August 29, 2007 on 10:20 am
Filed Under:Articles
As I sit and look at the SEO forums I belong to as well as some of the groups that I’m in, I notice that a fair amount of the posts are created during “working hours” and are not necessarily of a work-related nature. I hear about Facebook becoming an issue in offices to the point that access has to be restricted.
Productivity. That’s always what we’re on about in today’s work environment. How to raise it, how to keep it optimal, how to keep us all in the black. When I think back to my office days, whether they were spent sitting in an actual office or in a cube, I used to pride myself on my productivity when I knew that others were sluffing off.
I still wasn’t this pinnacle of purity though, I would check my personal emails and I kept track of the visitor traffic on my blog(s), I would even occasionally visit sites that didn’t have anything to do with my work.
It seems to be a relatively accepted part of our lives these days, that our workers will take a certain amount of time to spend on personal endeavours, and that we’ll let them in order to keep their sanity. I was never told this though, quite the contrary, and I felt constantly guilty about it.
The truth is, is that even if I’m spending all my time on client projects and work-related exploits, the bottom line is really about whether or not I’m making the company any money. It isn’t really about my sanity, or my high level of loyalty or expertise, and it isn’t about whether or not I’m willing work hard. My worth to the company really boiled down to what I was worth in the “profit” column.
With one notable exception, my entire career has been this way, and now that I’m working from home, on my company, I am beginning to fully realise the benefit of some personal time. Sure, when its your small business, the lines between work hours and personal hours are frequently blurred enough to the point that your taking the laptop to bed at night a bit too often (and on a Saturday… for shame).
But, the benefits are immeasurable. I get to pick my kids up from school and not sweat what time it is or how long we have when they ask me if we can play at the park on the walk back home. I get to spend almost an entire day looking after the baby and looking after my wife when she’s had a particularly involved trip to the dentist. These are things that I would have to “take a day off” for normally. Time spent that I wouldn’t be paid for.
I got so sick of the message being sent that I was really only valuable to “the company” if my butt was in a chair in that office. It was, and still is, so illogical to me to think that I am of any more value at a “company” desk where I am not necessarily working, than if I am wherever I choose to be. Be that at home, at my home desk, or in my bed or at the park.
I can truthfully say that even though I’m not at my desk, working, working, working, for the duration of set Working Hours, I have never been more productive in my life.
There’s not a day that goes by that I am not truly grateful for the chance to be “productive” on my own terms. For I am a good worker and I have a high level of expertise and I am productive.
But my life is much better now.