What percentage of your time at work are you actually working? 18

[Christine74]

I was just reading the "How many hours per week do you work?" thread and would like to ask all of you what percentage of those hours you spend at work are you actually *working* at your job, meaning that you're not chatting with your coworkers, or pretending to work when you're not, or posting to online message boards .

Personally, I'm probably only working productively for around two hours of each eight-hour shift, which works out to 25%. How about you?

Thanks,

-Christine

 

[ChemFemme]

How appropriate for this thread! If I remember correctly, the main character is even talking about his inefficiency during his interview. I can't quote directly, but it sounded somewhat comparable to some of the previous postings!

 

[bioengr82]

A star for everyone who appreciates the subtlety of office space humor.

"In a given week, I'd say I only do 15 minutes of actual work."

 

[MadMango]

Bob Porter: Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I wouldn't exactly say I've been *missing* it, Bob.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[vooter]

Why am I still at work? It's 4 am!!!

 

[pba]

How about efficiency? I can design a steel beam in (say) one hour. Another engineer may take two hours for the same beam. There is a good reason for this - I've been doing it a long time. I'd also like to think that my beam design has a greater chance of being right!

Now if I could find a job just designing beams then I'd be worth at least twice as much as the other guy and the company would still have the benefit of me probably being right more often.

Of course it doesn't work like that. I spend most of my time doing other things and looking at "bigger picture" work. Much of this work is not directly applicable to the jobs I book my time to, but assists the whole department. I also get to check the other guy's work and try to help him improve his efficiency.

Of course while I'm not actually paid twice as much as the other guy, at least I don't have to design nothing but beams.

 

[epoisses]

The biggest frustration for a senior manager is that he just can't make those d*mn human beings act like efficient machines.

 

[GregLocock]

None of you seem to be considering the not insignificant amount of time we spend thinking about work, outside of work.

I'd say that on an interesting project this could easily be 2 hours per day, and is very high value time, since there are no distractions.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[SomptingGuy]

Typical weekend conversation:

Mrs A: "What are you thinking Steve, you look far away?"
Me: "Oh, nothing much."

When in reality I'm wondering how to cope with multiple-entry junctions in my linearisation scheme. Do I have an n-squared connectivity problem or is there an easier way.

 

[epoisses]

That leads to the following embarrassing question:

How many of you do occasionally implement a good idea/advice that you got from your wife or husband?

(Note that this assumes that your wife/husband listens to you when you talk about work).

 

[astructurale]

I think my husband half listens to me when I talk about work, which I really don't mind. I can go on an on, and he really does not understand what the heck I'm talking about to begin with most of the time. But, if I've got something really on my mind just saying it aloud can bring about a solution.

I love the Office Space references. UsfSE, you're hilarious! I can't believe you remember all of the lines. I'm a honary Office Space fan. I went to a sneak preview opening of it and got a free Office Space t-shirt. It was way too big for me, but my husband loves it and still wears it a lot. I think he'll wear that thing until it falls off of him!

SomptingGuy - I get that question a lot from my spouse. Sometimes it's just not worth going into the details, but he can tell that I'm distracted.

Worst thing is when you are working in your sleep though! That's a habit that is hard to break. And I end up feeling like I just was at work when I wake up. ARGHH!!

 

[EngJW]

If thinking about work counts, how about complaining? If so, my wife must put in about 16 hours a day including weekends.

 

[whyun]

I suppose when someone is complaining, they are obviously unhappy. According to Dilbert's boss, if you are unhappy it is considered work.

 

[14159]

By definition, 100% -- now that I am a lone-ranger consultant. I don't bill for any time that I'm not actually doing something for the client. And, yes, I really mean it. Besides being honest, the people I work for could probably smell "milking" a project a mile away and I'd lose the client. I usually charge slightly less than I actually work because I don't feel right charging for things like software learning curves and experimentation that's as much for my good as theirs. I figure that's overhead.

Back when I worked for somebody else, I became pretty sure that nobody I knew worked more than about 5-6 REAL hours per day out of 8 supposed hours. People are usually terrible at estimating the time wasted on personal calls, e-mails, internet, getting coffee, smoking, greetings in the corridor, etc. We had many people that I was pretty sure worked 1-2 hours/day total and got paid for 8.

My business is good and when I finish school, I expect to have to get help -- man I dread that because I know I'll have to do a better job at actually getting work out of people than what I've seen everywhere I've worked in the past. I've thought about only hiring consultants but haven't thought it through completely.

DBD

 

[EngineerDave]

Brian Tracy said work all the time you are at work.

But I have the same problem to. It varies. Somedays it is full on with no stops.

One thing I tried for a while is taking a stop watch and starting it whenever I was engrossed in work and stopping it when I took a break.

The results were interesting but it wasn't a habit I wanted to keep up.

The thing is.. It will keep you working more that's for sure!

 

[debodine]

DaveVikingPE:

I have not looked at this thread for a while but I spotted your post about charging 25 cents for repeat questions. I wish I could have seen the look on the faces of those whom you dunned for the quarter when they realized exactly what you were telling them!

Bet you enjoyed seeing that look yourself...

debodine

 

[wes616]

We are on *mandatory overtime* right now (which doesn't mean much to a salaried worker like me - except maybe loosing money) so I find myself working the same amount as I would if only putting in 8 hours... it's just spread out more. I take 2 times as many breaks and spend twice as long on them...

Wes C.

 

[WYScott]

I have been told that if you are a very contentious worker, about 50% of your day is actually doing the work. There is preparation for doing the work, sorting and filing at the end of the day, planning the work for the day, geting required data or information from other people, phone call interruptions, safety meetings, project review meetings, totally useless meetings, bonding, nature calls, and many other things that are necessary because we are just human.

Now if you start from that point and work you way down depending on how long you can keep you mind focused on only the task at hand. The actual “work” is dramatically reduced, especially if you have an active mind and any imagination at all.

However for engineers and others that use their brains it’s almost impossible to just leave your work behind when you walk out the office door.

Every one is different. I met a man once that got drunk every day at noon( at least a six pack) every one knew it. I was told that the reason that he was still on the job was because he did twice as much work as anyone else did in a whole day. After careful observation, I think he did more than that. I found that he actually came in about two hours early in the morning to avoid the traffic and in those two hours he was amazingly organized and productive..

 

[PsionSaint]

I'm one of those consultants with a critical focus on my billable hours being useful to my client. That said, I've developed two thoughts over the past years on various clients sites. (I'm usually assigned to a client on a long-term basis basically as a staff augmentation PM..)

1. Part of what they pay me for is to sit at my desk and solve whatever problem they throw at me. That means if I'm not currently engaged in an active project and you still want me around to throw things at, you get to pay my hourly rate. This applies regardless of whatever I'm doing at said desk... surfing ET, reading articles, etc. I limit my activities to "work" related so it's not like I'm totally goofing off.

2. I used to have a money clock that I would take to meetings sometimes to make a point. Basically the clock has average salary rates for various levels of people in whatever company I'm at (senior manager, VP, tech, whatever). I punch in how many of what type person is in the room when the meeting starts and hit the 'go' button. The clock then proceeds to count upwards with how much money we're burning sitting in the meeting. This is always an interesting experience with business folks that have never had to justify time like a consultant. And normally it results in a much shorter meeting.

Overall I've been about 80% billable based on rule one above - the other 20% is drive time since I don't bill for that (orporate policy). Inside those 32 hours billed per week, I'm probably actually working between 20-25 so I guess I'm higher than the nation's 40% average. This has nothing to say about what I get done in an hour compared to other consultants either. Man... some of them seem like they majored in look-busy-but-don't-do-anything-useful engineering.

 

[knji]

105%

 

[Ussuri]

So for three weeks I recorded everything I did, times, frequencies, etc ... The results were that due to formal/informal meetings, potty breaks, coffee breaks, vendor discussions, co-worker discussions about work, co-worker BS sessions, etc., I could only reasonably expect 40% of each work day for productive work time ... I discussed my method with my boss, and he realized that there were wa-a-a-a-ayy too many meetings and other non-value-added activities.

My company has just employed a consultant to do that for us!!! It is costing a lot of money. The idea is to make all us engineers more efficient by removing all the non-value-added activities.

The reason for we are doing it is that the market I work in has a limited number of Engineers, working at a handful of competitors. The company has realised it cant get any more cheap engineers, so is going to make the ones it has work harder.