My dive into bloghood - Thank you downtime.

Okay, So at some point yesterday while at work, I came to the realization that there is an aspect of working in an office that up until a few months ago, I was unfamiliar with. "Downtime" is an interesting concept. "Downtime" in manufacturing terms relates to the period of time when a factory or production line is not working, usually caused by some malfunction or poor planning. I have a cousin who works at a production facility where he spends much of his day figuring out how to minimize downtime.

In the business world downtime is all that time when you are at work, but not working. You know, the first half hour of your day when you come into the office, put your things down, get your cup of coffee, say good morning to the other employees, read the paper (Digital or printed), get your second cup of coffee and mentally prepare to start working. This half hour is often stretched to an hour or so. So, now you have already been paid for one hour of work and you haven't even done anything yet. Lunch breaks are stretched into luuuuuuunch breaks (first hand example to come, be patient) and the "almost" end of the day is spent packing up and getting ready for the end of the day. Nine to Five is not what it used to be. Where are the days when a work whistle signified the start and end of the actual work day? Oy, to work in a quarry. (Flintstones reference)

I know that most employees would feel unfulfilled if they only had 6 hours of work to fill an 8 hour day. This is a rather simplistic summary of chapter 7 in Roger Fishers book "Beyond Reason" in which he speaks about peoples need to feel like they matter. Now obviously once in a while a lack of work is a refreshing break, kind of a countermand to Arbeit Macht Frei. However to not have enough work to fill your day on a regular basis is frustrating and can lead to the inability to do work when it does come along.

In a recent visit with a good friend of mine,who is just finishing up his internship in a law firm, I observed the true meaning of downtime. I am self employed, so when I have downtime I either decide that my day is over and go home or find a different project to work on. In a law firm, or almost any corporate job, the importance of "clocking hours" can not be overated. The amount of work done in a day is not nearly as important as the number of hours spent doing that same amount of work in that same day. I learnt something very important about working in an office, not being in your office for a long stretch of time is very different from going home for the day. As long as your things are still out on your desk and you haven't officially finished for the day, you are still working. Thus, a two hour lunch break is perfectly acceptable, but leaving a half hour early is not.

I took a long lunch break with this friend of mine the other day. We had a great time. Eventually we finished our lunch, went back to his office, packed up his stuff and went home. It would have been preposterous to just go home instead of going to lunch, but somehow this way was considered perfectly normal, acceptable and legit. I am pretty sure this act is defined as "lawyering" the system. During our lunch break he mentioned to me that Google allotts 20 percent of all of thier employees time to work on their own ideas. Basically Google has defined downtime as work time. The engineers are encouraged to present thier ideas to the company who then has a special task force for implementing the ideas. Google clearly has the right idea, convince employees that working on thier own ideas is actually "good use" of thier break time from doing real work. I remember speaking to a friend of mine about the amazing gym and pool that was offered by his company to the employees. He then proceeded to tell me that in all of the time he has been working for the company, he has gone once and has never seen anyone else use it. Apparently the way it works is, if you have time to go to the gym, you are not putting in enough hours. I am pretty sure that this same idea was offered by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers" (I might be wrong on this one) when he spoke about a major downtown New York law firm that didn't want thier employees to bother going to a gym when those hours could be better spent working. Who needs to live past 50 anyway? I get the idea of "sleep when you're dead", but seriously?! Relax a bit.

So here is my point. Downtime is part and parcel of working in a company. I am now a full fledged employee of a company. Thus, by definition I will have unsatisfying, uneventful, monotonous, boring, dull, tedious, routine downtime. This blog is and hopefully will be the culminating indulgence of my downtime. I was asked if by having a blog I will reduce my blabbering in my non-digital interactions, after much thought my answer is au contraire mon fraire.