Comments on: Treating your company’s time as you would your own

By: Dominic Sayers

Dominic Sayers — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:25:45 +0000

UK public figures like Dave Gorman, Will Self, Richard Herring, Sue Perkins and Emma Kennedy are actively using blogs, MySpace and Facebook as part of their working lives. OK, these are people with a public profile so it is in their interests to live part of their lives in public, but none of them are using these media as cynical marketing tools (in the way politicians generally do). It's just a natural part of how they live and work. (All of the above have an active MySpace or Facebook page but you need to log in to see it at the moment)

By: david cushman

david cushman — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:51:37 +0000

Stephen, that’s a very reasonable point and certainly matches my own experience of my work flow/focus!

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:01:43 +0000

JP, I assume it has not escaped you that, once again, we are returning to that question of what constitutes “wasted” time:

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/08/01/on-facebook-and-wasting-time/

However, when you start talking about “outcomes,” you are basically anchoring the discussion in the world of nouns, which, as we both well know, is not the world of verbs:

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/05/27/musing-about-nouns-and-verbs/

Where this is most important is in the service sector, where maintaining an ongoing engagement is as important as any of the “outcomes” of that engagement (if not more so). To some extent “turning up” (when the time is right, i.e. when needed) is the primary obligation of the service provider!

Thus, there is a deeper problem that arises from this whole shift from a production economy to a service economy. It is not so much a question of wasting time. It may not even be a question of “productivity,” if “production” is not the primary goal of the work. Rather, it is the need for a new model of compensation that is commensurate with both how services are rendered and with what service providers do during their “down time” in order to be better at rendering those services. Are the corporate bean-counters ready to get their heads around that question? :-)

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:00:10 +0000

Laurel, I hope your “serious” argument is not that one addiction is as good as another! Having deep-ended on the entire HBO series on the topic, I find myself thinking of addiction as a defensive reaction against stress. In this case the source of stress is the very nature of the workplace and the need to sustain workplace pressure over eight hours with little interruption (without taking commute time into account). If we had more flexibility in allocating our “work time” (whatever that may mean), we might have less need for the very concept of a “mental health break!”

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:52:31 +0000

david, if the human visual system has evolved to accommodate both focus (foveal vision) and flow (peripheral vision), why should Stow Boyd pose this as an either-or choice, instead of a both-and synthesis?

By: JP Rangaswami

JP Rangaswami — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:51:36 +0000

Hi Esme, nice to see you here. Agree completely. Which is why we have to move people from this awful “visible effort” mindset to an outcomes-based view.

By: Esme Vos

Esme Vos — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:25:48 +0000

I’m self-employed. When am I NOT working?

By: david cushman

david cushman — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:18:30 +0000

Stowe Boyd insists in his post ‘overload shmoverload’ (http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2007/03/overload_shmove.html) that we have to think about flow rather than focus – and to give ourselves up to the network.
He says:
â€œDon’t listen to industrial era or information era (the last stage of industrial-ism) nonsense about personal productivity. Don’t listen to the Man.
â€œThe network is mostly connections. The connections matter, give it value, not the nodes.
â€œTime is a shared space — your time is truly not your own
â€œProductivity is second to Connection: network productivity trumps personal productivity.â€

I’ve discussed some of this in a paper here:
http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/08/reeds-law-and-how-multiple-identities.html

By: Laurel Papworth

Laurel Papworth — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:52:31 +0000

Sorry, but I don’t have time to waste on social networks. You see, I get to work as late as possible, read the morning paper, sneak out for a coffee or three, play solitaire on the PC, take a long lunch, phone my sister, hang around the water cooler, flirt with the guy who delivers the afternoon post, redo my make-up, have a fight with the boyfriend just before the chocolate break at 3:30pm, read the afternoon paper, plan my evening’s TV viewing, and then slip out early.

And I’m self-employed. :-P

But seriously, isn’t time out once or twice a day for Facebook healthier as a “mental health break” than a cigarette break?

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 21:57:33 +0000

In my experience too, there are many self-employed people spending significant time on social networks to investigate the collaborative possibilities contained therein.

Self-employed people are paid for turning up for sure, but there’s a lot of networking and devlopment of presence that goes into having places at which to turn up. That is an output to which social media can make a direct contribution.