Working hours

I keep a note of all the hours I work. I can cope with 60 hours a week. Last year there were two weeks in a row that were 80 hours each. I was surprised at how ridiculously exhausting that was. After all, that was only 50% of my time. Really, why is 50% a hardship? And why is it that now, 70 hours is impossible and liable to leave me weeping in a toilet cubicle?

I read a blog post by David Wong yesterday. In it, he laid out his typical week. He would start work at 8am and continue through to the wee hours of the morning. 7 days a week.

Was he perhaps exaggerating? He is a writer of fiction after all (and pretty great fiction at that- read "John Dies at the End" but understand that the sequel "This Books is Full of Spiders, Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It" is far better). But I bet he wasn't. I bet he was telling the truth. Except he wasn't working 100%.

When I work, I can't afford to spare a moment for distractions. Procrastinations, daydreams... all are out of the question. I am multi-tasking continuously and purely engaged in work.

Multi-tasking effectively is a myth- everyone knows that concentrating on one task at a time is better- but my job depends on it. I have to field phonecalls, texts and emails constantly. I am often called on my mobile during meetings or I can be seen tapping away on my iPod, responding to email at the same time as I am discussing the plan for the week. I get a bit of quiet usually after 6pm on work days or any time during weekends (except actually Saturdays have been known to be as busy) and then I can actually think and respond properly to emails. But the rest of the time is a confusing whirlwind of inputs I don't have the bandwidth to deal with.

I think I deal better than most but have little evidence for that. I might be making it harder than it really is. The fact that people see me doing this and are aghast at the number of distracting inputs I get throughout the day indicates that I am either justified in thinking this is impossible or indicates that I am failing so hard I make it look horrible. Kind of like Tommy Cooper except for real.

I really hope that in actual fact David Wong takes it easy throughout the day and that is how he can cope with much longer working hours. There is another theory though (apart from the one where I am just not as good as he is of course) and that is that he just enjoys what he does and doesn't get tired of it. I discount that on the basis that everyone gets bored of what they are doing even if they love it. Could I review television for 20 hours a day? Of course not. But certainly it does contribute and that is part of the reason why this year is harder than last year. Last year I could work 80 hour weeks because I had the passion for what I was doing. Now, that has gone and I cannot extend myself as far.

Today I worked 13 hours and it seemed relatively easy. Because it was a Sunday and distractions were minimal (just constrained to half a dozen people calling me and only about ten emails). Still, the week amounted to 68 hours and I fear this means that next weekend will be a teary one as I cannot go very far with these working hours.