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September 27, 2012

How do you know if you're really working?

"Doing focused work for 5-6 hours a day is really hard. We forget this because much of what keeps businesspeople “busy” during the day is plowing through email or sitting in random meetings or socializing. We waste hours to this daily ho hum. Yet through it all we trick ourselves into thinking we’re being productive since we’re 'at work.'"
This quote came from Ben Casnocha's Behind The Book, a worthy, wiki-like long read about what went on behind-the-scenes of writing "The Start-Up of You".

It is certainly not the most important quote in what is an extremely comprehensive and personal diary of events in an author's life. It isn't even that original.

But, in length, form and delivery, it's the best explanation of how "work" works. Let's dissect it.
"Doing focused work for 5-6 hours a day is really hard." 
Many would scoff at this, touting they pull all-nighters and work 12 hours a day, but until you actually track the time you spend on projects, as Ben did using Toggl, you never know the difference between "work" and work. There were only a handful of times - crunch time - when Ben actually pulled 12 hour days.

This is not to say that time spent thinking about a project doesn't count. I have young memories of sitting in my dad's office watching him work, and the majority of the time he would sit there silently mulling over something in his mind. Occasionally he would write something down or whiteboard a few diagrams, but it took him a while to get down to writing a proposal or brief or press release (which now I know is what he was doing). Ideating is extremely important, and perhaps even trackable, but consistently drumming out 5-6 hours of focused work each day is in fact really hard.
"much of what keeps businesspeople "busy" during the day is plowing through email or sitting in random meetings or socializing." 
This is the filler time before Miller time (I had to). It's what pads those 12 hour days. Rarely can I imagine knowledge work being done for such a long period of time. This is not only speaking from personal experience but also observing many colleagues, consultants and entrepreneurs at work. Some of them are brilliant at what they do, but burnout doesn't come from working the whole time, it comes from coping with the distractions. The CIO in my last job used to come in at 7am and stay till 7pm because he found the first few and last few hours to be the most energizing and productive.
"We waste hours to this daily ho hum."
Most people like to work, create, review, ideate, and produce. Whether it's knowledge work or not, there's a personal worthiness attached to these activities. The distraction comes from meetings, workplace politics, water cooler talk, office social media and general social media. Again, this is not to undermine these activities, it is to downplay them in the context of the term, "productivity." I often get right to the point in a conversation or engage deeply in a person's challenges, hearing them out, mulling over solutions, assessing the situation. This is too abrupt for some people and that's understandable. More ice breaking is involved in some contexts over others. But it still doesn't fall under productive time. 
"we trick ourselves into thinking we’re being productive since we’re 'at work.'"
Going into the office everyday has it's bonuses; free coffee (sometimes), business broadband, colleague proximity, consistency, printer/scanner/fax, etc. Yet, for those that have the option of working remotely or have freelanced before, there is a lot of productivity in freedom of location too. Sometimes, "because the possibility of communicating is so easy, it is often taken for granted"(thanks Lifehacker), and becomes diluted in its necessity. 

Bottom line, you don't have to be in a specific place for work to happen. Occasionally, I miss having a place to dump my stuff, but if it's coffee and wifi and a printer/scanner/fax I need, I turn to a free coworking space or a library. At the least, I can go into a Starbucks or B&N or use the scanner app on my phone to replicate what expensive office technology offers. 

There's always a way and that's what work, in essence, boils down to. If you need to get stuff done, you'll do it one way or another. You'll put the 5-6 hours of focused work in and come out of it sighing with relief that you just got that creative good out of you and out into the world. It may not be ready for show time, but it's there for you to look at it again. And you'll do it again tomorrow when you're recharged to take it on again. 

Consider this an ode to a well crafted paragraph or a redundant, perhaps thorough dissection of what makes "work", in fact, work. I see it as another way to tell if you're really working. 25-30 hours a week. That's it. Good luck finding what gives you focus.