work patterns

Most of us (I’ll hazard) have occasional issues with “productivity,” or “efficiency”. This is particularly felt in academe, programming and other fields where it’s nigh unto impossible to predict how long a task will take.

It occurs to me that “staying late at work” is a hostile opponent of “learning to work more efficiently.” This excludes cases such as “I had a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day and am making up the absence” or “this is taking me longer than I thought, but I’m on a roll.” I’m talking about the feeling of “well, I’m doing something unrelated now, but that’s okay, because I can just tack on an extra hour or so at the end of the day.” If you-impersonal* are trying to become more efficient when it comes to your working hours, do not permit yourself to stay late. Slacking off? Still, get up and go home at a pre-determined time. Eventually the slow progress will catch up to you, and push you into more efficient working mode(s).

*of course, I’m talking about myself here :)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 12th, 2005 at 12:33 pmand is filed under work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “work patterns”

  • J. Lasser Says:
    April 12th, 2005 at 3:46 pm

    When I was in a .com job, I accomplished my projects on schedule, and I left on time.

    Interestingly, this made me extremely unpopular. I was seen as less committed to the success of the company because I worked 40 hours a week. Never mind that I did everything I was asked to do, and it all got done, and that I was the go-to guy for a whole lot of stuff. I was uncommitted simply because I wasn’t killing myself for a job that in practice didn’t require me to kill myself.

    YMMV, of course.

  • vika Says:
    April 12th, 2005 at 4:17 pm

    Jon – interesting, and a bit sad. Mostly, though, when writing the post I had in mind the internal state of the work-er, not how that person is perceived by others. Your point is well taken, though: efficiency isn’t always going to be popular.

    On the other hand, when I have a kid or two, fuck popular. I’ll want to be efficient, and as long as I get my stuff done, anyone who doesn’t like me leaving on time can bite me.

    This is more or less the attitude I have now, too (although I haven’t run into the political problems you describe). I *need* to be efficient, so that I can do all those other things I want to do with my life. Otherwise I’ll go insane. Time of your own was likely a benefit of your .com working habits as well, no?

  • duchess Says:
    April 12th, 2005 at 10:35 pm

    I am trying to get myself to a state where I can get efficient and streamlined. The problem is that I have a large pile of things to do that gets bigger everytime I don’t put in a late night. Is there such a thing as really having a longer to-do-list than there are hours in a day? That’s what I feel like sometimes.