Notice of Incorporation: Hardly Working Corp. Is Open for Business

To all future employees,

Hardly Working Corp. announces the formation of Hardly Working Corp., a time reclamation solutions firm headquartered in an undisclosed location. Effective immediately, the company is open for enrollment.

Our mission is straightforward: to quantify the gap between employment and productivity, and to provide every professional with the tools to understand what that gap is worth.

The Problem

Modern employment operates on a simple arrangement. You agree to be somewhere for eight hours. Your employer agrees to pay you for eight hours. What happens during those eight hours is, statistically speaking, not eight hours of work.

Studies suggest the average knowledge worker is genuinely productive for roughly three hours per day. The remaining five are spent in meetings that could have been emails, emails that could have been nothing, and a persistent low-grade performance of looking busy.

This dynamic is well-documented in productivity literature and widely observed across industries.

The Solution

Hardly Working Corp. does not solve this problem. We are not in the business of making you more productive. There are plenty of apps for that, and you have ignored all of them.

Instead, we offer a tool that does something no productivity app has ever done: track the other hours. The ones between tasks. The coffee runs. The bathroom scrolls. The long lunches. The staring.

We track them, we categorize them, and we calculate exactly how much they are worth at your hourly rate. Not to make you feel guilty. To make you feel informed.

Corporate Philosophy

The modern workplace operates on a widely observed principle: that presence equals productivity. This principle has not been empirically validated. Hardly Working Corp. does not intend to challenge this principle. We intend to measure it.

Our assessment is that the gap between “hours paid” and “hours worked” is quantifiable, significant, and universal. We provide the measurement tool. The implications are left to the individual employee.

What Happens Next

In the coming weeks, we will be rolling out the Hardly Working application on iOS. It is free to use. It does not require your employer's permission. It does not share your data with anyone — especially not your employer.

Enrollment is voluntary. No references required.

— J. Pemberton
Chief Slacking Officer
Hardly Working Corp.