Forty. Per. Cent. That is huge.
Then again, this won’t surprise anyone in a truly creative field.
Thanks to Victorian scientific ideas about work (aka “Taylorism”), conventional bosses tend to see their employees’ work as running forty-hour marathons.
Whereas the reality is, people create value in very short, creative bursts. An hour or two before lunch, say, and an hour or two after. The rest is regrouping, building social ties, going to meetings and downtime.
Our London friend James Governor likes to talk about the difference between being conventionally busy (“busy-ness” or “business”) and creating value in short bursts (what he calls “burstiness”).
If you’re a “Bursty” person (i.e. someone who creates value in short, intense bursts), then you’re going to need a lot of downtime. In the past, you managed said downtime by just looking busy, shuffling papers, or just going to meetings. It wasn’t really work, of course, it just looked the part.
Looking busy might make the managers feel good, but the reality is, it’s a COLOSSAL waste of time and money.
True creativity requires understanding people for what they really are, not what some textbook says they should be.
