Ok. So what is really behind all these hours I'm spending at work and not reporting? I'm not just straight-up donating my time that much (anymore). I'm just doing things a little weird.
The ingredients are a) very little top-down structure in terms of when I'm at work, how I spend my time, and what I work on when, and b) a lot of pressure to keep my hours low. Because we can't afford to pay me for so many hours. But I don't want to just leave!
1) Like making a mistake and having to do something twice, and then not putting the doing-it-over on the timesheet, feeling like I should take responsibility and eat the cost of my own stupid mistake.
2) Or working, but getting distracted in the middle of working, so a task that should've taken me 30 minutes takes me 90. And putting only 30 down. Or not keeping track, and guesstimating at timesheet time that it was 30 when maybe it was really 90.
3) Or getting to work a couple hours early to set up, and then realizing that I really didn't need to set up very much at all, and then just starting the clock at the regular time instead.
4) Or estimating my boss will get there at a certain time (again, no structure) and set me to work in a certain direction, but then not guessing right and waiting around for a while to really get started. (this is what's happening right now, and why I'm chillin on the forums in the middle of the work day... )
5) Or, when I would otherwise go home at the end of the day, getting involved in some fun little side-project that's technically work, but it's just something extra and not necessary or so low-priority that it feels weird to put it on the timesheet when I have other more important projects that are less fun that I could've theoretically been doing instead.
Sigh.
1) this I should just suck up and put on there, because that's part of the cost of having human workers and I should be upfront about that cost.
2) Again, cost of being human. And I need to keep better track.
3) I should commit to working on something during this time, and then timesheet it. If I don't, then I should commit to working on something important in my personal life. Like that good ol side-hustle action.
4) See above.
5) Timesheet it. If I feel guilty about it, then I should keep better track of my tasks, and force myself to choose between a) going home or b) working on the important thing.
Your replies are really important concepts that I need to hear often. I've printed them out and pasted them to the front of my task notebook.
Let's talk about this hustle and creativity. If you suddenly found yourself able to carve 2-3 hours out of each work day, what would you spend that time doing?