little better than too much. You can always find something to do, but finding time to do something is harder.
It depends on how much time you want to spend here on the boards.
I am with Annie on this. At the moment in my life I will always go for “as little as possible”. Yes, I am a lazy bitch. I adore when I have a job where I can legitimatly do nothing but please my self for hours a day. I also detest responsibility with a passion. Give me something easy but non-repetative and I will be fine. I want to leave it all behind me when I walk out the door.
I feel like such a freak here where everyone is always saying that the number one thing they want in a job is responsibility and a lot of challenge. Screw that, I want easy work for good pay, absent bosses and a desk where my computer screen faces the wall.
God I miss my old job sniff
I can imagine later in my life I will be more interested in a more challenging job, but right now I want about one task per day that takes about 2 hours to perform. 
I went from too much to do to too little rather abruptly, but my answer would have been the same 6 weeks ago. I’m a bit of a type A personality. Give me too much to do and I’m happy because I’ve got lots of (hopefully) cool stuff to do. Give me too little to do and I start to go stir crazy.
So, anyone want to give me too much to do? (Cleaning houses/apartments doesn not qualify!)
CJ
If it’s a boring job and you have somethhing you can waste time with- for instance, working independently in a library- a light workload is good. If the work is at all fulfilling, working hard feels good.
I do almost nothing at work. I get printouts from a computer system every day. I (often) get every third Wednesday off and paid. I (often) get every other Friday off, also paid. I’m on “call” those nights, so I stay sober. I get to surf the net and play civilization for pretty much 8 hours a day. When that gets boring, we have a fairly large catalog of DVDs and VHS tapes to watch. I can even take the occasional nap. I work midnights so no boss and he knows what we do anyway. Now this isn’t always the case. There has been many a night where we worked for 8 full hours. OK, not many, but a few. Computer maintenance is great.
That’s where I have a problem! My desk is right in the middle of it all and I have to look as if I’m doing work all day. But even if I could safety surf the net I’d still get bored. There’s only so much surfing you can do each day. And at the moment I’m not getting paid enough. And, good point, kneadtoknow. Personally I’ve never known anyone at my workplace made redundant. But it may happen.
Back in the early 1980s, I once had the thoroughly miserable experience of working as a receptionist for a company that had just gone through Chapter 11 reorganization. They had moved to new quarters, with a new phone number, but their old customers hadn’t figured out where they were yet. So the phone never rang, except for wrong numbers. And this was before the Internet. There are only so many hours a day you can sit there and read paperbacks, I discovered.
But I did have a computer at work, an Apple II with (gasp!) 128K of memory! (And yes, I mean “kilobytes” not “megabytes”.) It was meant to be the office’s word processor/spreadsheet computer, but thank God for the day that I discovered that it would play games (I was a tad new to computers, you understand.)
My choice was Zork, one of the original text adventure games. (The shoot-em-ups were too obviously “computer games”, according to the Boss. Didn’t look right to have the receptionist sitting there shooting asteroids.) It was all black-and-white text, no graphics at all, but it was, literally, a lifesaver. Gave me something to think about all day.
The newer Zork versions with graphics never look quite right to me somehow.
DDK> I once had a similar job. A receptionist, all alone in my little box, a phone that rang about once every five minutes for company. As I was temping I didn’t know I was allowed to read during the quiet period, and nobody told me. After a bit I took my boyfriend’s thesis in and spent whole days proofreading it. So good came of it, after all.
Too little is much worse, not only at the time, but in the long run. At the job I held before this one, there was never enough to do. I was bored out of my mind, and thus stretched what little there was to do endlessly, tweaking things over and over again and obsessing over tiny details. That took care of about 2-3 hours a day, and I spent the rest web surfing, playing Hearts online, etc. It got to the point where I overslept every single day, schlepping in at about 11 am. And I’d leave as soon as other people were gone. It sucked ass.
I finally got out and got my current job, and when I got here, I realized that my work ethic had atrophied down to practically nothing. It took my a long time to get back into the groove of actually working during the day. Sounds terrible, but it’s true. I’d open a project and then catch myself looking at the Boards again, emailing, whatever. Now I’m back to working 10-hour days, with only about 1 spent on the Boards. Guess I’m doing better, now!
For proof of this truth, see Tygr.
I’ve been “downsized” four times in four jobs. Each time came after a spell during which I spoke these words: “It’s been nice and calm at work this month.”
Too little when you need to look busy is the worst. I was in these situations at three past jobs, and it left me stressed and bored at the same time. The day just dragged along, and I’d be struggling to stay awake as I begged the clock to say it was quitting time. Now I’m busy (but not buried), and I find the day breezing by. I can work until 10pm or later now without feeling the least bit tired or worn out.
I like having too much to do, but only when it’s stuff that interests me.
I like being busy, so my vote is for too much, but I hate having to work my ass off because of someone else’s poor planning. That gets me.
I guess I’d go with too much too, but I’d rather have a moderate too little than an extreme too much. Being bored a quarter, or less than half the time, is better than feeling like I’ll never make it up for air. I’d rather be somewhat bored than sacrifice my health, my personal life, and my sanity.
So, given a choice between busy and bored, I guess I’d go with busy, just because time goes faster. But if I’m so busy I’m not enjoying life, then it’s time to find another job.