I work, at least nominally, a 10 hour day. I say nominally because some days I work for 5 hours but on other days I work for 12; some weeks I work for 4 days but other weeks I work for 7 days straight. (I think my longest stint was 28 days straight, back when I was shipping a product.) When I’m on a normal schedule, I get to work around 7:30am and I leave around 4:30 or 5:30 (or later). Yeah my schedule is highly flexible and somewhat difficult to quantify but I think it’s safe to assume that on average I am at work around 8 - 10 hours a day.
One would think that 8 hours a day is plenty of time to get work done. I used to think that, too. However, I took a class at work a few months ago that put some things in perspective for me.
The class was an introductory class into project management. Overall, the class was pretty interesting and compelling enough to have me thinking of taking additional classes on the topic.
The instructors talked a bit about the Project Management Institute. It’s an organization whose primary focus is to research and present best known project management practices across various industries. One thing that completely blew my mind was that, according to the instructors, PMI says that when planning your project you need to take into account that a developer only works on code for 3 hours a day. That’s stable across multiple companies and across multiple industries.
So, if you have estimated that a certain component of your project is going to take 24 hours to code, you might think that it’s going to take 3 person-days (24 divided by 8 hours = 3 days). But it’s actually going to take 8 person-days (24/3 = 8 days).
As you can imagine, everyone in class was a bit skeptical of this number - and we said so to the instructors. But they didn’t budge and said that the numbers are consistent not only across our company, but across our industry, and across multiple industries. So much so that it’s an accepted figure in project management.
And that got me thinking about why I can’t seem to get anything done at work.
I think my problem is, aside from general apathy, is that I’m not the best planner in the world. I have a hard time estimating how much time it’s going to take me to do something. Unfortunately, I tend to underestimate rather than estimate, which makes making deadlines a bit “dodgy” (as the Brits would say). Not only do I have a hard time estimating how long it’ll take me to do something, I have a problem estimating how much time I’m going to have to work on said something. Astute readers will note that if you don’t have a good estimate about how long it’s going to take to do something AND you don’t have a good estimate of how much time you actually have to do said something, you really have no idea when you’re going to be done with aforementioned something.
Which is my point exactly.
In hopes of addressing this sad state of affairs, I’ve run a thought experiment to help clear up the 2nd part of that equation. Knowing how much time I have to do things will at least help me understand 1/2 the equation. I’ll deal with the other 1/2 at a later date.
Hours I have to do shit a day:
- 2 hours in meetings on average
- 30 minutes reading and managing quick emails
- 30 minutes in simple/quick email responses
- 1 hour in complex/strategic/tactical email responses
- 1 hour for lunch
- 30 minutes randomly talking to coworkers
- 1 hour doing “research” online
- 1 hour “short” work-related hallway discussions or impromptu-but-necessary meetings
That makes a total of 7 1/2 hours in a given day that I’m not actively moving my projects forward. Granted, some of that meeting and email time is project related, so let’s say that I’m spending between 6 and 7 hours a day on non-project related stuff.
Eating lunch at my desk helps free up some time, sometimes. As does cutting back on my online “research”. Though honestly, much of that is actually work related. In my job I have to be up to date on the latest games or latest consumer products and pop-cultural trends. So time spend on Gizmodo, Gamespot, Penny Arcade, Wikipedia, etc etc etc actually does make me better at my job.
But shit. That only leaves me with 1 - 4 hours a day to do actual stuff. Which don’t seem like a whole lotta time, if you ask me.
Now I’ve got to figure out how I can get better at estimating how long doing my work tasks SHOULD take. Then it’s all simple math from there, right?
Right.
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