How To Slack

On most computers, you can quickly change your screen saver settings. The important thing that we want to pay attention to for the purposes of slacking is the amount of time before the screen saver comes on. When you are working at your desk, set this to a very low amount of time, no more than five minutes. You WANT the screen saver to come on WHEN YOU ARE AT YOUR DESK.

Now, here is the important thing. If someone comes over to ask a question, go to your computer and shake off the screen saver with your mouse or keyboard as you answer the question. You can do this as if you are looking up the answer, or you can do it as if you are busy and need to multitask. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that people see the screen saver, and see you shake it off.

What is the purpose of this?

Well, the other day, I went to have coffee with a friend and catch up on a few things for an hour. If I change the screen saver so that it NEVER comes on, people walking by my desk will get the feeling that I am around, just not at my desk at the moment. You see, people have incidentaly seen that I have a screen saver on my desk. When they walk by and see that I am not there, but neither is my screen saver, intuitively they will think I musty not have been gone long.

This will be true in the first minute of that hour-long coffee break as well as the last.