In “The billable hour is a trap more and more of us are falling into” (Magazine, April 30) I was a little puzzled by Tim Harford’s last point that “there is a distinction between working and not working” which is worth sustaining.
True enough if you need to bill a client, perhaps. But what about those “eureka” moments that can occur, seemingly at random, after hours of (billable) ineffectual effort have failed utterly to find a way through?
And is it fair to bill for the hours during which your brain has become so dulled by the monotony of the task that it is incapable of producing a worthwhile insight — until, that is, the vicious cycle has been broken by (non-billable) “fun”?
Perhaps we have become so obsessed by needing to measure what we manage that we fall into the old trap of managing only what we can measure.
Don’t forget that there is a whole army (or two) of volunteers out there each day of the week working “in the community” so that — for example — the next generation can live, learn and enjoy a host of activities. It would be a tragedy if the only thing we teach them is how to bill time accurately.
David Boorer
Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, UK