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For Manufacturing: Even in the Same Hour, Work Involving Many Decisions Is More Exhausting

2026年7月28日 20:43

One day, I helped with assembly work for about an hour.

I picked up parts, aligned them, and installed them in the specified order. By the time I finished, I was sweating a little, but there were more completed products in front of me.

My body was tired.

Even so, the sense of having accomplished work was clear.

On another day, I barely moved from my desk.

I opened drawings and answered questions from the shop floor. I considered delivery date inquiries from sales and checked if material changes were possible. In the middle of that, someone from another department called out to me, and I closed the previous drawing to look at a different project.

Before I knew it, an hour had passed.

There was not a single finished product. The distance I walked was probably just the round trip to the restroom.

And yet, I felt strangely more tired this way.

Even though it was the same hour, the weight of it felt quite different.

I used to be unable to explain this fatigue well.

Bringing work back into my head before answering

Many of the questions coming from the shop floor are short.

Can I proceed with this material?

Is it okay to follow the drawing here?

Is it okay to make this first?

Looking only at the words, it sounds like something that could be answered with a yes or no.

In reality, I am recalling various things before that.

Where will this product be used? Will changing it affect the finish? What happened with a similar project before? What is the status of the delivery date and cost?

If I have already moved to another task, I have to start by retrieving the project from my mind.

Reviewing drawings, searching for emails, and considering how much the other party already knows.

Even if the decision itself takes only a few seconds, it takes a little time to get back to that state of mind.

It is like pulling out an entire cardboard box from the back of a closet rather than just taking one book off a shelf.

Just when you have finally recalled the details, another question comes in.

This time, you have to open a different box.

If you repeat this many times, your mind ends up doing the equivalent of moving house, even though you are just sitting at your desk.

A little bit remains even after you have decided

Decisions do not always end once you have provided an answer.

"Please proceed with that method."

Even after saying that, you still worry a little about whether there will really be no problems.

Will it be finished on schedule? Will it cause trouble for the next process? Will I be able to explain it if something happens?

The person doing the work can move forward once they receive an answer.

The person who made the decision is left with the consequences that follow.

Especially in work where drawings or conditions are not fully available, you have to choose without seeing a perfect answer.

If you stop, the delivery date will be delayed. If you proceed, there might be rework.

Whichever you choose, something remains.

These kinds of small hesitations do not appear on the schedule.

Since each one is not a major problem, you intend to forget about them yourself.

However, they remain little by little in the corner of your mind.

By the evening, those small burdens have increased more than you expected.

People who receive many inquiries can sometimes look like they have nothing to do.

The busyness of those doing manual labor is easy to see.

Machines are running.
Products are lined up.
People are moving back and forth.

On the other hand, time spent thinking is hard to see from the outside.

Sitting in front of a computer, looking at a drawing, and remaining silent.

If you only look at the appearance, they are just frowning.

Even so, questions gather at that person's desk.

"What should we do about that matter?"

"Is it okay to proceed with this first?"

"Who should I ask for this decision?"

Since it is fastest to ask someone who knows, questions naturally gather toward the same person.

Each one is small.

Many can be answered in less than five minutes.

However, in those five minutes, they are re-reading the work, considering the impact, and searching for where the responsibility lies.

Even if it is five minutes on the clock, their mind is taken to different places many times over.

Therefore, when someone in a decision-making position is tired,

"What were you doing today?"

they might find it a bit difficult to answer when asked that.

They decided on many small things.

However, even if you list them all, they do not look like a major achievement.

I worked all day, yet when I try to explain it, it only takes about five lines.

I, too, used to view my day only by the amount of progress made.

In a factory, people care about the quantity completed and the time spent working.

Did we get ahead of schedule?
How many units were made?
How far did we get?

This is a necessary perspective.

I also used to view my day primarily through tangible results and completed processes.

Because of that, when I felt tired on a day where I had made almost no progress,

"I haven't really done anything today"

was a thought I sometimes had.

Was my concentration dropping?
Was my way of working poor?
Was it due to my age?

Since I hadn't moved from my desk, I couldn't find a reason to be tired.

However, looking back, on those days I had switched tasks many times.

Thinking about production methods, answering delivery inquiries, deciding staff assignments, and confirming estimate conditions.

Even if it was the same hour, it was not time spent on a single task.

Within those finely sliced segments of time, I held a different responsibility each time.

I came to realize that it is only natural to be tired under those circumstances.

It is different from the fatigue of using one's body.

Even if I take a break and sit in a chair, I am already sitting, so there is not much change.

It feels a bit unreasonable.

If the time is the same, is the burden the same?

Workload is often measured by time.

One hour of work.
One hour of meetings.
One hour of estimation.

If written in a table, they are all the same one hour.

However, the content differs between time spent following established procedures and time spent repeatedly making choices with no clear right answer.

Of course, I do not mean to compare which one is harder.

Work that requires maintaining the same posture or movement puts a strain on the body. There is also the difficulty of maintaining quality without losing focus.

However, the fatigue from work involving many decisions is hard to capture if you only look at the results.

Nothing has been produced.
No numbers have increased.
Nothing remains on the schedule.

Even so, if that person does not make a decision, many tasks will come to a halt.

Just because it is hard to see does not mean there is no burden.

The goal is not to reduce decisions

If you are working, someone has to decide.

If you are in a position of responsibility, there is much that cannot be avoided.

I do not want to eliminate work that involves making decisions.

What concerns me is the state where similar questions are repeatedly returned to the same person.

Thinking from scratch about things that were already deliberated last time.

Because it is unclear who should decide, it is brought to someone who might know.

Things that should originally be decided on-site are being escalated to those in charge.

When this piles up, it does not necessarily mean that those in higher positions are thinking about bigger problems.

The day is sliced up by small decisions, and what truly needs to be thought about is left for later.

In that state,

It is difficult to be told,

"I want managers to look ahead and think."

This is because before they can look ahead, they are busy guiding others through every single minor fork in the road today.

A clock cannot measure the weight of time

Recently, I have come to believe that when someone is tired, you cannot tell just by looking at the hours they worked.

How many hours did they work?

Beyond that, how many times did they switch tasks during that time, and how many answers were they required to provide?

To what extent were they carrying the burden of the results of their decisions?

Even in the same hour, the level of exhaustion at the end is different between an hour spent moving straight ahead and an hour filled with forks in the road.

On the surface, there are days when it seems like nothing has progressed.

Even so, inside their heads, they are pushing forward multiple tasks that were on the verge of stalling.

An hour is sixty minutes for everyone.

However, I think that while a clock can measure the length of time, it cannot measure the weight of that time.

Information on Kindle Books

For frontline leaders, it becomes easy for decisions, adjustments, explanations, and responsibilities to accumulate, not just the work itself.

I have compiled here a way of thinking to avoid becoming exhausted by taking on even invisible tasks all by yourself.

Introduction to Factory Management for Frontline Leaders to Avoid Burnout

Self-Introduction

Self-Introduction | I am gradually putting into words the things I have felt on the front lines.