[yjftsjthsd-h]

> Unplanned work happens unexpectedly, but it’s not unexpected. You know that there will be bug reports, you just don’t know when, where, and in what shape they will come up. The only thing that is certain is that they will appear.

I am tempted, half tongue-in-cheek, to suggest simply scheduling it:

    09:00-09:30 get coffee and morning standup
    09:30-11:30 work on project A
    11:30-12:30 lunch
    12:30-14:00 deal with the emergency of the day
    14:00-17:00 work on project B

And for all that that's exaggerated for humorous effect, I actually have played with scheduling blocks of time for catching up on Slack messages, which is pretty similar really.

[meheleventyone]

I work with a team from PT->CET and am in UTC-0 so no joke the first thirty minutes to an hour of my day is catching up with the rest of what happened the previous day and what’s going on at the start of the next day. I don’t need to schedule it because thankfully my morning is usually quiet but it’s common enough I mention it in my work log.

I don’t think this is unplanned work so much as unrecognised work. Few Gantt charts etc. keep track of that overhead like the overhead from ‘surprise’ tasks.

[candiddevmike]

I love multi timezone teams because it forces everyone to work asynchronous. I find those environments to be really relaxing and flexible.

[esafak]

If your company is sensible. Some mandate "core working hours" based on the HQ, and meetings around the clock.

[meheleventyone]

To an extent, for me at least I get a great block in the morning to early afternoon then a lot of meetings that are mostly 1:1s with direct reports and strategy/planning clustered around PT morning and my evening. I like that though but it’s a struggle to not be brain dead especially with people freshly awake and full of coffee.

[adastra22]

Why is this exaggerated or humorous? That's literally what I do. Works great.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I guess the joke is that I would have liked to imagine that I didn't have an emergency a day like clockwork. Let me keep my fantasies;)

[veidr]

Same here. And I put in my calendar to make it obvious to others that it's there. I used to put in in the issue-tracker, too, but lately our team manager started reducing the "normal" expected story points to a level that reflects the time left in the iteration after the average amount of "unplanned" work is considered, which also works.

[tut-urut-utut]

I always hear these 9 to 5 references about working time.

As someone in Europe where lunch break doesn’t count as working time, this would amount to 7 work hours. Here the norm is 8 hours.

Does lunch break in the USA counts as working, or you typically work 7 hour days?

[Projectiboga]

Depends, but traditionally in the USA white-collar jobs are 9-5 with time for lunch.