[Moissanite]

While I agree with you in principle, some of us have KPIs which implicitly assume "productivity" equals "hands on keyboard, delivering features".

I'm a consultant with a 70% utilisation goal, meaning that at least 28 hours per week needs to be spent on things which I can defend billing a customer for. Add non-billable pre-sales activity and admin task on top, and not much time is left over.

My own experience and what I've observed in other people is that this is unsustainable both because of normal working habits and the unreliable cadence of new projects. As a result, I spend a few months of the year working 60 hours per week to get ~100% utilisation, then the next few months getting as much project time as possible while also catching up on all the other obligations I was forced to neglect like training.

As I write this, consulting seems more and more like a really shitty style of working...