In economic terms: if your main compensation is a fixed yearly salary, the most efficient use of your time is to expend the minimal amount of effort required to merely retain your job.
I hate to say it because i was trained to rise against forces and give my all 100% of the time, but in an env. Where the economic incentives are simply not correlated to productivity, I will not work more than nec. To not get fired.
Usually by then my efforts go to finding a new job, bc at that point i feel rather imprisoned.
These terms are too simplistic: there are other goods to be had. We have emotions, like it or not. Going home at the end of the day feeling proud about something is better than feeling like the day was a minimal-effort waste. Even if you had infinite time, you still have an opportunity cost by trading that time for n $MONEY when you could have nplus happiness.
I agree with you completely. I am referring mainly to the context in which you have practically no influence on your work environment. In such a case, hard effort becomes wasted effort.
Lots of things opposing a worthwhile attribute in your life makes your own efforts in that area more important, not less.
I'd rather in control of my own development, even it requires more deliberate effort than if other external things were removed.
Plus, it seems plausible that you will one day find a job which removes those things. Why wait?
Of course, this presupposes that you think being productive is a worthwhile thing independent of your current job.