{"id":392,"date":"2009-05-06T13:49:19","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T18:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=392"},"modified":"2009-05-06T13:49:19","modified_gmt":"2009-05-06T18:49:19","slug":"whats-really-work-during-office-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2009\/05\/06\/whats-really-work-during-office-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"What's Really Work During Office Hours?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s Work?<\/a><\/h3>\n

When you set your office hours, decide what’s work and what’s not.\u00a0 Please, for the love of Ceiling Cat, don’t limit what you consider work to paying contracts and marketing.\u00a0 I know it sounds weird. But look at the policies of some successful companies who encourage their employees to take a certain percentage of their time to develop a project that just takes their fancy.\u00a0\u00a0 (Google leaps to mind. Gmail and several other Google applications are a result of this policy).\u00a0 You want to make sure that you “count” time to be creative, to brainstorm, to experiment, get messy and make mistakes.\u00a0 Just be careful not to fool yourself about what those projects are.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For instance, this book is one of those projects for me.\u00a0 It counts as work.\u00a0 If I’ve finished what I intend to do on paying contracts, have finished answering my quota of RFPs and have done my bookkeeping, this is what I work on during my office hours.<\/p>\n

So, how do you decide what’s “real” work and what’s screwing around?\u00a0 Ultimately, you’re going to have to make a choice.\u00a0 Sex blogs?\u00a0 That’s a no-brainer, right?\u00a0 Well, I know of one entrepreneur for whom sex blogs would most certainly be time well-spent professionally!\u00a0\u00a0 What it boils down to is, “Is this really in my field?”<\/p>\n

I’m a writer who will work on some of the most amazing ranges of things, so this can get fuzzy.\u00a0 I’ve written on everything from Red Pandas to how to flirt.\u00a0 I may be called upon to write about almost anything at almost any time.\u00a0 So, does surfing Wikipedia count?<\/p>\n

For me, no.\u00a0 While my ‘Satible Curtiosity is a boon to professional development, I’ve chosen not to allow surfing for information randomly during office hours.\u00a0 Oh, I have a ball with it afterwards (under the “learn how to learn” principle).\u00a0 If I can’t envision a “product” for it within an hour or two, it’s screwing around rather than working.\u00a0\u00a0 Does this mean I might turn rants, irritations, debates and curiosities into actual useful material?\u00a0\u00a0 Well, where do you think this course came from?<\/p>\n

Depending on your field, you may find that you spend less professional time than you intended on directly paying contracts.\u00a0 For me?\u00a0 I spend an average of 45% of my working day on directly-paying material.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s pretty much par for the course in my field.\u00a0 If it drops below that, I know my sales and marketing needs work.\u00a0 If it goes above 60%, I need to re-assess how many contracts I’m accepting. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That sounds really cool and all, but it’s actually a lot more stressful than not enough work.\u00a0 You won’t believe me until it happens to you, but trust me, it’s true.<\/p>\n

This isn’t something you can look at as a daily, or even weekly thing.\u00a0 I’m talking month to month.\u00a0 There are weeks when I have bugger all to do for a client, then weeks where I spend all my office hours on directly-paying material.\u00a0 While you really ought to keep track from day to day, you don’t want your evaluation granularity to be smaller than a month.<\/p>\n

This does help you set your rates, though.\u00a0\u00a0 My bills are such that I have<\/em> to bring in at least what I did as an administrative assistant.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0But only about half of the hours I spend working directly pay for that.\u00a0 However, I charge more<\/em> than twice per hour what I earned as an admin, even though I bid by the job, so it’s not necessarily immediately obvious to a client.\u00a0 Yes, I’ll be giving a good hourly rate formula to you in a later lesson.<\/p>\n

Train Yourself to Work in Weird Places<\/a><\/h3>\n

While routine is good, and it’s a good idea to make it work for you, Life Happens.\u00a0 Kids get sick, spouses change work schedules so that alone time you thought you had is no more.\u00a0 You’ll want to make sure that whatever you do, you don’t get so wedded to your routine or work ritual that when that ritual can’t happen, you can’t work.<\/p>\n

This is another one of those “speaking from experience” moments.\u00a0 When I was working on my first novel, I was living in Virginia with my husband.\u00a0 I had a word count goal for each week day.\u00a0 We lived in a one-bedroom apartment and my desk was in the living room back to back with his drafting table.\u00a0 My ritual was to get up, have my mug of espresso, and write all morning until I’d hit my word count.\u00a0\u00a0 I would dread “workdays” that he’d take off, or wouldn’t go in because of snow.[1]<\/a> I couldn’t get anything done.\u00a0 His very presence was a distraction.<\/p>\n

Don’t do this to yourself.\u00a0 If you’re going to make a living, especially doing creative work, the last thing you can afford to indulge in is artistic temperament.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you can train yourself to be able to work under a variety of conditions, it’s a good idea.<\/p>\n

I really do, no kidding, write when I’m traveling.\u00a0 In fact, before I started work on this paragraph, I was working on a formatting job for a client – all while riding on a passenger train to visit a friend[2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why should you do this?\u00a0 Well, for one, you don’t<\/em> want to develop an artistic temperament, even if you are<\/em> an artist.\u00a0 Two, you’re going to be working your rear off.\u00a0 You’re not going to be getting paid vacations, so it’s better to accept that, and learn to work during dead time like travel time, or under unusual circumstances.\u00a0 Otherwise, you’ll be chained to your house, or you need to raise your hourly rate to save for vacations.<\/p>\n

Set Daily Goals<\/a><\/h2>\n

Setting goals is really important to being self-employed.\u00a0 You’ll need it at first to start getting the contracts, and then to complete them.\u00a0 You’ll need the goals to have some direction, especially in the beginning when you aren’t bringing in a lot of cash.\u00a0 You’ll need them as you go along to make sure that you’re making appropriate use of your best commodity — your time and brain.<\/p>\n

Setting yearly and monthly goals are a good way to help you plan your daily goals.\u00a0 In fact, I’d say that the daily to-do list without a general idea of what you want to accomplish over time is foolish.\u00a0 While there is a certain level of throwing things against the wall to see what sticks in this gig, you don’t want to be too<\/em> scattered!<\/p>\n

This was my goal list for October 2007<\/p>\n