# Betting On Nothing By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-10-28 Organizations and leaders like to pretend a lot. They pretend to execute a plan, develop a strategy, care for the customers, and support their employees. Any serious analysis often highlights the massive gap between the stated action and achieving it. Some of this gap is explained by the effort it takes to achieve it versus the benefit of just saying one is trying. For example, telling someone I'm sorry goes a long way in the beginning as we take people's word and give them the benefit of the doubt. So, one hardly needs to follow through on this apology via an action, especially if the relationship is short-term and one is in a position of authority. However, this phenomenon only explains part of why many leaders and organizations pretend to do things. The other large part is that there is no work to be done in the first place. Most work is unnecessary bullshit. In the next few years, we'll see how true this is as people build AI agents to execute the "work." While some AI agents will certainly be beneficial and more efficient than humans, society will soon discover just how pointless most of our work has been because there will be no point in AI and automation. Say one creates an AI agent to take notes for a meeting, has an AI summarize the notes from the meeting, and then has an AI assess the point or value of the meeting. What the last AI will likely conclude is just how pointless the meeting was in terms of organizational value. The kicker is that most already know this dynamic and their job is mostly meaningless. We should be working 15 hours a week or less, yet we fill the void because someone decided that 40 hours was the right amount of work to be considered a valued member of society. Assuming a 15-hour work week is the upper limit of the actual work required out of the standard 40, at least 62.5% of organizational work is pretend. In other words, 62.5% of the work is nothing. This is a conservative figure, and it will only increase with AI coming on board. Within the booming casino business, the casino typically has an edge of 2-15%. In other words, the casino is highly profitable by just offering games that are tilted 52% to 65% towards the casino. This aligns with the percentage of time work is pretend or nothing. Thus, betting on nothing ever happening at work is bound to be profitable for a worker. Sometimes, doing nothing results in a loss, but the time is right to bet consistently on nothing and truly pretending to work. Odds are one will be far ahead in the long run. #### Related Items [[Work]] [[Pretending]] [[Performance]] [[Probability]] [[Artificial Intelligence]] [[Bullshit]] [[Organization]]