My childhood friends started saying that anyone working after noon on Friday is disorganized and I think it’s beautiful.
It don’t matter how organized I am, my boss sees I’m done by noon on a friday he’ll give me more service calls, shop time or some other job to do.
That’s where you’re going wrong, you still need to pretend you’re doing work
Wow, Sounds like you really need to work on your time management skills.
That’s why you develop the talent of looking busy while not doing shit.
That’s not the type of job they are referring to.
They’re referring to jobs where you have overarching goals and deliverables but aren’t logging actions to the event, or to the hour.
I’ve had jobs like yours and steady, dependable, maintainable pace is the way to get through the week. Don’t over promise, don’t look available for random new tasks.
At my current gig I have tasks issued at the 2 week level, and aside from very rare requests for assistance or discussion, I’m left to my to-do list, and my predetermined commitments. If I consistently meet my commitments, and show up for scheduled meetings, no one gives a shit when I actually work. It’s great but requires the right environment.
Just don’t say you’re done with your work.
That only works until the last call I did calls to pay their bill and now the office knows I’m done my work. I usually just suck it up and take more work, I’d hoestly rather that than twiddle my thumbs for a few hours.
Oh, I see. My work only knows I’m done by when I move my tickets to complete on Jira, so I just leave them as in progress until my due date. I work from home, so I just watch TV or play video games while sitting near my work laptop to respond to emails or chat messages in the meantime.
Living the dream!
Twiddle your thumbs? You need some hobbies my dude. There is more to life than constantly working.
Must be nice to not have billable hours to worry about…
It is. You should try to move to a career where you sell the results of your labor, not the time it takes to achieve them. Easier said than done, I know. Good luck!
I think I would have to get a govt job in my career path to be able to do that. I’ve considered it, but idk if I really want to or not.
Until recent times, I’ve always thought a govt job was a good thing to have.
Still is, but the constant threat of government shutdowns, in the US at least, as of late, make me feel you need to live below your means and keep a decent chunk of 3 to 6 months pay, because you could suddenly be without pay for a good chunk of time because some idiots think they score political points, or will get their way, by hurting citizens.
How about also, “Wow, seems like you need to work on your resource planning skills,” when a manager tries to demand unpaid overtime?
I’d straight up tell a boss that asked for unpaid overtime that their failure to allocate resources is money out of my pocket if and only if you want to hear from the DoL.
Unfortunately, many jobs that do this are salaried exempt.
Now, whether they are miss categorized is a different story. That’s why my wife’s old workplace is going to get some attention from the IRS and DOL when she finishes her month’s notice.
STFU I’m hyperfocused on this stupid script that I can’t get to work and if I don’t finish it I will feel sad and frustrated.
My coworkers give me shit for not working late all the time. Like, I work late when I absolutely have to or get permission to make up missed time. I refuse to stay just because lol.
Your coworkers shame you for not donating your time to the company?
Seems pretty fucked up. sounds like yall need a union rep.At my last job, I would clock-watch like a kid in school and bolt out of there when it got to be 5. No fucking way was I staying there any longer than I had to.
For me, it’s very much cyclical: when there is a project going, there are so many people counting on you that pretty much every minute counts, and the cost of mistakes is always high. It’s during these times that time management skill is critical and you need people on the team who’s job is to manage everybody’s time and make sure things gets done, but even with that, the long hours are unavoidable. I don’t think it’s something to brag about, it’s the nature of the job.
But when there is no project going, it feels like there is really not much to do all day, sometimes even the task of finding things to do is a struggle, so you do whatever you want until the next project starts.
Aren’t you taking a break from movies?
From acting.
Producing is still work.
Here’s my view as an executive, if my folks regularly add hours to their day/week to get their job done they’re not good at their job. If they’re good at their job they know how to prioritize and they also know how to optimize and automate constantly so they can do more with less. They also do their form of zero base reporting or zero base budgeting constantly to get rid of what was once important that no longer is.
To be fair in senior leadership a 40 hour week probably isn’t going to happen but you should swing between 55 hours and 30 hours depending on the week and average it to the mid to high 40s.
I suspect this isn’t going to be a popular post, and I accept your down votes but would also like to hear your contrary view along with it if you don’t mind.
if my folks regularly add hours to their day/week to get their job done they’re not good at their job
Or they have too much work
In a broken or toxic system, yup that very much could be it.
I can see that you’re engaging thoughtfully and in good faith, but that’s a pretty glaring omission from your original post.
Even in organizations that are healthy in many ways for most people, there can still be people who are stretched thin and don’t feel empowered to throttle their workload for whatever reason.
Culture for most people begins and ends at their boss. And if they don’t feel empowered it’s often because of their boss and the culture their boss creates.
This topic like most are more nuanced than this, sometimes it’s that person’s own history and issues and not the bosses, like maybe past locations are childhood and so on. But this things aren’t really something a boss can do anything about. The boss is responsible for creating a healthy environment that encourages healthy boundaries and the measurement is that they are getting the results from the majority of the people the majority of the time.
Is the measurement that they’re getting the results, or is it that they aren’t working extra hours? “Getting the results from the majority of the people the majority of the time” is exactly how I’d expect an executive to handwave employees burning out due to the kind of environment we’re talking about. Not everybody is going to manifest visible problems at the same time, so it will just look like a handful “not working out” every once in awhile, which is to be expected.
It could describe a healthy environment equally well… But my point is just that your formulation (“Results from the majority of the people the majority of the time”) doesn’t seem to me to have the ability to distinguish between a healthy and a toxic environment.
The phrase applies to negative results not positive ones because the rest of the phrase is it’s not the people it’s the system which implies a problem not a good result. Going through all the details of the system is more than I’m willing to type. If you’d like to know more these are a few of my favorite resources.
Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
Beyond Command and Control by John Seddon
First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham
The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman
Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Oh, sorry for misunderstanding you. I’m used to “getting results” as referring to achieving measurable business objectives, but the meaning changes completely if you meant the opposite, and I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying in that case.
Thanks for the recommendations. I will look at those.
My time management is great. I do my job and the job of the person underneath me, because we can’t find anyone worth a damn.
Make sure you highlight this in your one on one discussions with your manager and get compensated. You’re doing two jobs- your employer should not be taking advantage of you. Get paid my friend.
Nawh he’s the problem, complain? Attitude problem. We’ll find a new guy for half the salary and not tell him what he’s getting into.
Nah, we document every fuck up, and sit him down for a come to Jesus moment
Are you all looking for work now? Lol.
I actually had to do something like that with a co worker once, we hired a lemon and nobody believed us that he didn’t do any work lol.
I honestly work at a company that would fit most ideals for the average anti-work/work-reform subscriber.
Unlimited PTO, with minimum PTO usage requirements. Free medical. They pay for my gym membership. They pay for tampons for my household. Full time remote. I hold equity in the company. Annual performance bonuses. And they disclose the financials of just about everything to employees. It’s pretty wild
Ooo wee
I always wondered how bragging about how long you worked was considered by some as a good thing. The “higher ups” must have used some fancy tricks to get people to think that way. It never worked on me though :)
Modern day life is a competition, people always want to “1 up” the previous person. This is prevalent in society, don’t overthink it
Ok yeah maybe but can we all stop writing our witty tweets in the same format? “normalize [abnormal thing]” is not only getting old, it probably is not effective at all
You’re more than welcome to downvote and move on.
Hey, I’m just trying to normalize better ways to call for normalization.
I doubt anyone else is thinking about it as much as you tbh
Isn’t the goal of a post like this to get people thinking? If it’s the same ol’ same ol’, it’s easier to tune out.
