40-hour weeks

[Kevin McLauchlan]

Ah, so this is a framing discussion.

 

From the perspective of the goals of the enterprise as a whole, that big
chunk of your time is "unproductive" because it is consumed by merely
countering the misdirected (and unproductive?) efforts of other members of
the organization. 

 

Nevertheless, it's what you have to do, because you can't get to the
"productive" part of your job until you get past the internal obstacles.

Therefore, from the narrower perspective of your job and that of your
immediate supervisors, you are working toward getting what you need, in the
most productive manner available to you.

 

Contrast that with somebody who puts in 20% biz-related effort between bouts
of day-dreaming, web-surfing, stock-ticker-watching, non-work e-mailing,
phonecalls to/from non-biz people, etc.

 

So, I'd say your point is valid and relevant, but requires a different
framing than the rest of the thread has touched.

 

We could probably start a separate thread about the in-house obstacles that
we TWs face to getting on with our jobs (not just the cliché grumpy SME, but
endemic cultural and procedural blockages).

 

Kevin

 

  _____  

From: Richard Lewis [mailto:tech44writer at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:45
To: Kevin McLauchlan; TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: 40-hour weeks 

 

Only about 20% of my time per week is productive - that includes analysis
(i.e., learning).   Where does the rest of the time go?   In my current
assignment, I am driving enterprise-wide integration efforts (i.e., I am
doing a bunch of essential data flow diagrams).   I have to talk with a
large number of analysts, managers, etc to tie their automation efforts
together.  (Their documentation of what they are doing is largely useless:
I want to know what they are doing, and all they ever want to document is
how they are doing what they are doing.)

 

Soooooo much time is wasted in trying to get answers to my questions (i.e.,
not on learning, but in getting the learning inputs).   There are two main
reasons for this:

 

*  Most people spend just about all of their time focused on things that are
either are non-relevant, or that should not be considered until much later
in a project.   These people - often senior level  - are basically incapable
of  answering questions about some of the most important things for which
they are charged.  

 

*  Some people are very turf conscious.   They feel that if I know the
essentials of what they know that it subtracts from their power base.

 

This is the way the work world works except in some rare, highly-focused
efforts - people working 41 or MORE hours per week focused on the trivial -
and taking forever to get some minor thing done.   

 

Richard Lewis

 


Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan at safenet-inc.com> wrote:

On Behalf Of Richard Lewis wrote:

> I work a max of 40 hours a week. Of that, only about 20% of my time is
> productive. 

[plumber joke]

"Hitting pipe ... $5.00
Knowing where to hit ... $195.00"

At least some of that other eighty percent of your time is where you learn
all about "where to hit". Yes?




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