Where is the fun?

Category: Work

Published: 01/03/2009 06:44 a.m.

Why are we working so hard? Why is there so much focus on productivity? In a recent piece that I found through lifehacker, Mike Elgan suggests that a person who focuses for six hours a day has an advantage over a 12-hour workaholic who doesn't control their attention. This is a perfect example of multitasking backlash. I recall just a year ago seeing job requests that had "multitasking" listed as a required skill. Is the work environment already calling for some new style of personal time management? And is it already the opposite of what was needed last year?

Personally, I think all of these people have it wrong. What they struggle with is rooted in technology, in computers. Computers are machines that can do boring things very fast. They can be used to save time and are much more accurate that past methods. We should use them as such, keeping in mind they are the machines, not us. For some people, they use too much technology to the point where they are the ones acting like machines. They are not putting the computer to work for them; they are working for the computer. There are times when I try and focus on efficiency, but not to the point where I am acting like the machine.

The other use of computers that has increased in the past years is entertainment. This fall I watched the olympics live in HD over the internet on my laptop. I didn't need a TV, a cable box, or even a power plug. It was all wireless and beautiful. I also love surfing The Onion, Twitter, digg, and Facebook to name a few. So, how do we protect ourselves from these easy distractions to focus on work? My answer is, we don't.

If I could manage to stay focused for six hours straight and just do work, I would be burned out after two. This isn't more effective or efficient. If I could do the six hours, it would free up a few more hours in the day, but guess what I would be doing with those hours? Surfing the web, reading RSS feeds and tweets. So instead, I combine the two. Instead of six hours of work focus and six hours of play focus, I balance. I don't know if it's necessarily multitasking, but an hour of this, a half hour of that. On top of it all, I don't care that I'm at the office for 12 hours. There have been multiple times where the last half hour I spent at the office was on google reader or on chat with someone. I am sure work doesn't care about this, because I got my stuff done already. I'm not paid hourly, and I am certainly not costing them money by "wasting bandwidth".

So why do I not care about a shorter workday? Because I already have a shorter workday. I use tools on the computer to get things done faster. I just don't do it all at once. I need those distractions. Google reader and twitter are great sources of creativity and inspiration. I have quite a few drafts of things I started to write based on things I've read online (like this one right now). In some instances, they can make me a better worker, but rarely do they take away from my abilities. They don't slow me down, they just serve to spread out when I work.

At the end of the day, I can't muster more than spending 1/3 of my awake time being 100% work productive. I think I am lucky to get that much. I think the same is true for most people. I am not nearly as chatty as most people, and that takes quite a bit of time. But I also see no reason to do all of that 1/3 at once. I am going to be on a computer for most of the day anyway, so why not spread my work out. As long as I don't keep other people held up (like with missing deadlines) then I am really doing things better. Because during the day, I am having fun. Unless you love what you do and would do it for free, it is hard to work consistently for hours and have fun doing it. I break things up, I intermix some Facebook friends and funny tweets and Kotkke links, and I have a good time. Oh, and I get my stuff done.

This all reminds me of working nights in CARPOOL. That was about as close as doing something I loved for free. While we weren't paid, I definitely benefited from the experiences. On nights when we were really busy, I would be in front of a computer assigning rides or working on reports, but I would always have a ton of other tabs open. I remember nights filled with Chuck Norris facts, nights creating Facebook groups about said facts, and nights when I spent half my time playing scrabulous on Facebook with people in the room. We were having fun, and doing work. And like most work, there wasn't a way for us to condense all of the work during the night into a few hours. Things happened slowly. There was dead time. What better way to use it than putting a smile on your face with something interesting.

Much of my work habits were formed on those nights. I dealt with slow nights where my patience was tested, busy nights when I learned to truly multitask, and understaffed nights where I learned not to fret and to do the best I could with what I had. Many of these same situations happen everyday at work, and if I hadn't learned how to distract myself, I would be confused and frustrated on most days.

When working on big projects with lots of people, most days are different than the others. You have to be able to adapt to the changes that occur and roll with the punches. Popurls helps me do this. The distractions help me work better. The only real problems come with the quantity of distractions. While I like reading tweets, I can't spend 7 hours a day doing it. What we really need is more self-moderation. The ability to get out of a conversation at work is vital. The ability to turn things off is what needs training. Always keeping them off (catch-all firewalls) is not an effective solution. It's like web prohibition. Most people will either find a way around it (thanks, iPhone), or complain til they can get to what they want, or in some cases, need.

I consider myself lucky to work at a company where we are trusted to use the computers appropriately and not treated like children. You can check my logs, and while I spend some time browsing non-work things, I don't do the bad stuff. And of course, I get my stuff done.

So instead of a six hour day or a four hour work week, here is to spending more time at work, breaking things up, and having fun while you do it.