I have set hours in my job. I work 8AM to 5PM, Monday to Friday. I have breaks and I take lunch. Normally around the same time everyday. The majority of people in office life do the same. However I don’t believe it’s the most productive way to get the most out of me.
My day is cut into tasks which I assign myself. I keep tabs on what tasks need to be done using a task manager called Things. You can read more about it’s benefits here. If I’m working on one of my tasks, the time assigned to it is never totally accurate. Some run 15 minutes over what I had hoped, some might take an hour less due to unforeseen circumstances. In fact I hate assigning a time frame to the tasks and very rarely do.
If I’m plugging away getting what I need to do done, I don’t want to glance at the clock and realize, “Hey, this is my lunch time…” drop what I’m working on and head out to get some food. Same goes for companies that have designated breaks. If an employee is happily plugging away on a task, you don’t want them disrupted. At all. This can be worse for IT works but it applies to all.
When that employee comes back to that in-completed task, their concentration is lost. They need to spending an unneeded amount of time to just get back to where they were.
The same goes for when I arrive and leave the office, it’s not always optimal. If I’m running a little late and arrive to work at 07:50AM I don’t want to be frantically getting my ducks in a row with coffee’s, booting up my machine etc. If I do, I’m disjointed when I go to start my work. I’m trying to slow my breathing down rather than getting stuck in.
If I’m working on a task and notice it’s 5PM, I would prefer for my brain to not go “Time to yet…” but rather, “Lets get this done”.
The ideal scenario would be to arrive in work when you wake up fresh from a good 8 hour sleep. Setting tasks to be done before lunch, with a few coffee breaks in between the tasks, then some more work on the same basis after lunch. When all the tasks are complete, go home. Rinse and repeat.
I know this wouldn’t work in all walks of office life, but I know I would be more efficient. The company would reap more from me and I would go home a lot happier knowing my full list of jobs that I wanted to get done today, are done.
The truth will set you free
Honesty is the best policy. I’ve always believed it. The company I work for, Blacknight Solutions, also believes it. We have a status blog that we post to if any service that is public facing has any issues.
Blacknight Internet Solutions
Sometimes they are related to a server being in difficulty and other times it’s just a way of communicating that we’re planning downtime to fix an issue. You see, we provide services to customers. If a customer is sitting at home and their service isn’t working, they should know why, what’s being done and an aprox ETA to it’s resolution.
I don’t want this post to just be related to where I work, it’s about honesty from businesses as a whole. I’ve seen so many different companies turn the other way when things start to go wrong. They close up the customer facing shop front. Nestle down, fix what needs to be fixed and then re-open and pretend nothing has happened.
It’s not rocket science. Your customers are the key to your businesses. If you mess up, and you will at some stage, tell them. The majority of your customers will understand and will be very thankful that you are honest enough to tell them the truth. They have messed up along the road too. They understand!
If you mess up and just go into hiding, customers don’t know where to look. It starts to radically pitfall into anger and then finally to sourcing a more reliable service. Being honest let’s everyone know who you are, what your doing and that your a company who cares. It builds your reputation positivity.