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Antiwork

Employer Believes Organization’s Successes are Down to ‘Multitasking’ and ‘Passion’.

I work at an NGO that works on conservation of biodiversity and environment. I realise that's not common for someone who posts here, but I think the issue I'm mentioning belongs here. ​ After a particularly gruelling day to what has been a tough and confusing period at the workplace, my co-worker lost it and had a mental breakdown. It was mostly to do with us being given project after project, in an ad-hoc manner. I took it upon myself and wrote an email to the executive body, that we need to do stuff in a planned manner (at least as much as this field allows, a lot of our work involves SOS stuff like animal rescues and the like which are hard to plan). The way things are happening now is haphazard, bad for the organization's future, but mainly causing emotional distress to both of us. ​ I also…


I work at an NGO that works on conservation of biodiversity and environment. I realise that's not common for someone who posts here, but I think the issue I'm mentioning belongs here.

After a particularly gruelling day to what has been a tough and confusing period at the workplace, my co-worker lost it and had a mental breakdown. It was mostly to do with us being given project after project, in an ad-hoc manner. I took it upon myself and wrote an email to the executive body, that we need to do stuff in a planned manner (at least as much as this field allows, a lot of our work involves SOS stuff like animal rescues and the like which are hard to plan). The way things are happening now is haphazard, bad for the organization's future, but mainly causing emotional distress to both of us.

I also made a reference in the email to 'multitasking' (which had been mentioned by another employer before), and said that it has been proven to not exist. In response, another employer replied saying that she hoped that 'fancy stats' were not conducted by the studies that disproved multi-tasking (she's a researcher, btw) and that every achievement of this organization has been on the back of 'multitasking' and 'nothing but passion', and that in saying this, she feels both 'humble' and 'proud'.

We will have a meeting with the executive body about these issues, and I am currently taking time out of my free time post-work to come up with an entire bibliography of studies and all the methods they used to prove that multitasking is a myth, since apparently, the burden of proof is on me with regards to this thing which is commonly accepted among almost everyone.

P.S.: As an aside, I want to add a point about how these NGOs work. 'Passion' is weaponized against us, and 'exposure' is often framed as a reward. These organizations routinely have no HR, rarely any checks and balances on accepted compensations, terrible working conditions, all within a field that prides itself in being liberal, but rarely walking the talk. And unions? You can forget about that, though me and a few other comrades from other NGOs are in talks of starting a union of ecologists and conservationists who are junior employees (mostly early-career people who don't have a PhD).

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