@Eckhart
Also realising that 90% of the work is done in 10% of the time
This is a good tip for life in general. I do exactly the same job as several colleagues, and they take all day doing what I get done in about an hour. I don't know how they make it take so long. They're definitely busy and stressed. I think they worry and procrastinate a lot. We're not paid to worry and procrastinate! Do it and have done with it.
God, yes. I used to have a colleague who became a friend, who did exactly the same job as I did at the same workplace, and was notorious for being poorly organised and perennially late for deadlines, so I was often a bit taken aback that he was always in long before me in the mornings, and stayed long after I left — he did have a longer commute, but was easily out of the house daily from 7 am till 7.30 pm or later.
Because we lived a long way apart it was quite a while before I met his wife, whom I liked immediately, and who’d clearly been picking up the slack with their children for years as well as working ft. I realised a bit later that she had realised we had the same job and was asking in a roundabout way about my general hours, responsibilities and whether I went in at weekends much and looking grimmer and grimmer.
Turns out my colleague had convinced her — and, in fairness, himself — that he absolutely needed to be in the office ten hours a day five or six days a week just to keep up with the workload, whereas I got far more done working from home two days a week, did the morning school run daily and was never home later than six, often five, to pick up DS from afterschool.
I don’t think he was consciously lying — he was just a total time waster and faffer.
She realised she’d been rushing around juggling kids and work while he browsed on the internet between bits of half-hearted work, coffee breaks, staring at the wall and having to reinvent the wheel on a regular basis because he hadn’t kept a record last time.