202304112203 Ten percent time

The concept of "10% time" (or any given percent) is the idea that we set aside 10% of our work week for non-immediate work problems.

While it doesn't have to be each work week, it's important to do this 10% time on a regular basis. It could be daily or biweekly, but it shouldn't be less frequent than that.

This practice helps us avoid staying immersed in the sea of detail where almost everyone stays almost all of the time. We need to examine the big-picture on a consistent, frequent basis for many years (202304041619 Keep the whole in mind, 202203231646 Affecting long-term change) especially if we're going to be leaders instead of followers.

The well supported¹ outcome is that the value we get out of this time is greatly repaid through the process in both direct (202304102048 Compounding Interest) and indirect (202106221146 Leverage) ways.

As a software developer, we might experiment with new tech, do some independent learning, get around to cleaning up that bug in the developer experience flow that is annoying you, or anything else. It's an open ended time for research and development, for thinking, for play and experimentation, and for inefficiency.