The Perpetual State of Busy
What I'm Up To (WRITING!!!), What I Reflected On (Business Context for Being Busy), and What's Occupying My Mind (Web3 Readings) - all part of Allen's Friday Flights
HELLO to my Friday Flights
Happy Labor Day Weekend. How appropriate!
Ciao!
Allen
Past Friday Flights
8/19 - How did WFH → Work Creep?
8/12 - My top short reads of the week cause I did not finish a coherent reflection this week
What I’m Up To
TL;DR: Food. lol
The Things:
California Fish Grill has amazing Cajun shrimp tacos, you only need 2, and its a perfect lunch. You can say I’m a shrimp for one.
Falasophy has damn good wraps.
I learned of Cebu’s Lechon Belly which is based in Irvine and its lowkey and I must have it. Thanks Marty.
Brouwerij West in San Pedro offers a drink called Holy Satoshi.
Hi Tina & John - thanks for chattin.
Still working on my Wooble. Yep.
If you’re hiring, or soon to be hiring, and you follow me here - I’m doing this LinkedIn Campaign to figure out who I know is hiring.
Looking for a job or inspiration for a job? Check out my other newsletter.
What I Reflected On
TL;DR: Part 2: The business environment of why you might be working more. See part 1 here.
The Perpetual State of Busy
When I was working more than full-time, I observed many senior and managerial colleagues be in a perpetual state of busy. The calendars are typically reflective of how many meetings and events they are locked in. Or the amount of phone calls and aggressive pacing they were doing.
They’d brag about it too.
Example:
“Oh what is Fred doing these days?”
“I don’t know, but he is doing a lot of things and is busy!”
This begs the question. Is being busy good?
A career break later, and I’ve realized that it depends. But, I do know the perception around “busy” is as meaningful as you give it.
Except…
Your employer and boss are thinking the same questions too.
What does your employer and your boss perceive and expect of you when it comes to the word “busy”?
Let’s explore the concept of busy from multiple angles.
The Revenue Angle
Let’s look at the concept of busy from the angle of a business. Let’s assume a business model whose entire business is built on chargeable, billable hours. This is called variable pricing, and is often found in consulting and contracting businesses.
Here’s the scenario:
1 hour is charged to the client at $100.
If I bill 200 hours in 1 week to a client, and bill for that, that’s $20,000 in expected revenue. (there’s a team here of us!)
I am paid salary, not hourly.
Let’s say I found ways to reduce how many hours a project takes. Instead of 200 hours, it only takes 40 hours. An 80% reduction in effort.
If I bill 40 hours in 1 week, that is now $4,000 in expected revenue.
I am still paid salary, not hourly.
Since this business is based on charging hours, and I have effectively reduced how many hours it takes, and thus reduce our billings to a client, I have effectively reduce our revenue by $16,000.
As a business, what incentive do we have in reducing hours at the trade off of reducing revenue? If you can’t think of incentive, try: What circumstance do we have to be in for us to make this decision?
As a salaried individual, what incentive do I have in working less, or working more, if my reward is static? What circumstance do I have to be in to work more than I need to, or less than I have to?
How about you?
In your current workplace, what is the expectation of you in terms of being “busy” as it relates to revenue? Does 1 more hour you work directly correlate to earning more revenue? If you worked 39 hours instead of 40 hours, did 1 hour of possible revenue not get achieved?
The Cost Angle
Let’s look at the concept of busy from the angle of cost. In a business, the question “how much does something cost” usually, and ultimately, comes down to how many hours does it take X my cost rate per hour. There are other ways, I’m sure, but this is so prolific that it’s hard to argue against.
Here’s the scenario:
Let’s say I worked on a client deliverable. It is expected to take 100 hours.
I did it in 50 hours. Congratulations, I did it in 50% of the time.
What happens next?
If I reduced the time it takes to do something by 50%, what do I get?
If I helped someone else reduce the time it takes to do their task by 50%, what do I get?
What does the business get knowing that I can do a task in 50% less time than expected?
How about you?
In your current workplace, what is the expectation of you in terms of being “busy” as it relates to cost?
Does 1 less hour worked directly impact how much something costs? Is that the right question? If you worked 39 hours instead of 40 hours, did that 1 hour do anything? Did it even change the overall value?
Leveraged Value Angle
I’m sure the Revenue and Cost questions were a walk in the park for you.
Now I’m going to push it.
Let’s revisit the concept of busy through a leveraged value angle. I just came up with this phrase.
Company management rest on their ability to leverage assets to multiply value.
Can we get $2 worth of effort for each $1 paid? $4?
$120k for the $60k salary?
$1m worth of effort for $200k?
Here’s the scenario:
Let’s say I had to do a task in 100 hours.
Instead of 100 hours, I can do it 50 hours.
My manager understands this, and gives me an additional 50 hours of estimated work so that they can get me to an expected 100 hour of utilization.
It takes me 50 hours to do this 2nd task too.
Assuming I success, and I did in fact do the two tasks given to me - the original task estimated at 100 hours done in 50, and the new task assign also done in 50-
I just did 150 hours worth of work in 100 hours.
Congratulations to me. I have a multiple of 1.5x; that means I can do 1.5x the work in 1 hour than what is expected of another.
What is my current workplace’s expectation of me in terms of being “busy” as it relates to leveraged value thinking?
In a standard 40 hour work week, if I work only 27 hours knowing that I had a 1.5x multiple, which means I can output 40 hours of work in 27 hours - what do I get? What does my boss, or the boss’s boss, expect?
The Silent Workload Normalization
The leveraged angle scenario is a common occurrence and observation. However, instead of 1.5x multiple, there’s a good chance since you’re reading this you have at least a 10x multiple. I think you can do 4 hours of work and generate 40 hours of value.
Perhaps you are in a scenario where you are actually doing 40 hours of work generating 400 hours of impact.
Here’s the scenario:
When I first picked up the job today, I knew I can meet the challenge. Its the role of 1 person, for 1 person.
Then someone on my team quit, or scope increased, and there was suddenly a vacancy/need on my team.
The company did not fill it for a very long time, or it was too late, so I had to do it. Congrats to me, I am doing a 2nd job- but I was told it was a 2nd role instead ;)
I got comfortable with my roles, I saw it as a learning opportunity and growth, and I mastered it. Now I can do the work of 2 people. We call this taking ownership! The sense of pride of accomplishment. And ego.
Someone left again. Now I can be 3 people.
This happened again. And now, I am 4 people. At some point, I am essentially Thanos collecting the infinity stones but with company jobs…err roles.
Some of those jobs were my former supervisors role who left, and now I am doing it; some of these jobs were the junior roles, and some of these roles were lateral.
I was working 45, maybe 50. Probably 60 hours.
By doing the work of 4 people across different roles, I have effectively multiplied my impact but maintained the same cost rate. Let’s revisit the concept of busy and if it was good for me.
What do I get out of this? Is it worth it?
What does the next person who takes on my role assume? Maybe I received a 10% increase if you felt enough courage to ask for a raise.
What is my supervisor, or employer, receiving? As a business, I’d call that a deal. If I pay you 10% more, you’ll do 4x more people’s work? That’s it? Done deal.
What if the role I am taking over was already stretched to be 4 peoples jobs, but it was marketed to me as only 1 job? How would I know?
How about you?
The Carrot of Being Busy
So is being busy good? If I knew that I was doing the work of 4 to 10 people, or I did enough work that it presents itself a company’s worth of people-
What would have to be true for me to stay and be extremely satisfied?
Alternatively, what would have to be true about me for me to keep doing this?
There’s a lot that can be said. Go on, give your laundry list.
The Framing of Being Busy
The thought exercises I have outlined with you is something to noodle about if you’ve ever experienced the WFH → More Work correlation.
However, I framed the scenario as a issue between me and the overall business context. It’s easier to justify what I need to do to advocate for myself in relation to a business context. Protagonist vs “Society”.
But I’ve only shared with you the business side of it.
What I haven’t gotten to yet is the personal side.
The Protagonist vs Self part. The part that also contributes to how I, and you, are working a lot more. I’ve previously written about how I felt guilty being idle, and that’s when I was on a career break - but next time we’ll dive into personal manifestations in a career.
What readings occupies my mind
TL;DR: Recommended Web3 readings.
Web3 Readings
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is trying to create new accounting standards around Crypto and has narrowed their scope to only cryptocurrencies, excluding NFTs.
Judge differentiates physical world and virtual world, dismisses a copyright claim against EPIC Games (Fortnight) on stealing dance choreography.
Luxury Brand Hèrmes files NFT Trademark last Friday, after previously suing an NFT Creator for Trademark Infringement (Metabirkin) back in January 2022.