There’s a difference between working and being at work. In my job, working means that my fingers are on the keyboard, my ear is to my phone, my eyes are reviewing a report, or my brain is spinning over solutions to problems. These are days that I enjoy, days when I get things done.
But I have coworkers who believe that time at work should be filled with meetings, conferences, dialogues, and the like. While these efforts are sometimes akin to working, they are just as likely to become agenda-less, rudderless, meandering conversations. An hour or two each day isn’t a big deal, but there are a lot of days where 30 minute meetings stack up one after another on my Outlook calendar. Hopping from meeting to meeting fills the day, but it doesn’t always fill it with work.
The boxes that surround these meeting invitations look a lot like rungs on a ladder when they’re stacked one on top of the other. I’ve told Laura about my ladder-looking calendar days, and she’s come to learn that my cranky, short-tempered evenings often come at the end of a ladder day.