Remote Work: Stop Looking Busy, Start Being Visible
Remote work removed the commute and the office small talk. It also removed something people didn't realise they relied on: being seen working. In an office, your manager walks past and sees you at your desk. At home, nobody sees anything, so many people start performing productivity instead.
Most of us have seen the tricks. Some of us have tried a few. They don't work for long, and the alternative is simpler than it looks.
The classic tricks, and why they fail
The permanent green dot
Keep Slack or Teams open, wiggle the mouse, react to a message now and then. The status says "online", so you must be working.
The problem is that everyone knows how easy the green dot is to fake. It measures presence, not progress. A team that judges people by their status icon ends up rewarding the people who are best at staying online, not the ones shipping the work.
The well-timed late-night email
Send a message at 11 p.m. or 6 a.m. to show dedication. It works once. Then it sets an expectation that you're always available, and it quietly pressures your colleagues to do the same. Burnout loves a good timestamp.
The calendar full of mysterious meetings
Block the afternoon with "Strategy Alignment" and nobody will ask questions. Except that a fully booked calendar makes you hard to reach for things that matter, and sooner or later someone asks what came out of all that alignment.
Jargon-heavy status updates
"Leveraging cross-team synergies to unblock scalability bandwidth." It sounds important and says nothing. Vague updates make it harder to see real progress, and they hide problems until they are expensive.
All of these tricks share the same flaw: they optimize for looking busy, which is the one thing nobody actually wants from you.
What to do instead
The goal isn't to look busy. It's to make your actual work easy to see.
Write short updates with outcomes
A daily or weekly update in three lines beats eight hours of green dot:
- Done: what shipped or moved forward.
- Next: what you're working on now.
- Blocked: what you need, and from whom.
Concrete updates build trust because people can check them. They also surface problems early, which is the real reason managers want visibility.
Work in public
Open pull requests early, write clear descriptions, post short demos or screenshots of progress. Visible artifacts show your work far better than an online status, and they help teammates who depend on it.
Be clear about availability
Share your working hours and stick to them. Block focus time openly and call it what it is: "Focus: payment refactor". Colleagues respect boundaries that are stated clearly far more than mysterious unavailability.
Make async communication easy
Write messages that can be answered without a meeting: context, the question, the options and your recommendation. Remote teams spread across time zones run on good writing.
Flag problems early
If something is taking longer than expected, say so before the deadline, not after. Nobody remembers that a task was late by a day. Everybody remembers that they found out at the last minute.
A note for managers
If people feel the need to look busy, the measurement is usually the problem. Judge outcomes, not activity: what was delivered, how it was received, what got unblocked. Make it normal to say "I'm stuck" or "I finished early". Teams that trust each other don't need green dots.
Conclusion
Remote work rewards the people who make their work visible, not the ones who make themselves look busy. Turn the energy spent on performing productivity into clear updates, visible progress and honest communication. Then enjoy the sweatpants with a clear conscience.