OK the concept of this thread is going to be difficult to explain, but I'll try my best. It basically relates to a feeling of malaise about working days not having any real meaning in relation to the work that needs doing.
For a while now, I've mulled over modern IT working and the fact that it feels like time off work is stressful because in some cases it just reduces the amount of time you have to do almost the same amount of work in. I've tried to dig a bit deeper and think about the general pattern of work these days, whereby the 'end of the day' isn't really a clean break. It's just an arbitrary cut off point, it doesn't mean everything that needs completing has been completed.
I tried to consider how this might have been different in the past, or in different industries. The example I always cite is the coffee shop barista. If you take a week off work, you don't come back to a queue of people out the door and a week's backlog of coffees to make. Each day is distinct in its own right. You might have a busy day or a quiet day, but generally, you don't have a day that impacts on the next day.
Even in some menial jobs where the work is too much for one day (say, crop harvesting), it's enough that you just fulfil your quota, you worked for X hours and harvested Y kilos of crops. You go home not worrying about the rest of the field that wasn't harvested (if you are a general worker; a farmer might have concerns about the storm arriving overnight I guess).
In IT, I often find that there are 'work items' that span over a long period of time. It's quite difficult to switch off because you never get to the end of the day and go "brilliant, I've cleared my plate, let's see what turns up tomorrow". There's always a sense of unease about these ongoing tasks you need to complete. There's always that backlog there gnawing away at you. Always some activity mid-flight that you dwell on outside working hours. If you have an unproductive day, that's just amplifying your future workload (equivalent of a coffee machine failure one day meaning more coffees to make the next day - doesn't work like that for the barista).
Now you could argue, that this is all perfectly fine, that really it makes sense for the work to fit around the hours we spend doing it, not the other way round. But it often lacks closure, it's not a case of saying "OK I'm done, nothing to do now until my shift starts tomorrow" more "I've reached the end of my allotted time for working, I still need to think a lot about XYZ, and I'll crack on again tomorrow"
Another thing I came to to the realisation on is that your work stack can change when you aren't even working. You finish for the day and then come in to an email requesting you to do something else. Or the 500 emails you come back to after a week off work. You might choose not to prioritise this request, but it's still another drain on your mental energy and adds to the backlog.
I think this problem is compounded by the ease at which people can make requests of you. Someone half way around the world can spend 5mins firing off an email that drastically changes your work outlook. 30 years ago, sure you might get a fax, a phonecall (when in the office) or memo etc but generally this sort of scenario must have been a lot more muted.
I'm not really sure what the purpose of this thread is, beyond me wanting to get my thoughts down on paper. I do worry a bit about this emergent scenario whereby work has no natural boundaries and is only constrained by how many hours you spend doing it. Like a sort of nebulous entity with no clear compartmentalisation, just a never-ending dark tunnel of work with no light at the end of it.
For a while now, I've mulled over modern IT working and the fact that it feels like time off work is stressful because in some cases it just reduces the amount of time you have to do almost the same amount of work in. I've tried to dig a bit deeper and think about the general pattern of work these days, whereby the 'end of the day' isn't really a clean break. It's just an arbitrary cut off point, it doesn't mean everything that needs completing has been completed.
I tried to consider how this might have been different in the past, or in different industries. The example I always cite is the coffee shop barista. If you take a week off work, you don't come back to a queue of people out the door and a week's backlog of coffees to make. Each day is distinct in its own right. You might have a busy day or a quiet day, but generally, you don't have a day that impacts on the next day.
Even in some menial jobs where the work is too much for one day (say, crop harvesting), it's enough that you just fulfil your quota, you worked for X hours and harvested Y kilos of crops. You go home not worrying about the rest of the field that wasn't harvested (if you are a general worker; a farmer might have concerns about the storm arriving overnight I guess).
In IT, I often find that there are 'work items' that span over a long period of time. It's quite difficult to switch off because you never get to the end of the day and go "brilliant, I've cleared my plate, let's see what turns up tomorrow". There's always a sense of unease about these ongoing tasks you need to complete. There's always that backlog there gnawing away at you. Always some activity mid-flight that you dwell on outside working hours. If you have an unproductive day, that's just amplifying your future workload (equivalent of a coffee machine failure one day meaning more coffees to make the next day - doesn't work like that for the barista).
Now you could argue, that this is all perfectly fine, that really it makes sense for the work to fit around the hours we spend doing it, not the other way round. But it often lacks closure, it's not a case of saying "OK I'm done, nothing to do now until my shift starts tomorrow" more "I've reached the end of my allotted time for working, I still need to think a lot about XYZ, and I'll crack on again tomorrow"
Another thing I came to to the realisation on is that your work stack can change when you aren't even working. You finish for the day and then come in to an email requesting you to do something else. Or the 500 emails you come back to after a week off work. You might choose not to prioritise this request, but it's still another drain on your mental energy and adds to the backlog.
I think this problem is compounded by the ease at which people can make requests of you. Someone half way around the world can spend 5mins firing off an email that drastically changes your work outlook. 30 years ago, sure you might get a fax, a phonecall (when in the office) or memo etc but generally this sort of scenario must have been a lot more muted.
I'm not really sure what the purpose of this thread is, beyond me wanting to get my thoughts down on paper. I do worry a bit about this emergent scenario whereby work has no natural boundaries and is only constrained by how many hours you spend doing it. Like a sort of nebulous entity with no clear compartmentalisation, just a never-ending dark tunnel of work with no light at the end of it.
