This is the continuation of the first post I posted today and the second post. Now, the next topic is about working overtime.
Working overtime may be required for some urgent and important project, usually, it will be project based and should not be a continuous condition where all the employees are expected to stay late in the office. Personally, I take overtime as an obligation to finish up my tasks. No doubt this had taken some toll on me physically and mentally which I really concern about, especially when I am tired with the packed schedule in some weeks. Nonetheless, I am working on to improve the productivity of myself as well as implementing a better system that can oversee my tasks and also my team output so that I can have more time to recharge and get out from the box to get some fresh air and nourishment.
In essence, it is about the productivity and value output that I am looking at. After learning from a series of overtime work, I realized that as long as there is a production with quality output, then it is fine to continue. However, if there is any drop in productivity and I have little and to none energy to continue further, it is best to put the task aside and get some fresh air. I may not be constantly doing my office work but also some studying, working on ideas, taking on notes, sketching, etc. To me, all of these activities are the same which is to produce output and create value for myself or others. It is either to earn me money, provide value for others or make my life better. Hence, I do not see overtime as a bad or good thing but a process that I need to go through to get things done. On the other hand, getting things done will need me to have a different priority. This will enable me to work without affecting my personal time, especially time for myself like doing sports, sleep, time with loved ones and also meals. Without all these personal moments, I do not think any human being can survive and still standing to work.
To make things clear for myself, I had made some principles to follow in terms of doing overtime:
- Overtime fully (as in staying in office) for urgent tasks (deadline less than 3 days)
- Overtime partially (anywhere, as long as I have pencil paper, my laptop or phone around) for important tasks like making strategies, making notes, drafting some designs, manage my emails and RSVP, meeting minutes, project review and etc.
- Overtime incognito, whereby I still work but working on my side hustle like study, managing my schedules, managing my finance, building networks, work on hobby projects, etc.
- Private time, where I training myself to space out this quality time with my loved ones and also for myself, to maintain my body health (meal, sport and sleep).
I am starting to see myself getting familiar to such tempo and such time categorization but It surely needs time (so far already 2 years and yet to master it) to really make it part of me. Nonetheless, I am positive that once I master such time categorization and mindset in doing things, I would achieve another transformation for myself and definitely I could create more wealth for my loved ones and also others. As of now, it is about the focus on building up the foundation work. Thus, overtime!
So back to the slide again where it says about overtime is not healthy in the condition of you are thinking that what you are doing is not helping anyone and redundant. For me, as long as it is my day job where I get paid for my service, it is our contractual responsibility to deliver a complete job. It is like how I deal with my freelance job whereby I would make sure I deliver the job on time and with expected quality and complete scope. Well, it is the same mindset that I applied for the day job. I am putting myself in a position whereby I am the employer and employee at the same time. For now, my only employee would be myself and later on, I would have more and more employees to work together. I like to work with a team that has a similar mindset and have the passion (with the right attitude) to make things happen. Again, not easy to maintain as such being, but no harm!
Images credit to Nomazon