Work Power

As an operations manager planning your tasks, you want to know what your "production capacity" is that can be used to accomplish both work-related and personal tasks. And it turns out that this production capacity can be calculated not only for equipment but also for agents. The only difference when it comes to agents is the assessment of labor: how much actual time does a worker have to complete work tasks? What output can be achieved in that time?

All available work time (that is, time minus sleep, basic "maintenance," including showering and meals) is called work capacity. It occupies approximately 60% of the available daily time. Work capacity is further divided into:

• productive. This capacity is utilized when important work projects are being advanced, including the time spent on crucial tasks that must be done for a project to be successfully completed;
• protective or investment. This capacity is needed to invest time in prospective opportunities and to prepare for the complexities of "tomorrow";
• leisure. During leisure time, the agent's productivity is restored, engaging in important non-work-related activities, for example, doing something around the house.
• excess. This category includes everything that could have been avoided: meetings that could have been canceled or replaced with asynchronous communication; work chats where you mindlessly linger; scrolling through a news feed with no purpose, and so on. Anything that does not help you either realize projects, rest, or improve the environment around you and only ends up draining you in the end.

Most likely, at the beginning, you will find a significant amount of time redistributed in favor of "excess capacity." It is better to strive to minimize it regularly; tasks from there will try to sneak back into the "to-do" list.

Leisure capacity will be the largest in percentage terms, and that is normal. If you have a lack of quality leisure time, your ability to bring tasks to completion quickly diminishes. When you notice a decrease in productivity, most often you need to take a break, even if it means tearing yourself away from a "very important task."

We want to maintain investment capacity regularly. If 5-10% of the total work capacity is taken up by investment, then you are doing very well in investing in the future: better than about 90% of people.

Your productive capacity will increase when you eliminate unnecessary tasks and take breaks more often. You can also train yourself to do slightly more work - if you need to, you will periodically need to increase the workload, and then rest and recover.

Work capacity can be calculated for a team or for yourself personally. Team calculations have their own specific characteristics, as described in the book Tame Your Work Flow (also known as The Book of TameFlow) by author Steve Tendon. We will not delve into team calculations in this course, but note that you cannot consider employees' non-working hours in team calculations and decide for the performer how much time is needed to complete tasks.