The cursor is blinking at me, a rhythmic, taunting pulse that matches the dull throb in my cervical spine. I cracked my neck about 21 minutes ago-too hard, clearly-and now there is this sharp, electric wire of a sensation that zips from my ear to my shoulder every time I look toward the second monitor. On that monitor is a spreadsheet with 11 tabs. Each tab represents a different layer of habitat connectivity for a migratory elk corridor project I’m supposed to be finishing. But instead of refining the 1001 data points that determine where the underpasses should go, I am currently formatting a status report.

I’ve been at this for 121 minutes. The report is for a meeting that will last 31 minutes. The irony is so thick it’s practically structural. The actual work-the spatial analysis that keeps animals from being turned into roadkill-would have taken me 61 minutes to complete. Instead, I am engaged in a elaborate dance of documentation, proving to 21 different stakeholders that I am, in fact, doing the things I haven’t had time to do because I’m too busy documenting them.

In complex organizations, visibility is the only currency that doesn’t devalue. If you do something brilliant but don’t send a Slack message about it to 51 people, did it even happen? According to the current logic of the corporate machine, the answer is a resounding no.

The performance has become the product.

The Visual Stall

I think about Dave, a project manager I worked with on a previous corridor plan in the high desert. Dave was a maestro of the theater. He once spent 181 minutes-nearly three hours-perfecting the drop shadows on a PowerPoint deck. The deck was meant to update the board on a fence installation that had been delayed because Dave hadn’t signed the purchase order.

He was so busy creating the visual representation of progress that the progress itself had stalled. He presented that deck with the confidence of a man who had just brokered world peace. The board loved it. They gave him a commendation for ‘clear communication.’ The fence sat in a warehouse for 41 days.

The Corporate Treadmill

We see this everywhere. The ‘green’ dot on the internal messaging app. The ‘re-stacking’ of the Trello board. The endless cycle of ‘sync’ meetings where the primary output is a scheduled time for the next sync. It is a self-perpetuating spiral of busyness. We are terrified of the silence that comes with deep work because silence looks like inactivity to a manager staring at a dashboard.

I remember one specific mistake I made back when I was starting out. I was so desperate to show ‘activity’ during a performance review period that I stayed up until 2:01 AM manually color-coding a database of 151 soil samples. I didn’t need to do it; the software could have automated the visualization in seconds. But I wanted the timestamp on my email. I wanted the proof of my sacrifice. In my late-night haze, I accidentally overwrote the primary coordinate data for a 301-acre preserve. I spent the next 11 days of actual productive time trying to recover what I had destroyed in the name of looking busy. It was a wake-up call that I promptly ignored for another several years.

The Safety Net of Appearance

There’s a strange comfort in the theater, though. Real work is terrifying. Real work involves the possibility of failure. If I design a wildlife crossing and the elk refuse to use it, I have failed. That is a heavy burden to carry. But if I create a 151-page report about why the elk *might* use the crossing, and that report follows every corporate branding guideline, I have ‘succeeded’ in the eyes of the organization regardless of what the elk do. Theater is safe. It is controllable. It is a way to hide from the brutal honesty of results.

This is why I find myself increasingly drawn to the physical aspects of my job-the rare moments I get to go out and actually walk the terrain. There is no ‘status update’ for a limestone ridge. It either exists or it doesn’t. You can’t perform ‘being on a mountain.’ You either hiked up the 1001 vertical feet or you didn’t.

The Material Truth

When you’re designing a space, you can’t hide a lack of productivity behind a slide deck. The materials you choose speak for themselves. If a wall is built poorly, no amount of ‘engagement metrics’ will keep it standing. This is why I appreciate the straightforward honesty of something like a

Slat Solution installation. It’s a design choice that doesn’t need to explain itself. It provides a texture and a physical presence that is immediately legible. It’s not ‘performing’ a modern aesthetic; it is embodying it through material reality.

The Collaboration Trap

Yet, the administrative overhead of our collaboration continues to grow. We have built tools meant to liberate us from the mundane, but we have used them to create new, more digital versions of the mundane. Slack was supposed to kill email; instead, it just created a 24/1 stream of consciousness that we feel obligated to participate in. Zoom was supposed to save us travel time; instead, it allowed people to schedule 11 meetings in a single day, leaving zero minutes for the work those meetings are about.

I’ve noticed that the more ‘collaborative’ a project becomes, the less work actually gets done. It’s a phenomenon I call ‘The Stakeholder Tax.’ On my current project, I have 31 different people who need to be ‘kept in the loop.’

Prioritize the Crossing Over the Report

My neck still hurts. I think I need to stand up and walk away from this 11-tab spreadsheet. The elk don’t care about my status report. They don’t care that I used the correct shade of forest green in the legend. They are out there right now, moving through the brush, following paths that have existed for 10001 years. They are the ultimate practitioners of real productivity.

The material world doesn’t accept excuses.

Maybe the answer isn’t to work harder or to find a better app. Maybe the answer is to be more like the elk. To prioritize the crossing over the report. To value the structural over the performative. I’m going to close this laptop now. I have a map to finish, and I’m going to do it without telling a single soul until it’s done. If the theater wants a show, they can find another actor. I have trees to plant and corridors to protect, and that work-the real work-doesn’t need a slide deck to be true.