23rd
Ever get bored at work?
Nearly all my friends complain that at some point, every week, they get bored at work. They have hours to kill and nothing to do. Maybe they are procrastinating, but mostly I believe that it’s just tough to fill up 40-70 hours of pure work at a corporate job. This is as true with my friends in investment banking as it is with friends that work in real estate or technology.
The problem is those 5-10 hours a week are often just wasted. Long lunches, online chatting, blogging (ahem), surfing the net, anything that lets you pass the time. I consider myself fairly busy while I am on the job. Thomson Reuters is getting their money worth plus some. What we don’t have, and what I think very few companies have, is a culture that acknowledges this and puts this time to good use.
The 20% option (or is it mandatory?) at Google is the perfect remedy. They pay you to work those hours, and they get something out of the downtime. They encourage the downtime.
While I make this painfully long transition of having a second project (CHALQ) to figuring out what to do next, I want to create this environment withing my group. We have the ability to do some cool stuff within the Content group at Thomson Reuters, but our group is not built to encourage this type of behavior. This is not to say we don’t innovate within our group and push out some great things; we do. However, we could be doing much more, and it starts with being honest with upper management (or who ever the “upper” person is) and getting them on board.
This is my new side project until we can get CHALQ rolling again or I can find another start up to pour my energy into.