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Time Quality
Aug. 15th, 2005 04:57 amI had another one of those nights where I couldn't sleep at all, but this time instead of wasting the night trying to sleep until 5:00 AM, I got up at 2:30 considering it a lost cause.
The middle of the night is pretty low-quality time. I'm not only too tired to do anything remotely physically active, but also too mentally tired to do most of the things I'd really like to do. I can't study and learn things (my concentration and retention is too poor after 20 hours awake), and I can't really read (my current reading material is the surpringly difficult Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, which requires my full concentration even on a good day.) I could play computer games, but don't really care to... I played more than enough of those this weekend already.
So what do I find myself doing? Work! I have remote access to my work systems, so I can do pretty much everything on the couch downstairs with my laptop that I could do at the office. And getting work done now frees up higher-quality time this afternoon -- though my concentration won't be any better, my wife will be awake and I can spend the time with her, which is infinitely more fun than being awake by myself in the middle of the night. My job is pretty flexible with work schedules (they have people working 10-4 schedules and other oddities), and thus doesn't mind so long as I'm there for any meetings I have.
And I have no meetings at all today. :) The thing that I find most interesting, though, is how much more productive I am during this low-quality time than I am during the actual daylight hours when I'm at the office. In the last 2.5 hours, I've probably gotten as much work done as I usually do in 4 hours or more. Nothing distracts me; this post is the first time I've even opened up a web browser today. When I'm actually at work, I get distracted very easily, and am much less productive. Honestly, I think I would get as much productive work accomplished telecommuting 5 hours a day as I do actually working 8.
I think for many people (myself included) the office is a pretty terrible place for actually getting work done. The sterile environment gives the illusion of productivity but is poisonous to actual productivity. And I like my job; I was significantly less productive per hour back at Microsoft.
At this rate by the time business hours roll around, I'll literally be done with all the work I am able to do that doesn't require it to be business hours (i.e. work that requires calling up people who aren't there at 5 AM) and isn't blocked waiting on someone else to reply to emails I've already sent. Now that's something that never happened at Microsoft -- the idea of actually being caught up on work was unheard-of. It's kind of nice having a workload that's intended to be achievable.
The middle of the night is pretty low-quality time. I'm not only too tired to do anything remotely physically active, but also too mentally tired to do most of the things I'd really like to do. I can't study and learn things (my concentration and retention is too poor after 20 hours awake), and I can't really read (my current reading material is the surpringly difficult Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, which requires my full concentration even on a good day.) I could play computer games, but don't really care to... I played more than enough of those this weekend already.
So what do I find myself doing? Work! I have remote access to my work systems, so I can do pretty much everything on the couch downstairs with my laptop that I could do at the office. And getting work done now frees up higher-quality time this afternoon -- though my concentration won't be any better, my wife will be awake and I can spend the time with her, which is infinitely more fun than being awake by myself in the middle of the night. My job is pretty flexible with work schedules (they have people working 10-4 schedules and other oddities), and thus doesn't mind so long as I'm there for any meetings I have.
And I have no meetings at all today. :) The thing that I find most interesting, though, is how much more productive I am during this low-quality time than I am during the actual daylight hours when I'm at the office. In the last 2.5 hours, I've probably gotten as much work done as I usually do in 4 hours or more. Nothing distracts me; this post is the first time I've even opened up a web browser today. When I'm actually at work, I get distracted very easily, and am much less productive. Honestly, I think I would get as much productive work accomplished telecommuting 5 hours a day as I do actually working 8.
I think for many people (myself included) the office is a pretty terrible place for actually getting work done. The sterile environment gives the illusion of productivity but is poisonous to actual productivity. And I like my job; I was significantly less productive per hour back at Microsoft.
At this rate by the time business hours roll around, I'll literally be done with all the work I am able to do that doesn't require it to be business hours (i.e. work that requires calling up people who aren't there at 5 AM) and isn't blocked waiting on someone else to reply to emails I've already sent. Now that's something that never happened at Microsoft -- the idea of actually being caught up on work was unheard-of. It's kind of nice having a workload that's intended to be achievable.
