Yesterday, approximately two hours and ten minutes into a meeting that was scheduled to last one hour, I got to thinking. Not about professional stuff, of course (nothing so radical) but rather about time-wasting, mis-management, human nature... and then - naturally - I was a mere step away from contemplating the entire purpose of life.
As you can see, meetings tend to provide me with a real stimulus for reflection.
What I thought was: here we all are, talking about the possibility of work, debating the various ways in which we might work, reflecting on the potential obstacles that will prevent us from working... but not, of course, actually doing any work.
And then I started to do a few loose mental calculations: 9 hours wasted this week in meetings, 4 hours spent on "official" coffee breaks, roughly another 4 hours spent in "unofficial" conversation with my chatty open-space neighbour, 6 hours on lunch, 3 hours on polite conversation with visitors to the open space...
Give or take a bit, that all adds up to 26 hours, does it not?
The official working week is 35 hours. Except I only work 4 days, so in theory, I'm only working 28 hours.
And that's when it hit me.
2 hours.
That's about all the time I have left to squeeze in some actual work.
Is it any wonder I have the feeling I never actually get anything done?
OK. Next step: how to re-phrase all of the above and turn it into a professional-sounding formal request to work from home?
"Shirley?" asks my boss, suddenly. "Anything to add?"
"Oh, yes," I smile, snapping back to attention. "So, what's the actual next step? What do you actually want me to do?"
Blank, disconcerted, awkward, embarrassing.
After a brief pause, the discussion resumes.
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