Another Day And You Have Nothing to Show For It?

A Guide to Recognizing "Zero Days" and Turning Them Into High-Impact Work.

Have you ever gotten to the end of a workday, looked back, and realized that if you had just stayed in bed, nobody would have noticed?

The company would be in the same place. Your projects would be in the same state. The day might as well have never happened.

I call this a Zero Day.

It's not the same as a 0-day security vulnerability. It's a day that, for all its busyness, nets out to zero impact. And if I'm being brutally honest with myself, I've had more Zero Days in my career than I'd like to admit.

These aren't just days where you're lazy or slacking off, though those also count.

Most knowledge work is urgent and not evenly spread over time. It comes in intense bursts, like a critical deadline, a production incident, or a big launch. Maybe it’s something your boss needs by the end of the day.

In the lull between urgent matters, that’s where Zero Days appear.

When the urgent work runs out we start cosplaying doing work. We refresh our email inbox, stay active on Slack with performativ…