Issue #34

Real Work vs. Fake Work

Suppose you have a free hour to do some work. It will take you about 15 minutes to gather your thoughts, find the part of the code you want to work on, and run a build to ensure you’re at a good starting point. While the build is running, you decide to check your email.

You scan your messages and respond to one of them. Then, you go back to your build to find that it failed because you didn’t pull in some changes. You pull those changes and start the build again. Then, someone messages you on Slack. After you chat for a while, it’s time to go to that meeting. You notice that the build failed again.

How much work did you actually get done?

I used a coding example, but the same applies to writing a document, preparing a presentation, managing the books if you’re an accountant, or any other knowledge work you do.

My opinion is that you’ve done zero hours of real work and one hour of fake work. Although you spent an hour on work-related tasks, nothing valuable was created because your focus was divided. You can’t do substantial work in 15-minute increments because that’s the amount of time it takes to switch contexts and get started.

While the standard working day is eight hours, a study conducted in the UK indicates that the average knowledge worker actually focuses on work-related tasks for less than three hours per day. The common culprits for the other five hours are social media, news sites, chatting with coworkers, and preparing and eating food and drink.

And if those three hours are further split due to fake work, it could be that no real work gets done for an entire day.

Who knows if the numbers from the study are actually accurate. The articles I’ve read that cite this study all have a link to a URL that doesn’t resolve. I believe these numbers are self-reported from survey data, the worst type of data, but those ratios feel about right to me.

Now, I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to remain productive and focused for eight hours straight.

But, if you’re able to focus for three hours a workday, you’ll be known as the productive one at work.

If you’re very selective about what you focus on for those three hours a day and ensure that it’s always real and impactful work, you’ll be the most effective person within your peer group. If you’re not, you’ll make up so much ground that you will be soon. Head-turning achievement comes from sustained focus over a long period of time.

You don’t need to find more hours in the day; you just need to optimize the time you already have. That starts by taking control of your attention.

Check your messages when you come into the office, around lunch time, and before you leave the office. Do the same for your personal phone. I put mine inside a desk drawer when I arrive at my desk.

Then, focus on your work. I like to do the largest quantity of focused work in the morning. The quote that sticks with me (I forgot where I heard it from or who said it) is “earn your paycheck before lunch.” I front-load everything I can to the beginning of the day. I try to schedule all meetings for after lunch. And since I’m not a robot, I talk to my coworkers, play table tennis, and get coffee in the afternoons.

Or, I’ll head home early, guilt-free, since I’ve already done all my productive work for the day.

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