Every project can be divided into bite-sized chunks, so that I could, in principle, always create a specific objective for each time I sit down and keep that objective to something manageable. However, not every distribution of bite-sized chunks works to produce satisfaction as opposed to frustration. For work to be most satisfying to me, the optimal chunks need to be self-contained. If I have to start out each sitting reviewing what I've already done in the previous sitting no matter, how clearly I can define intermediate sub-goals, I am still working on the same project. The ideal project is one that has a start, a middle, and an end with no connectors in between. Where I can begin without worrying about the stuff that I've already done to prepare for doing this project, and I can finish and stop worrying about everything I've just finished. I don't think the apprehension or satisfaction is derived from the work itself per se. I think it's largely drawn from the time in between when I start work and when I finish it.
An important corollary for me, when dealing with large projects is that large projects cannot be interrupted. I need to dive in, start working, keep working, and then finish. If a project takes me weeks or months, I need to have the ability to make work my life for those few weeks or months. However, I am not at all willing to make work my life in general. So for me to do well at large projects and derive satisfaction from my work, I think the thing I am most well-suited to be doing is binging intermittently with rest and recreation in between. The typical workweek could, at least in theory, be thought of as having this feature. You grind for five days and then rest for two... assuming you actually grind for the full five days. I've found that in office life, most people quickly find that the most productive course of action for promoting the combined benefit of their personal sanity and their personal career advancement is to keep themselves mostly in first gear and to learn not to care about results. This is not a condemnation of the average worker. It's a condemnation of the average workplace. At most workplaces, being significantly more productive than your coworkers is simply not rewarding. But the real problem with the workweek is not that most people are just putting in the hours without actually putting in the effort that makes those hours valuable. Instead, it's that the grind and interruptions are unrelated to the work. The weekends do not coincide nicely with the ends of projects. The schedule of the office during the week does not necessarily fit well with working on a project either. Everyone is involved in all sorts of meetings, etc. that take place at certain prespecified times and are not necessarily related to the ongoing projects. Office hours are eight to five and if you work late today you are still expected to be in at eight tomorrow, and if you work extra hours all of this week, you're still expected to work your normal hours all of next week, you have a specific time window for taking lunch, and if you don't have lunch then, you're not supposed to leave the office for more than fifteen minutes just to fetch something, which you can eat at your desk. After about two, you're really not ever supposed to be away from your desk for more than a five minute stretch of time unless your at a meeting, or unless you have a doctor's appointment or something like it that you've already notified everyone in advance you would have to take a break to attend, etc. etc. etc.
For some types of work this schedule makes some degree of sense. There are many jobs where a significant part of your job description is to be there to answer the phone and be able to have your attention fully devoted to the phone call whenever someone calls you. There are many other jobs where your job mainly consists of reaching out to people during normal business hours so that you can build deals and build relationships on behalf of your company. These sorts of jobs should be based on a schedule, because they must be. We need scheduling conventions to help people figure out when it is or isn't a good time to make a call. Interestingly, all of these jobs, or at least all the ones I can think of, are also well-suited to being based on a schedule. The job naturally fits into bite-sized chunks. You research and prepare one phone call or one presentation, and then you research prepare the next one. You meet the needs of one client who has walked into your store, you complete the transaction, and then you move on to the next client. You're not editing and refining any of your past work.
Work like writing, engineering, software development, and even producing artwork, is nothing like these kinds of work, with respect to how tasks relate to time. The schedule that would (if my experience in working with projects is anything close to typical and all of the research I am familiar with on the subject of flow and engagement suggests that it is) best fit the kind of work that artists and engineers to do is to plunge, then vacation. Plunge and then vacation. You might work 100 hour weeks for a month until something has reached a state of completion that allows you to forget about it. And if you do that, you should then be given a month off (or more, if you are trying to preserve something close to a 40 hour work week, on average). Why? Because nobody wants to make work his or her life, and nobody wants to constantly have incomplete work hanging over his or her head during his or her time off. We want and crave completion, and we want and crave the ability to live our own lives and experience fun and interesting things. You really get neither of these things when you try to work on engineering projects with the traditional schedule, and that's a horrible shame. It's why I'm done with software development, unless I find a position that allows me to work at it pretty much on my own terms. I'd also discourage most smart young people from going into the field. It might pay well (actually, on an IQ-adjusted basis, it really doesn't pay well if you're smart), but it is not a career path that is conducive to experiencing a satisfying life. If the world needs more engineers, the world needs to make careers in engineering more satisfying. This isn't a problem that has anything to do with engineering itself. Writing code is fun. I'll still write code for myself, in the future. It's a problem with workplaces, management, conventions, and schedules. All of which can be changed simply by people making appropriate decisions, and none of which require much work to implement. If humanity can't get those things right, it's not ready to tackle problems that are actually challenging.
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