Why the shower is the most billable time of the day

Not that I've worked anywhere with a concept of billable vs. non-billable time in a long while, thank goodness.

It is a pretty common experience for the morning shower to be the most productive time of the day. The general explanation I've heard is that the subconscious has been working all night on your problems, but the other morning in the shower I became convinced that that is only a small part of the reason if it's any part at all.

I think the main value of the shower is the limited number of things to think about. By the time you've got a job you've had so many showers that the actual thing you're there for is completely automatic and requires little intervention from the mind. At the same time there are no distractions - you can't read, answer your phone, write an email, and so on. If you're like me you can't even see that well because your glasses are somewhere else, and of course you can't hear the rest of the house over the shower.

I submit that it is because of the lack of distractions that the shower is so productive. While in theory you can think at your desk the email program is always a click away and your coworkers might come by any moment and even if you are not actively thinking about them your mind knows it might think about them. All that is left to do is think, and whatever you think about will get your full attention, which almost never happens.

By this reasoning you should be able to get shower levels of productivity at work when the power goes out and all your coworkers are at lunch. Or you can become very good at actually giving things your real full attention for extended periods of time, but that turns out to be very hard. Probably easier to cut the power when your coworkers are out.