I've been obsessing over this blog post for weeks. It's called "The is never just 'the work'" by Dave Stewart, and it includes graphics from a year-long study examining why scopes, pricing, and timelines rarely match what actually happens on projects.

His conclusion? There's far more work associated with any task or project than we properly account for. What you think you'll accomplish today, this week, this quarter—it's actually a small subset of what you really need to do to execute effectively.

At Snapmarket, we're taking this to heart. We're finding that realistic timelines are often nearly double what we initially estimate, not because we're inefficient, but because we're finally accounting for all the work that actually exists.

Here's how Dave Stewart breaks it down:

• Work around the work: Meetings, reviews, project management

• Work to get to the work: Research, experimentation, quoting, pitching

• Work before the work: Configuration, setup, infrastructure

• The actual work: Building the presentation, website, campaign

• Work between the work: Iteration, debugging, refinement

• Work beyond the work: Changes, omissions, scope creep

• Work outside the work: Surprises, contingencies, kids getting sick, internet outages

• Work after the work: Hosting, deployment, security, support, updates, fixes

This framework is a beautiful way to honestly consider what you're trying to achieve and what will actually go into accomplishing it effectively.

This connects directly to what I've been calling the coordination problem and creation problem. So much of this "work around the work" is coordination—getting information to the right people, managing reviews, handling communication. Until we solve coordination, we can't focus on creation.

I know agencies, marketing teams, consulting services, and finance firms are all wrestling with this. The tools have multiplied, the communication channels have exploded, and the "work around the work" has grown exponentially.

Here's my question for you: What percentage of your time is spent on the actual work versus all these other layers? And what's getting in the way of doing your work effectively?