I asked my teenage kids a question after a particularly long day:
How many hours is a “typical” workday?
Isn’t like 8?
Yeah. I worked 16 today. Do you have any idea how much more money I get when I work 16 hours instead of 8?
A lot?
Zip. Zero. Nada. It’s called being on salary.
Why don’t you go get a job where they do pay you for working 16 hours?
Yeah, well, that’s not the point.
It’s been a busy week, and it’s not over. My job is structured in a way that half of my time is working on projects, half my time is spent on management stuff, and half my time is spent on outages.
Fortunately, I have an understanding boss. Because when stuff breaks on the call floor, that becomes my focus.
Unfortunately, it means that other stuff just sits there, like yesterday’s dirty dishes. They aren’t going to do themselves. And as soon as I have the time I can pick them up again I can continue making progress.
But, since I never put “solve outage” on my TODO list, I can find myself at the end of the day, having “worked” for 16 hours and realize I literally got nothing done on my list. Zip. Zero. Nada.
It’s late. I’ll just put these remaining few projects in the sink and let them “soak” overnight. There’s always tomorrow.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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