Year in Hours

When you are a professional whose service is billed and expressed by hours, it is something that is evaluated each year. It is a measure you are judged by. The number of total hours worked (and how many of those were billed) directly affects your base wages, your raises and your bonuses. It means something and a higher number of hours is worn like a badge of honor in the workplace.

In my case, all hours worked are accounted for in 15 minute increments. I hate that. It is one of the worst parts about my job. You cannot just go on about your day working, taking phone calls, answering emails, putting out fires...etc as they come up, but rather you must always observe the time and note how long each of those interruptions took. It is such a pain. If you get involved in something and forget to note the time, it is stressful to go back and try and reasonably evaluate how much of the day was spent on each task. This is one of the major reasons I'd like to try my hand at employment where the product is the main thing and not the hours.

Yesterday, as I do each year, I looked at how many hours I worked in 2008. I worked 2015 hours. Last year I worked about 1900. From what I can tell, maternity leave, pumping and rushing home to nurse made the difference between the years since becoming a mother. Before that, I generally worked about 2225 hours a year. If you were a "great" employee, you would have worked 2300 hours though. Bah.

So while I thought I was going to cut my hours by about 20% to make more time for motherhood, I really only did so by about 10% this year. I'm working at 87.60% of the capacity they'd really like. I feel like I'm only considered a 70% employee though.

Will 2009 be a changing year? I think it just might be. It seems things will fall into place to take a new path this spring. We'll see. I'm hopeful.