Chris over at CSS Tricks, telling it like it is:
But what is highly prized in our industry is productivity, in whatever form it takes.
“Hey, I refactored some of our mixins to be more efficient and made sure they are used properly site-wide.”
“Good morning, I looked over a lot of the copy around the site and have some ideas on what we can change to make it more clear and cohesive.”
“This afternoon I closed out a couple of long-standing bugs that have been bothering me.”
Any place I’ve ever worked, any of these things would have been applauded. Especially if they relate to the current team/project at hand. That’s what productivity is.
The danger is that you fight against urges to work on something different. You feel like you should be working on converting some layouts, and you feel guilty for tweaking some color palettes. You’re kind of into cleaning your inbox out right now, but feel like you are being lazy for not getting the JavaScript scaffolded out for that new thing. You’re finding a funny image to respond to a playful customer with, but you’re a little mad at yourself for not updating those docs.
That’s too bad, since you are being productive anyway. You’re following your mood.
Chris Coyier, Mood Driven Development