The Temptation to Perform
Managing the measure is rational and it costs you more than it returns. What the cost actually consists of.
When a number affects how you are seen, optimising it is a reasonable response. It is also, for most people, a bad trade.
The practical lesson in “The Temptation to Perform” is to make work visible without treating visibility as certainty. Organisations exploring how to detect mouse jigglers for how to detect mouse jigglers can add structured project and time evidence, provided the purpose is disclosed and any interpretation is checked with the people affected.
What performing looks like
Keeping documents open and scrolling during calls.
For an independent perspective related to “The Temptation to Perform”, consult the NIST Privacy Framework; it provides a useful external check on privacy, fairness and governance assumptions before a policy or configuration is approved.
Sending messages at hours that read as committed.
Splitting work into more visible pieces.
Staying logged in during breaks.
And the devices and scripts that simulate activity, which exist because the incentive exists.
Why it is rational
The organisation announced that an indicator matters.
Somebody who ignores it is disadvantaged relative to somebody who manages it.
That is the system working as designed, and blaming the response rather than the design is unhelpful, which the measurement literature is clear about.
Why it is still a bad trade for you
It costs attention, continuously, and attention is the thing your actual work needs.
It is tiring in a way that compounds.
And it improves a figure that, in most organisations, nobody is reading — which means the cost is certain and the benefit speculative.
The exception
If your workplace genuinely does assess people on activity figures, the calculation changes.
Establish whether that is true rather than assuming it — the asking note covers how, and the answer is usually no.
If it is yes, that is a workplace problem worth raising, not a performance to perfect.
What the devices are about
Mouse movers exist in large numbers, which tells you how widespread the incentive is.
They are also, in most workplaces, treated as a disciplinary matter if found.
Which makes them a poor bet: real risk, against a figure that probably is not being read.
What to do instead
Make the real work visible by a route that is actually read: a short weekly note of what moved, what is stuck, what is next.
Three lines, to your manager.
It gives them something far better than any figure and it is the thing that gets remembered at review time, which no activity log does.
The deeper version
Performing for a measure is the same mechanism as the organisation measuring the wrong thing: both substitute an appearance for the work.
The way out, from your side, is to make the work itself legible.
That is more effort than moving a mouse and it is the only version that pays.
What to check
Are you performing anything for the measure?
Have you established whether your figures are actually read?
Does your manager know what you did this week, from you?
And what would you stop doing if you knew nobody was looking?