As you can probably expect giving what I write about here at Organize IT, time is a big issue for me. I have hobbies and interests and goals I want to achieve and they all take up precious hours. This is actually a good thing because I’d much rather spend those hours in pursuits I enjoy rather than in mundane work. The challenge I have then is how to free up more time for the former and do less of the latter. It should be simple but it never is and I think I may have finally figured out why. At heart, we’re all just a bunch of time wasters.
Back to school
Thankfully, by and large it’s not our fault as I will hopefully demonstrate today. To make the point, let’s go right back to when we were school kids. At my school at least, classes always lasted 45 minutes. I never figured out why but according to the teachers that’s exactly how long it took (plus homework) to teach a concept, idea or subject. This was all well and good but occasionally I’d understand the subject in much less time than this (and no doubt a few other kids in class would too). Of course, we couldn’t say anything or go off and do something more constructive. We’d have to sit there, hide our boredom and pass the rest of the time in the best way we could, otherwise face getting shouted at by the teacher.
Back to work
Naturally we grew up and entered the big wide world of work where everything was… exactly the same. School days of 9AM to 3.30PM (for me at least) were replaced with work days of 9AM till 5PM (again, there are variations on this but the principle remains the same). We couldn’t finish our work early or fly through it with efficient ease because the boss would shout at us for taking it easy while the rest of the workforce were still trudging along doing the work that you had finished several hours ago. And so, we’d drag our work out, come up with pointless activities and make sure it filled up our time so as to look busy. Go figure.
My point is…
What I hope is apparent from my example is that society as a whole is geared towards wasting time. From the moment we enter school we’re in an environment where dragging work out, taking your time and generally being inefficient is the norm. That manifests itself all the way to the world of work so it’s no wonder that our entire mindset is geared that way. Take checking your email inbox as a prime example. What should be a simple five minute task if you focused on it, often becomes thirty minutes of dawdling just to pass the time till the bell goes or the workday is over. When society is like this, how do you break free?
October 12, 2009 at 09:48AM
Well said! These fixed schedules really are terribly inefficient. The way I remember school, it was always the worst possible compromise, because the pace was always one that was too fast (frustrating) for some, too slow (boring) for others and just right for perhaps 20% of the class, if that.
I have been self-employed for a few years now, and that really takes care of this problem. No one is keeping time on how much work I do. All work basically consists of projects that just need to be done as efficiently as possible. Of course, working like this comes with it’s very own set of issues.
October 12, 2009 at 11:16AM
That’s exactly the point, very well written. Measuring work in hours or days is necessary for a software developer like me, but getting paid by the amount of time I sit at my desk is plain and simply wrong. You seldom get a reward for being effective at work, even more so if you are paid for X hours a week and not the real work you have done.
October 12, 2009 at 04:02PM
Hey James.
You have a modern and relevant message here. A lot of time is lost simply due to time architecture that isn’t fitting for the current day and age. The class times are certainly limiting to many students, and it can be somewhat debilitating until classes of that type are completed, and those students can then break free. It doesn’t need to be this way, and I can imagine schools trying different methods that are not as time-based, although I can also imagine very little change showing up.
The people who work hard and play hard are the ones who have the toughest time with extending their work over many hours for no reason except to look productive.
Thanks for this.
October 14, 2009 at 12:07PM
Well, that’s interesting, but I’d love to see a more constructive opinion. How else would you see work and school organized?
I went to one of the best high schools in Poland and time was well spent there. Not always, of course, but I don’t see how it could have been done better.
At work, I do have some stuff to do. If there is a lot of it, I make extra hours that I can later take back when I’m finished with my bugs. If I screw something, I have to stay in longer without extra credit. I never need to look busy.
October 14, 2009 at 04:48PM
Glad you liked the message of this post, I enjoyed writing it.
Anna, that’s a good question. I could speculate on a few ideas here but I don’t think that’s fair to the subject matter. However, I will give it some serious thought and follow up with another post suggesting my ideas…
October 28, 2009 at 02:56PM
I was always ticked off by having to sit extra hours at work. I was always consistently finishing my jobs quicker than my colleagues. So I negotiated with my boss, and now work part time with a bump in wages as a special productivity rate and consistently do in 30 hours what my colleagues manage in 40. I still have to sit at my desk for the 30 hours, but at least I get the 10 hours to do what I want, outside of work.
November 6, 2009 at 04:58PM
Here in the Netherlands, schools have to give every student 1040 hours of lessons. Bullshit! Don’t they understand that the amount of things we have to learn can’t be measured in time?
November 6, 2009 at 06:23PM
Exactly, Kevin. I think that’s the way schools here in Britain work as well. When my school went from doing fifty minute classes to forty minutes, all the teachers had a crazy time trying to figure out how to fit those missing ten minutes of each class into the school schedule. In the end we had shorter classes but longer days.
December 29, 2009 at 10:27PM
Hmm. I envy people who run out of work! I basically manage myself and my job’s goals are basically unattainable (because it involves changing a few thousand people’s behavior). Nevertheless, I try very hard to constantly progress. This means there is always something to do. If I have free time, I start a new program or initiative. Now I have so much to do (after over five years on the job) that I am in complete paralysis. I have been coming to work and doing nothing, just because I am overwhelmed with how much I have to do. I am not lazy and I like my job but I am lost.
January 4, 2010 at 06:57PM
Thanks for the comment Rai. I’d be curious to know why you consider your goals to be unattainable? What is it about other people’s behavior that holds your work back? Delegating something to someone represents in itself a completed task, even if you still have to wait on their response to take further action.