My Eight-Hour Sprint to Prove I Actually Work

My Eight-Hour Sprint to Prove I Actually Work

For months, my partner has been plagued by one constant, nagging question: “What exactly do you do all day?”

It’s an honest, fair question. She sees me at my home office desk, surrounded by monitors, looking deeply focused. Yet, my most consistent, visible output that reaches her is always the same: a steady stream of Instagram Reels (usually featuring racist jokes and dark humour).

“I just don’t get it,” she’d say over the phone. “It looks like you’re doing something very serious, then suddenly you’re sending me videos of people getting hurt.”

I’d try to explain the complex projects, the planning, the hundreds of tiny steps involved in my tech job. But to her, my true calling seemed to be “Professional Curator of Viral Clips with an occasional side gig in coding.”

The Unscheduled Audit

My chance for redemption came. She was visiting for the day, dropping in between errands and meetings. This wasn’t a two-week window; this was a single, high-pressure, eight-hour audit of my work life. I had to prove my professional value quickly.

I decided to take everything I usually do in a week and cram it into that one single, high-intensity day—a super-sprint designed to silence the critics (i.e., her).

The moment she walked in, the performance began. I started my day pacing the kitchen while she grabbed her coffee, talking loudly on the phone about my “critical project path.” I used words like “urgent” and “mandatory,” even when describing minor tasks. I had to establish the high stakes immediately.

The Over-the-Top Workday

For the rest of the morning, I was in full method acting mode: The Indispensable Tech Professional.

I intentionally scheduled back-to-back video calls, turning up the volume so she could hear the gravity in my voice. I emphasized every technical phrase and nodded dramatically at my screen.

I’d declare loudly: “We need to address this bottleneck immediately! I’m talking about a complete database overhaul by end of the day if we want to hit our deadline!” (In reality, I was mainly arguing with a teammate about the best format for a status report.)

When I wasn’t in meetings, I was typing like a maniac, furiously closing out old tasks that had been sitting untouched for weeks. I was moving at an unsustainable speed, desperate to show that my life wasn’t just a cycle of scrolling and saving funny clips.

At one point, I even threw in a loud, frustrated groan when I hit a small error. “Ugh, look at this! A glaring error! This system is a complicated mess!”

The Reality Check

Finally, at 4:30 PM, I slumped back in my chair, utterly exhausted but convinced I had won the day. I had given her an undeniable, eight-hour display of pure, relentless work. I waited for the validation.

She walked up to my desk, smiled sweetly, and gave me her summary:

“That was loud. You definitely look tired. But I counted: you paused that ‘Urgent System Overhaul’ meeting three times to send me a reel, a cat video, and an article about a guy who found 20 bob in his old jacket. Oh, and you spent half an hour talking to yourself about a semicolon (python guys ii imewapita)”.

My grand, dramatic performance had completely failed. All the loud talking and fast typing couldn’t hide the simple truth: the work is often complicated, but I still can’t resist a perfectly timed joke.

I realized that day that the most important thing isn’t how many tasks I finish. It’s how quickly I manage to sneak in a moment to make her smile.

The case is closed. It turns out that being the ‘IG Reel Broker’ for the person you love isn’t a distraction—it’s a high-priority feature of our relationship.

---

Happy Dating!