I can usually tell how busy I am by how much of my book I read in a day, and by the unbiased evaluation today was not busy. I actually have two books going, but my pleasure reading is "The History of the English Speaking People." Instead of the five volume set I got the condensed version which Tim would not approve of. Today I covered James I, Charles I, the English Civil War, Charles II, and James II. That is not much Army work done in the day, but miraculously, I didn't fall behind. How does that happen?
I'll tell you how it happens. Whenever any new person is added to a government staff, they become indispensable. We have two EWO's doing my job, me and a chief. When the chief that just left was getting ready to leave I told my boss that I could handle the job just fine by myself and we didn't need anyone else. In fact, I told him I would stay busier and the time would go faster if it was only me. He said that he would still like to have two people on staff so he sent out a replacement. When the next battalion comes in, mind you, they will only have one person with to do the job that two of us are now doing. Unless they are legally dead, they'll be just fine.
No boss wants to let their staff shrink, and people who arrive at a new job as extras have to find (make) something to do to justify themselves. We got a new captain on the battalion staff to fill a position that had never existed before. She is one of those people pleaser types who will make up stuff to do or spend time making perfectly good things look prettier or different, and then have the audacity to think she has accomplished something. Make a meaningless change and think you have had an effect? Ridiculous. The Army, the Navy, the whole military has the mindless notion that all motion is progress, all change is improvement, and all effort causes success. When did good enough stop being good enough? My program is running just peachy-keen fine, and I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'm going to put in effort for effort's sake just to make my spreadsheets more colorful and my training presentations have multimedia effects. There. I've said it. I'm a rebel. A type-A minimalist. I will not make up work to make myself look busy. I will sit and read about dead kings.
