DEV Community: Thomas Delfing

Rethinking Work Ethics: Productivity Is About What We Do, Not How Long We Work

Thomas Delfing — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 03:47:31 +0000

Are longer working hours a sign of greater productivity? As AI transforms the workplace, businesses need to focus less on time spent and more on how working hours are used, which activities create value, and where processes can be improved.

An American living in Germany once described the cultural difference in a simple way: in the United States, people live to work, while in Germany, people work to live well. This observation highlights a fundamental question for modern business management: Should employee performance be measured by hours worked or by the activities and results those hours produce?

David Valdes, who moved from San Francisco to Munich and works at Google, described these contrasting attitudes toward work in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung. While work often plays a central role in professional identity and social status in the United States, employees in Germany tend to place greater emphasis on integrating work into a balanced life.

Working-hour statistics may appear to support this distinction. According to the OECD figures cited in the original article, annual working hours averaged 1,332 per employed person in Germany and 1,800 in the United States in 2025. However, longer working hours do not automatically indicate greater productivity, just as shorter hours do not necessarily mean lower performance.

An hour is simply a unit of time. It tells us how long someone worked, not what they accomplished.

Why Tracking Activities Matters More Than Tracking Hours

Businesses have long recorded attendance, working hours, breaks, holidays, and overtime. Yet many still struggle to understand how employees actually spend their time.

How much time goes into client projects, administration, meetings, research, development, or support? Which activities create value, and which consume resources without delivering proportional benefits? Where could automation eliminate repetitive tasks, and which projects consistently exceed their budgets?

Without answers to these questions, companies may know their employees' working hours without truly understanding their work.

Consider a developer who automates a process that previously required ten hours every week, completing the automation in just five hours. This is not a sign of reduced effort. It is a measurable productivity improvement.

The same principle applies to consultants who solve problems faster through experience, professional firms that streamline administration, and teams using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate research and documentation.

True productivity comes from creating greater value with the time available—not from consuming more hours.

How AI Is Changing Employee Productivity Measurement

Artificial intelligence makes this distinction increasingly important. Tasks such as drafting content, summarizing documents, analyzing data, generating code, and researching information can now be completed significantly faster.

However, businesses that measure performance primarily by hours worked risk penalizing their most efficient employees. If someone completes a task in two hours with AI instead of four hours without it, traditional time-based metrics may make that employee appear less busy, even though productivity has improved.

The time saved could instead be invested in customer service, innovation, quality improvements, professional development, or additional projects.

To realize these benefits, companies need visibility into which activities consume time, where efficiency gains occur, and how saved capacity can be used effectively.

From Time Tracking to Activity Tracking

Modern time tracking should go beyond recording how many hours employees work. It should help businesses understand which activities fill those hours, which are necessary, which create value, and which could be simplified or automated.

This is where activity tracking becomes a practical management tool.

With timespin, employees can track their activities using a physical dodecahedron-shaped timer. Each side can represent a specific project, client, or task. When employees switch activities, they simply turn the cube to the corresponding side, allowing them to record their work without repeatedly opening software windows or entering times manually.

The recorded data is automatically synchronized and can be used for reporting, project billing, and controlling project costs.

This straightforward approach makes activity changes easier to capture as they happen, providing businesses with a clearer picture of how working time is distributed.

Activity Tracking Should Improve Processes, Not Monitor Employees

Detailed activity tracking must not become a tool for judging every minute of an employee's day. Its real value lies in identifying patterns and opportunities for organizational improvement.

If a developer spends too much time on administration, the problem may be inefficient internal processes rather than individual performance. If a project repeatedly exceeds its estimated development hours, the cause could be inaccurate budgeting, incomplete specifications, or underestimated coordination requirements.

Similarly, if consultants spend excessive time documenting their work, automating documentation may be more effective than simply asking them to work faster.

Activity data should be treated primarily as process data. Used responsibly, it helps employees and managers identify bottlenecks, improve workflows, and make better-informed decisions.

Why Project-Based Businesses Need Greater Transparency

Activity tracking is particularly valuable for agencies, law firms, software companies, consultancies, engineering firms, and technical service providers, where employee capacity is a significant business resource.

If a project budgeted for 200 hours ultimately requires 320 hours, the additional effort creates a financial challenge regardless of how hard the team worked. In fixed-price projects, every additional hour can reduce profit margins rather than generate additional revenue.

Accurate activity data supports project cost analysis, budget-versus-actual comparisons, and more reliable future estimates. Through integrations such as REST APIs and data exports, these records can also be transferred to existing ERP systems, accounting platforms, and industry-specific software.

The result is a stronger foundation for project management, cost control, and operational planning.

The Future of Work Is About Value, Not Hours

As businesses navigate AI adoption, skills shortages, remote work, and changing expectations around working hours, focusing exclusively on whether employees work 35, 40, or 45 hours a week is no longer sufficient.

Companies first need to understand what happens during those hours.

The most productive organizations will not necessarily be those that encourage employees to work longer. They will be those that understand where resources are being used, which activities create value, and where better processes or technology can eliminate unnecessary effort.

Ultimately, work ethic should not be measured by how long someone sits at a desk. It should be reflected in how responsibly and effectively people use their time.

The question businesses should ask is no longer simply, How long did we work?

It is: What did we work on, what did we achieve, and was the time invested worth it?

In an economy increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and productivity pressures, answering that question will be far more valuable than measuring who arrives at the office first or leaves last.

Beyond Time Tracking: Why Activity Transparency Matters for Workplace Productivity

Thomas Delfing — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:14:22 +0000

Time Tracking Shows When We Work—Not What We Do

Working hours are relatively easy to measure. An employee starts at 8 a.m., takes a break, and finishes at 5 p.m. The time record shows eight hours. But an important question remains: What actually happened during those eight hours?

A pilot project in Bremen, Germany, brings this question into focus. During the 2026–2027 school year, teachers at nine schools are recording not only their working hours but also the activities that fill them. These include lesson preparation, grading, supervising breaks, advising parents, attending conferences, organizing class trips, and resolving conflicts—all essential tasks that can remain invisible when workload is measured mainly by teaching hours.

The lesson extends far beyond education: Is time tracking enough to understand how work gets done today? In many workplaces, it is not.

Time Tracking vs. Activity Tracking

In industrial settings, time was once a useful indicator of work. Today’s knowledge work is more complex. A software developer may spend a day coding, investigating bugs, attending meetings, documenting systems, helping colleagues, and responding to messages. A patent attorney may review files, advise clients, check deadlines, draft legal documents, and handle administrative communication.

Both employees might record eight hours, yet their days—and the implications for planning and productivity—could be very different.

Time tracking records when work starts and ends and how long it lasts. Activity tracking adds context by showing how that time is spent. Combining the two creates a clearer picture of workloads, processes, and how work is distributed.

The Bremen Teachers’ Pilot Shows Why Context Matters

For teachers, the distinction is particularly clear. Teaching hours are only one part of the job; preparation, grading, administration, parent communication, and conflict resolution also take time.

Bremen’s education senator, Mark Rackles, has argued in connection with the pilot that the focus should move beyond scheduled teaching hours toward total working time. But total hours are only the starting point. If a teacher works 50 hours in a week, it also matters how those hours are divided among teaching, preparation, grading, administration, and communication.

One teacher involved in the pilot reportedly found that the workload reached around 50 hours a week at the start of the school year. Recording activities also encouraged a more deliberate approach to organizing the working day. This illustrates an important effect of activity transparency: measurement can change awareness. Patterns that were previously only a vague impression become visible.

Transparency Should Improve Work—not Become Surveillance

Detailed activity tracking can raise concerns about employee surveillance. That is why the purpose of collecting data must be clear from the start.

Activity records should not become a tool for continuously ranking individuals or comparing how many minutes different employees need for the same task. That approach can undermine trust rather than improve work.

The real value lies in understanding how work is distributed, which processes consume disproportionate time, how often interruptions occur, and which tasks take up more of the day than expected. The useful question is not, “What did this employee do for eight hours?” but “Which activities shape our working day, and does that distribution support our goals?”

Activity Transparency Helps Explain Overload

Knowing that someone regularly works ten hours a day signals a problem, but it does not explain its cause. The workload may come from too many operational tasks, excessive meetings, growing documentation requirements, administrative work, or repetitive manual processes.

Without insight into activities, conversations about overload remain abstract. With it, organizations can identify where pressure originates and decide whether to add staff, redistribute tasks, redesign workflows, automate repetitive steps, or stop doing work that no longer adds value.

Why Activity Data Matters for AI and Automation

As organizations invest in artificial intelligence, activity transparency becomes even more important. Businesses want to know whether AI tools are improving productivity—but that is difficult to assess without understanding how employees spend their time.

Imagine that an AI tool reduces the time needed to produce a document from two hours to 30 minutes. That appears to save 90 minutes. But are those minutes genuinely freed up, redirected to higher-value work, or absorbed by other tasks? Time records alone cannot answer that question. Activity data can help organizations evaluate where the time goes and whether the expected productivity gains materialize.

From Compliance to Better Organizational Decisions

Working-time recording has also gained legal importance in Germany. In 2022, the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht) held that employers are generally required to establish a system for recording the beginning and end of daily working time. Organizations should not treat time recording solely as a compliance exercise, however.

Existing records can become more useful when time is also categorized by activity. This does not necessarily require minute-by-minute project accounting. Even broad categories can reveal patterns—for example, how much time a manager spends on strategy, people leadership, customer contact, administration, and operational problem-solving.

Developers might distinguish between development, debugging, meetings, support, and documentation. Law firms could track client work, communication, deadline management, research, and internal administration.

Tools such as TimeSpin follow this principle: the goal is not simply to count hours, but to understand the activities to which those hours are allocated. Instead of seeing only a 45-hour workweek, an organization can build a clearer picture of what that week actually involved.

The Key Metric Is How Time Is Used

Debates about whether a 35-, 38-, or 40-hour workweek is ideal are legitimate, but hours alone tell only part of the story. Two people can each work 40 hours and experience very different workloads. Two companies can invest the same number of working hours and achieve very different results.

Organizations need to understand how much time goes to core work, coordination, administration, tasks created by inefficient processes, and activities that could be automated or organized differently. That insight supports better decisions than knowing only that employees worked an average of 8.2 hours a day.

Conclusion: Move from Time Tracking to Activity Transparency

The Bremen teachers’ pilot may offer lessons that reach well beyond education. Organizations need to look at working time as more than a number. They understand work more fully when they can see which activities fill that time.

Time tracking answers: How long did we work?

Activity transparency answers: What did we work on—and was that the best use of our time?

Sending XML E-Invoices and Readable Invoice Copies Together: Legal Requirements and Best Practices

Thomas Delfing — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 07:22:03 +0000

An XML e-invoice may be sent together with a readable representation of the same invoice. For an additional PDF, the German tax authorities explicitly confirm that this is permitted. An accompanying Word document is also generally possible, although it does not independently meet the requirements for an e-invoice.

The decisive factor is that both files represent the same invoice and contain no contradictory information relevant to tax law. The number of files alone does not create an additional VAT liability. [1, 2, 3]

For businesses and professional practices, this distinction has immediate practical implications. Accounting departments require structured data, while invoice approval is often carried out using an easily readable document. Both workflows can be combined, provided that invoice creation, transmission, and archiving rely on a single, consistent set of invoice data.

What Qualifies as an E-Invoice Under German Law?

Section 14(1) of the German VAT Act (Umsatzsteuergesetz, UStG) requires an e-invoice to use a structured electronic format that enables electronic processing. An ordinary PDF or Word document, by contrast, falls into the category of other invoices.

The XML file extension alone is not sufficient. The data record must satisfy the statutory requirements for the applicable format. [1]

XRechnung and suitable ZUGFeRD formats are widely used implementations. ZUGFeRD combines the readable invoice representation and the structured data record in a single file.

By contrast, sending two separate attachments — for example, an XRechnung file and an ordinary PDF — does not turn them into a hybrid ZUGFeRD invoice. This distinction should be considered when selecting the invoice transmission method. [4]

Why Sending an Additional PDF Is Permitted

The German Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Finanzen, BMF), in its letter dated 15 October 2024, states in paragraph 6 that an additional human-readable document may optionally be transmitted. The guidance expressly mentions both hybrid formats and an additional PDF. The tax authorities therefore do not require an XML file to be transmitted exclusively. [2]

The second file must be understood as an alternative representation of the same invoice. The invoice number, issue date, parties involved, supply or service, consideration, and VAT details must be substantively consistent. Differences in layout, page breaks, or graphic design do not create a separate invoice.

The cited passage does not establish an explicit special rule for Word documents. The general permissibility of an additional Word representation instead follows from the treatment of multiple identical copies and the fact that German VAT law does not prescribe a specific format for an additional readable representation.

As a practical recommendation, PDF is preferable. It provides a more stable presentation and reduces the risk of unintended changes. However, a PDF is not automatically immutable either. [1, 2, 3]

Invoice Copies Versus Separate Invoices

Section 14c.1(4), sentence 6, of the German VAT Application Decree (Umsatzsteuer-Anwendungserlass, UStAE) excludes substantively identical multiple copies of the same invoice from the consequences associated with issuing multiple invoices. Explicitly marking a document as a copy is not a prerequisite for this exception.

The BMF letter dated 15 October 2025 adds in sentence 7 that repeatedly transmitting an e-invoice file is also harmless where the file is merely sent more than once as a substantively identical copy of the same invoice. [3, 5]

The situation may be different when several separate invoices are issued for the same supply or service. In such cases, any additional tax liability under Section 14c of the German VAT Act must be examined.

Neither the number of attachments nor the word “invoice” in a filename determines the outcome. The decisive factor is the actual content of the billing documents. [3, 6]

A note such as “Readable representation of the attached e-invoice. No additional payment request” is therefore a useful administrative measure. It helps the recipient associate both files with a single transaction. However, such a note does not compensate for inconsistencies between their contents.

Discrepancies Between XML Data and the Invoice Image

For hybrid invoices, Section 14c.1(4a) of the UStAE expressly provides that a visual representation containing different invoice details relevant to tax law may constitute an additional invoice in another format. In that case, the requirements of Section 14c of the German VAT Act must be examined.

Minor technical discrepancies or supplementary information are not challenged under the conditions specified in that provision, provided that the document retains its character as an identical copy. This rule directly concerns hybrid formats. Separate XML and PDF files are subject to the general rules governing multiple copies. [5]

In practice, both representations should be generated from the same approved data set. For example, if the invoice amount is changed in Word after the XML file has been generated, both files must be reconciled again before transmission.

Labeling a document as a copy does not make an inconsistent representation legally harmless.

Mandatory Invoice Information and Supplementary Service Records

As a general rule, all mandatory information required under VAT law must be included in the structured part of the e-invoice. A missing description of the supply or service cannot be remedied merely by including that information in the accompanying PDF.

The structured data must identify the invoiced supply or service clearly and in a manner that allows it to be readily verified. Additional details, such as comprehensive time sheets, may be included in an attachment incorporated into the e-invoice. Specific rules for particular situations must also be observed, such as the deduction of advance payments already received in final invoices. [4, 5]

For example, a patent law firm could identify the patent application concerned, the specific work performed, and the service period in the structured service description. An attachment could then explain the individual work steps in greater detail.

This example is a recommendation for invoice design. Whether the description is sufficient in a particular case depends on the actual supply or service being invoiced.

Technical validation helps identify format errors and business-rule violations. According to the BMF FAQ, however, validation is not itself a direct prerequisite for tax recognition, nor does it replace a substantive review of the invoice. [4]

Invoice Transmission and Archiving in Daily Law Firm Operations

The tax-law permissibility of an additional PDF does not resolve every question concerning the transmission method. A recipient portal may impose technical restrictions on the number and type of attachments.

Invoices issued to public-sector contracting authorities are also subject to the applicable rules governing electronic invoicing in public procurement. If a submission is rejected for technical reasons, it should therefore be re transmitted through an appropriate channel. [4]

As an organizational recommendation, law firms should store both representations under the same invoice number, record the invoice only once in their accounts, and approve it for payment only once. Proof of transmission, the approved invoice version, and any subsequent corrections should be associated with the same transaction.

A subsequent change to the visual representation alone does not create a consistent set of invoice records.

Section 14b of the German VAT Act generally provides for an eight-year retention period, calculated from the end of the year in which the invoice was issued. Any additional retention obligations must also be observed.

For e-invoices, at least the structured component must be preserved intact in its original form. A printout or ordinary PDF does not replace the XML file. If attachments contain other information subject to retention requirements, that information must also be preserved. [7, 4]

Law firm management software should therefore manage the structured invoice and its readable representation as related documents. Generating both files from a central data set, maintaining a traceable approval process, and linking the documents permanently to the corresponding accounting entry help prevent errors caused by separate processing.

Sending both representations together is therefore a permissible and practical process, provided that both consistently represent the same invoice.

Creating Individual and Consolidated Invoices with Genese

With Genese, e-invoices can be created easily as individual invoices or consolidated invoices. This allows a law firm to process a single billing transaction or combine multiple services for the same invoice recipient into one invoice.

The appropriate option depends on the agreed billing arrangement and the client’s requirements. E-invoicing thus becomes an integrated part of the firm’s day-to-day workflow.

An individual invoice may be suitable for a specific completed task in an intellectual property matter. A consolidated invoice can group several billable services for the same client, such as work performed during a billing period across multiple intellectual property rights.

Even in a consolidated invoice, the services, relevant service dates or periods, consideration, and VAT details must remain clearly identifiable and verifiable. Different invoice recipients do not become a single invoice recipient merely because they belong to the same corporate group. [1]

A consolidated invoice must be distinguished from the collective transmission of invoices.

When several separate invoices are transmitted together, each retains its own invoice number and remains a separate billing transaction. A consolidated invoice, by contrast, combines several services into one invoice.

This distinction is important for accounting and payment allocation. A PDF that summarizes several individual invoices does not turn the associated XML files into a single structured consolidated invoice.

Genese supports the delivery of generated e-invoices through customer portals, Gweb, or email. The appropriate method depends on the agreed process and the technical requirements of the invoice recipient.

The actual e-invoice file must be transmitted or made available for retrieval. Merely displaying a visual invoice representation in a portal is not sufficient for this purpose. An identical readable representation may be provided in addition.

XRechnung and the Leitweg-ID for Public-Sector Invoices

For XRechnung invoices addressed to public-sector contracting authorities, the Leitweg-ID supplied by the recipient enables unique addressing and routing within the designated invoice-receipt platform. It is included in the structured invoice data as the buyer reference.

The Leitweg-ID is not itself a transmission channel and does not initiate the sending process. The invoice must also be transmitted through an approved route, such as uploading it to a designated portal or sending it to the appropriate platform email address.

Making an invoice available through Gweb does not automatically replace a mandatory public-sector submission channel. [8]

For ordinary business-to-business invoicing, a Leitweg-ID is not required, even when the XRechnung format is used.

Genese’s supported creation and delivery of individual and consolidated invoices can therefore accommodate the different receipt processes used by clients. As an organizational recommendation, the matter-file reference, selected transmission method, and exact version sent should remain traceable within each invoice transaction. [4]

Legal Disclaimer

The statements concerning administrative practice are based on the German VAT Application Decree and the relevant BMF letters. These documents are administrative guidance rather than independent legislation; they do not bind the courts in the same way as statutory provisions.

This article addresses general VAT requirements and does not replace an assessment of specific circumstances.

The statutory and administrative sources cited in this article have been reviewed for the purposes of its preparation.

Sources and Legal References

[1] German VAT Act (Umsatzsteuergesetz), Section 14 — Invoicing, particularly paragraphs 1, 3 and 4

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ustg_1980/__14.html

[2] BMF letter dated 15 October 2024, reference III C 2 — S 7287-a/23/10001:007, particularly paragraph 6. Official text reproduced by NWB.

https://datenbank.nwb.de/Dokument/1046425/

[3] German VAT Application Decree (UStAE), Section 14c.1(4), sentences 5 and 6. Official 2024 German VAT Handbook; see source [5] for the 2025 amendment.

https://usth.bundesfinanzministerium.de/usth/2024/A-Umsatzsteuergesetz/IV-Steuer-und-Vorsteuer/Paragraf-14c/ae-14c-1.html

[4] BMF FAQ on mandatory e-invoicing, as of March 2026, particularly questions 4a, 7, 7a, 7b, 8 and 13.

https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/FAQ/e-rechnung.html

[5] BMF letter dated 15 October 2025, reference III C 2 — S 7287-a/00019/007/243, particularly the amendments to Section 14c.1(4), sentence 7, and paragraph 4a. Official text reproduced by NWB.

https://datenbank.nwb.de/Dokument/1072024/

[6] German VAT Act, Section 14c — Unlawful or incorrect VAT disclosure

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ustg_1980/__14c.html

[7] German VAT Act, Section 14b — Retention of invoices

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ustg_1980/__14b.html

[8] Procurement Office of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), information for federal administration invoice issuers, particularly the Leitweg-ID and transmission via OZG-RE.

https://e-rechnung-bund.de/rechnungssteller/

German Working Time Act Reform: Flexibility vs. Employee Protection

Thomas Delfing — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 07:40:31 +0000

Debate over reform of Germany’s Working Time Act (Arbeitszeitgesetz, ArbZG) gathered momentum in early 2026. Saxony’s Minister-President Michael Kretschmer argued that existing rules belong to “another era” and should better reflect a digital, global workplace. The central question is whether Germany should retain its daily working-time limits or place greater emphasis on weekly hours.

What Germany’s Working Time Act Currently Requires

The current framework generally limits the working day to eight hours, with an extension to ten hours possible when the statutory average is maintained over the applicable reference period. It also provides for at least 11 consecutive hours of rest in most cases and sets specific restrictions on Sunday and public-holiday work. Critics say this daily structure does not always match project-based work, knowledge work, mobile working and international collaboration.

The Case for More Flexible Working Hours

Supporters of reform argue that fixed daily limits can be difficult to reconcile with work that fluctuates by project, workload or time zone. A stronger focus on weekly hours could let employees work longer on busy days and finish earlier on quieter ones. Businesses could respond more easily to demand peaks, while internationally distributed teams could coordinate across time zones with fewer scheduling constraints. For some employees, that flexibility could also help accommodate family commitments or personal productivity patterns.
Competitiveness is another part of the argument. Kretschmer has warned that rigid rules could discourage investment or encourage companies to move projects to countries with more flexible working-time arrangements. Reform advocates therefore see weekly or annual working-time models as one way to modernise Germany’s approach.

The Risks: Health, Fairness and Family Life

Trade unions, social organisations and occupational-health experts caution that longer working days carry real risks. Fatigue, reduced concentration, cardiovascular strain and psychological stress can rise as the day extends. Keeping the same weekly total does not necessarily offset the impact of repeatedly working very long days.
There is also a power imbalance to consider. Flexibility may be presented as a mutual benefit, but employees could feel pressured to stay longer to meet expectations or protect career prospects. In highly competitive workplaces, this can become an informal expectation to overwork. Variable schedules can also make childcare, caring responsibilities and family planning harder, reducing predictability rather than increasing employees’ control over their time.

How Digital Time Tracking Can Help

Whatever form future legislation takes, accurate and transparent working-time records will remain important. Digital tools can make work patterns easier to understand and help connect flexibility with safeguards.

TimeSpin is one example: it helps document activities over the course of a day or week and presents the distribution of work in a clear weekly overview. Employees and managers can see how time is allocated, identify workload peaks and quieter periods, and discuss actual patterns rather than relying on assumptions. In flexible weekly-hour models, this visibility can help teams recognize potential overload and plan compensatory time off. Time tracking supports better decisions, though it does not replace legal limits or health protections.

A Balanced Path to Reform

The debate is not simply a choice between flexibility and protection. A sustainable reform could give organizations and employees more room to arrange work while preserving clear rest periods, documentation requirements and safeguards against excessive workloads. Digital transparency can support that balance by showing how work is actually distributed across the week.

What Happens When beA Fails? BGH Clarifies Lawyers’ Duties and Emergency Filing Rules

Thomas Delfing — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 06:12:55 +0000

The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has clarified an important issue for modern law firms: when the mandatory electronic legal communication system fails shortly before a deadline, lawyers are not automatically required to revive technical methods they no longer routinely use.

In its decision of July 30, 2026 (I ZB 85/25), the BGH addressed the consequences of a temporary failure of the special electronic lawyers’ mailbox (beA). While the Court maintained strict requirements for substitute filings, it also placed limits on how far a lawyer’s duty of care can extend in an emergency.

The decision is particularly relevant for firms that have moved their workflows almost entirely to electronic communication.

The Case: A beA Failure on the Final Day

The underlying case concerned a deadline for filing grounds of appeal, which had been extended until May 14, 2025.

On the evening of the deadline, the responsible lawyer and two colleagues repeatedly attempted to submit the appeal grounds through beA to the Higher Regional Court of Munich. According to their account, the attempts failed because of technical problems.

At around 11 p.m., the lawyer looked for an alternative. Working from home and apparently without access to a conventional fax machine, he attempted to send the document through several internet-based fax services. He had never used these services before.

The document eventually reached the court by fax before midnight. It was also submitted through beA the following morning, once the system was functioning again.

That, however, did not resolve the legal problem.

The Computer Fax Was Not Formally Valid

Under Section 130d of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), lawyers must generally submit pleadings and other procedural documents electronically. An alternative filing is permitted when electronic submission is temporarily impossible for technical reasons.

A fax can, in principle, qualify as such a substitute. But the substitute method must still satisfy its own formal requirements.

The BGH found that the computer fax in this case did not meet those requirements. Unlike a conventional fax, a computer fax generally does not involve a physical original bearing an original handwritten signature. Depending on the circumstances, formal requirements may instead be met through an appropriate scanned signature or a statement indicating why a handwritten signature cannot be provided.

That was missing here.

The document contained references such as “via ERV” and “electronically signed,” which were consistent with an intended electronic filing through beA, but did not adequately establish compliance with the requirements applicable to the computer fax.

The BGH therefore maintained that the fax itself did not effectively preserve the deadline.

A Technical Failure Must Also Be Properly Documented

The Court highlighted a second issue with major practical consequences.

Under Section 130d sentence 3 ZPO, a lawyer relying on a temporary technical impossibility must substantiate that failure when making the substitute filing or immediately afterward.

A general statement that beA was experiencing problems is not necessarily enough.

In this case, the lawyers referred the following day to the previous day’s “beA outage in Bavaria” and submitted a screenshot showing a system disruption. The BGH considered that insufficient.

The Court emphasized that the circumstances must be presented in a coherent and understandable way. The record should make it possible to determine that a technical problem actually prevented the specific filing—not, for example, an operating error or a problem on the sender’s side.

For law firms, the practical lesson is straightforward: technical failures should be documented immediately.

Relevant evidence can include the time of each transmission attempt, error messages, screenshots, official outage notifications and the names of the employees involved. The closer the documentation is created to the actual incident, the easier it becomes to demonstrate what happened.

The Key Question: Must Every Lawyer Still Be Able to Fax?

This is where the decision becomes particularly significant.

Although the computer fax was invalid and the initial evidence of the beA outage was insufficient, the BGH overturned the decision of the lower court and sent the matter back for further examination.

The central issue was reasonable diligence.

For reinstatement of a missed deadline under Section 233 ZPO, the deadline must have been missed through no fault of the party. The lawyer’s fault is generally attributed to the client under Section 85(2) ZPO.

However, the BGH stressed that professional duties must remain reasonable under the circumstances.

That matters in a legal profession whose technical infrastructure has fundamentally changed.

Before mandatory active use of beA, the situation was largely the opposite. Fax was an established part of legal practice, and courts did not necessarily expect a lawyer to master an entirely new electronic system in the middle of a deadline emergency.

The BGH now applies the same logic to today’s digital environment.

A firm that has fully transitioned to beA, no longer maintains an operational fax machine and whose lawyer has no practical experience with computer faxing may not be expected to learn and deploy an unfamiliar system within minutes of a critical deadline.

An Unsuccessful Rescue Attempt Should Not Automatically Count Against the Lawyer

Another important aspect of the ruling is the Court’s treatment of voluntary emergency measures.

Suppose a lawyer was not actually required to switch to fax because doing so was unreasonable under the circumstances. If the lawyer nevertheless tries to use fax as an additional rescue measure, the failure of that voluntary attempt should not automatically create the fault that prevents reinstatement.

The BGH therefore distinguishes between two questions:

Was the lawyer required to use the substitute method?

and

Did the substitute method itself comply with the formal rules?

A failed attempt does not necessarily answer the first question.

In other words, the BGH did not validate the defective fax. Instead, it indicated that an error committed during a potentially unnecessary emergency measure should not automatically defeat reinstatement.

This Is Not a Free Pass for Law Firms

The ruling should not be interpreted as saying that lawyers can simply stop preparing for technical failures.

The BGH did not establish a universal rule that faxing is unreasonable whenever beA fails. The answer depends on the actual circumstances of the individual firm.

If a functioning fax machine is still available and the lawyer is familiar with it, using that fax may well be reasonable. The same can apply to other alternative communication methods that are genuinely available and familiar to the firm.

The lower court must therefore determine whether using fax was actually unreasonable in this particular case. The BGH has not yet granted reinstatement itself.

What Law Firms Should Take From the Decision

The most useful lesson is organizational rather than technological.

Every firm should have a clear procedure for handling a beA outage. That procedure should identify who records technical problems, which alternative filing methods are actually available, who knows how to use them, and how evidence of the outage will be preserved.

These details can later become decisive in a reinstatement application.

A digitally focused firm also does not necessarily need to keep every legacy technology permanently operational simply because it might theoretically become useful during an emergency. The BGH’s reasoning recognizes that modern electronic systems can genuinely replace older working methods.

The decisive issue is not which technical options exist in theory, but which alternative was realistically possible and reasonable for the lawyer in the specific situation.

Conclusion

The BGH’s decision is an important clarification for the increasingly digital German legal profession.

On the one hand, the Court maintains strict standards: substitute filings must comply with formal requirements, and technical outages must be documented and substantiated promptly.

On the other hand, the Court recognizes that professional diligence has to reflect modern working realities. A lawyer working in a fully digital firm cannot necessarily be expected, late at night and under severe time pressure, to revive obsolete equipment or master an unfamiliar online fax service within minutes.

For law firms, the message is therefore balanced: do not assume that every legacy technology must remain immediately available, but do build a reliable process for technical emergencies and document failures carefully.

The best reinstatement application remains the one that good organization makes unnecessary.

Author: Oliver Otto, Genese.de

Prepared for: Timespin.net and Genese.de

The AI Productivity Paradox: Why Higher Productivity Does Not Mean Less Work

Thomas Delfing — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 03:38:22 +0000

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises one major benefit above all: saving time. Documents can be analyzed within minutes, software code can be generated faster, and information can be processed at a speed that was difficult to imagine only a few years ago.

So, in theory, AI should make the working day shorter. If employees can complete the same tasks more efficiently, they should need fewer hours to achieve the same results.

Yet the reality is often very different.

AI Increases Productivity — But Not Necessarily Free Time

Research and workplace experience increasingly suggest that employees whose jobs benefit most from AI do not automatically work fewer hours. In some cases, they may work longer or take on significantly more tasks.

The reason is straightforward: when technology makes a task faster, companies often use the newly available capacity to increase output rather than reduce working hours.

An employee who can complete eight hours of work in six hours does not necessarily go home two hours early. Instead, those two hours may be filled with additional analysis, customer work, meetings, projects, or administrative tasks.

The result is a fundamental AI productivity paradox: technology can make individual tasks more efficient while simultaneously increasing the amount of work employees are expected to complete.

The Rebound Effect in Knowledge Work

This pattern is particularly visible in knowledge-intensive professions.

Developers can use generative AI to write code, identify errors, and create documentation faster. Lawyers can analyze contracts more efficiently. Consultants can process information and prepare reports in less time. Managers can summarize large volumes of data almost instantly.

But the time saved rarely disappears.

Instead, employees may handle more projects, analyze additional information, serve more clients, or take on responsibilities that would previously have required additional staff or time.

This resembles the economic rebound effect: when a resource becomes more efficient to use, demand for that resource can increase rather than decrease.

Applied to work, a more productive hour becomes economically more valuable. That can create an incentive to use the hour more intensively instead of eliminating it.

AI Changes How Companies Should Measure Productivity

This development also challenges the traditional debate about working hours.

Discussions about the four-day week, 35-hour versus 40-hour workweeks, and labor shortages often focus primarily on how long people work. But AI makes another question increasingly important:

What is actually being accomplished during those working hours?

Two employees may each record eight hours of work while producing very different levels of value.

One may spend much of the day on repetitive administration. Another may use AI tools to automate routine tasks and spend the recovered time on customer service, product development, strategic planning, or innovation.

Traditional time tracking records both days as eight-hour working days. From a business perspective, however, their contribution may be completely different.

This means companies increasingly need to look beyond hours worked and analyze how working time is used.

AI Cannot Fix Inefficient Processes on Its Own

Another challenge is that companies often introduce AI into existing workflows without changing the underlying processes.

An AI assistant may produce a document within minutes, but the document can still spend days waiting for approval. An AI system may generate an analysis instantly, but the final decision may still require several meetings.

Similarly, writing an email may take only seconds with AI assistance. If easier communication simply results in more emails, the technology has increased speed without necessarily creating meaningful productivity gains.

In these situations, technological efficiency improves while organizational efficiency remains largely unchanged.

For businesses, the key question is therefore not simply whether AI makes individual tasks faster. It is whether the entire workflow becomes more efficient.

What Happens to the Time AI Saves?

For managers, one question should become central:

Where does the time saved by AI actually go?

If a process genuinely eliminates two hours of work, the company may achieve lower costs, shorter working hours, or additional capacity for higher-value activities.

But if those two hours are immediately replaced by more meetings, emails, reports, and projects, the company may simply be producing more work at a faster pace.

That is not necessarily bad. More output can create significant business value. The problem arises when higher work intensity is mistaken for genuine productivity improvement.

AI can increase an employee's ability to complete tasks. It does not automatically determine whether those tasks are valuable or necessary.

From Time Tracking to Activity Analysis

This is where modern approaches to time and activity tracking become increasingly important.

Instead of asking only “How many hours did an employee work?”, companies need to ask:

Which activities consumed those hours?
Which tasks became faster through AI?
Which tasks disappeared completely?
Where did the recovered time go?
Was it used for higher-value work?
Did AI reduce workload or simply increase output expectations?

Solutions such as TimeSpin focus on understanding how working time is actually allocated, rather than looking only at the total number of hours recorded. This can help companies identify changes in workflows and understand whether technology-driven productivity improvements are translating into meaningful business outcomes.

The goal is not to eliminate time tracking. Instead, companies can make it more useful by connecting working hours with the activities performed during those hours.

The Real AI Revolution Is Happening Inside the Workday

The public debate around AI often focuses on increasingly powerful models, automation, and computing capabilities. For businesses, however, one of the most important changes may be much less spectacular: how employees use their working time every day.

AI creates a new economic resource — available time.

But that time does not automatically become free time.

Companies must decide how to use it.

Organizations that simply expect employees to complete more work with AI may increase their output. But organizations that redesign workflows, eliminate unnecessary tasks, and deliberately redirect saved time toward innovation, customer service, strategic work, or employee development may achieve much more meaningful productivity gains.

The central management challenge of the AI era is therefore not simply introducing more AI tools.

It is deciding what work should still be done, what can be automated, and what employees should do with the time that AI creates.

The most important question may not be how many working hours AI can save.

It may be:

What will companies do with the time AI was supposed to give them?

Based on the original article by Oliver Otto, Bremen, September 15, 2026.

Rethinking Time Tracking: How Haptic Tracking Reveals More About Work

Thomas Delfing — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 06:51:34 +0000

Traditional time tracking software is usually designed to answer one basic question: How many hours were worked? But for modern businesses, a more useful question is often: What was that time actually spent on?

Understanding how employees divide their time between projects, communication, administration, customer work and other activities can provide valuable insights for project management, resource planning and profitability.

This is where timespin.net takes a different approach to time tracking.

The Problem with Traditional Time Tracking

Digital time tracking is convenient, but it can also interrupt the workflow it is supposed to measure.

Employees may need to open a browser tab, find a project, select an activity and start a timer. When the task changes, the process has to be repeated. For people who frequently switch between meetings, research, documentation, customer work and internal tasks, these small interactions can quickly become distracting.

Time tracking should therefore require as little attention as possible.

Time Tracking with a Physical Interface

TimeSpin uses a physical 12-sided dodecahedron as an alternative interface for recording activities.

Each side can represent a predefined task or activity. To change the activity being tracked, the user simply turns the cube. The corresponding timer starts automatically.

The process becomes simple:

Change activity → Turn the cube → Keep working.

Instead of interacting with another software interface, employees can record their work with a quick physical action.

From Tracking Hours to Understanding Work

The real value of activity-based time tracking lies in the data it generates.

When each side of the TimeSpin dodecahedron represents a specific activity, businesses can see more than total working hours. They can analyze:

How much time is spent on specific activities
How frequently employees switch between tasks
Which activities consistently take longer than expected
Where short, fragmented work periods occur
Which activities consume the most time during a project or workweek

This turns time tracking into a tool for process transparency and workload analysis, rather than simple documentation.

Better Project Costing and Resource Planning

For agencies, consultancies, law firms, IT companies and technical service providers, understanding how working hours are distributed can be particularly valuable.

For example, a project may have been estimated at 10 hours but ultimately require 12. Knowing that the project took 12 hours is useful—but knowing why it took longer is much more valuable.

Was additional time spent on meetings? Documentation? Customer communication? Or was the actual project work more complex than expected?

Activity-based tracking provides a clearer basis for project costing, profitability analysis and future estimates.

A More Transparent Approach to Employee Time Tracking

Employee acceptance is another important consideration.

Detailed time tracking can sometimes be perceived as a monitoring tool. TimeSpin takes a different approach: the employee actively chooses the activity being recorded. The system does not silently monitor everything happening on a computer.

This distinction can make activity tracking feel less like surveillance and more like a practical work tool.

According to the source article, a Swiss industrial company is currently testing the system within one department, with the aim of introducing a less intrusive approach to time tracking.

Flexible, Hybrid Time Tracking

A physical time-tracking device does not have to replace digital tools completely.

TimeSpin can also be used as part of a hybrid time tracking system. Some employees can use the physical dodecahedron, while others can track activities through browser or mobile applications. The collected data is then brought together within the same environment.

The platform supports Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, allowing businesses to adapt the tracking method to different teams and working environments.

Integration with Existing Business Systems

Professional time tracking should not operate as an isolated system. Time and activity data often need to flow into project management, accounting, controlling and ERP processes.

TimeSpin provides a REST API and export options that allow time and activity data to be transferred to external applications. Potential integrations include ERP systems, accounting solutions and industry-specific software.

The workflow can therefore become:

Track activity → Synchronize data → Analyze projects → Bill or process the data

For companies with established digital workflows, this integration is essential.

The Future of Time Tracking: Less Friction, Better Data

Effective time tracking should become almost invisible in the working day.

The more attention employees have to give to recording their time, the greater the risk of interruptions, missing entries and inaccurate estimates. A simpler interaction can help reduce this friction while still producing structured activity data.

TimeSpin's approach combines a physical interface with software, cloud synchronization and integrations to create a more detailed view of how working time is actually used.

Conclusion: Don't Just Measure Time—Understand Work

Modern employee time tracking should be about more than recording start and finish times.

Businesses need to understand:

Which activities consume the most resources?
Which projects are actually profitable?
Where are unexpected time drains occurring?
How is work distributed throughout the day and week?

Haptic time tracking offers one possible answer. By connecting individual activities to a simple physical interface, the TimeSpin dodecahedron makes activity tracking quick while creating structured data for project controlling, capacity planning and more accurate workload analysis.

The principle is simple:

Good time tracking doesn't just measure how much time passes. It shows what that time is actually being used for.

For businesses looking to rethink how they track and analyze working time, genese.de and timespin.net provide relevant technology and digital solutions.

Productivity in Middle Management: How Time Tracking Improves Focus and Efficiency

Thomas Delfing — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:25:27 +0000

Middle managers operate under a unique form of pressure. They are expected to translate strategic directives from senior leadership into operational reality, solve day-to-day problems, lead employees, coordinate projects, and remain available for questions and unexpected issues.

As a result, their working days are often completely full. Yet despite constant activity, many managers reach the end of the day feeling that surprisingly little progress has been made on the issues that matter most.

The problem is rarely a lack of commitment. More often, working time is fragmented by interruptions, frequent task switching, unclear priorities, and a continuous stream of short-term demands.

Being busy throughout the day is not the same as being productive.

For middle management, productivity should not be measured simply by the number of tasks completed. Instead, it should be understood as the deliberate allocation of available time to activities that make a meaningful contribution to agreed business objectives.

Middle Management as a Permanent Interface

Middle management serves as a critical link between executive leadership and operational teams. This interface function is one of the main reasons the role can be so demanding.

Managers must absorb information, evaluate it, communicate it, and translate it into concrete action. At the same time, new demands appear continuously: emails, meetings, employee questions, customer issues, personnel matters, cross-departmental coordination, and unexpected escalations.

Many of these activities are legitimate and necessary. The difficulty begins when every new request automatically interrupts the task currently being performed.

The working day can then stop consisting of coherent periods of focused work and instead become a sequence of short, fragmented episodes.

The human brain does not genuinely process multiple demanding tasks in parallel. Instead, it repeatedly switches between different cognitive contexts. After each switch, the relevant train of thought has to be reconstructed.

This context switching consumes time, increases the likelihood of mistakes, and makes sustained concentration more difficult.

Managers can particularly underestimate this effect because the ability to move quickly between topics is often considered part of professional competence. In operational environments, that flexibility is certainly necessary. It should not, however, become the permanent default way of working.

Being Busy Is Not the Same as Being Effective

A completely full calendar can create the impression of high performance. However, a large number of meetings and completed tasks is not, by itself, a reliable measure of managerial effectiveness.

For middle managers, a more important question is:

Which activities actually contribute to achieving the organisation's objectives?

These activities may include:

Clarifying responsibilities
Removing recurring obstacles
Developing employees
Improving processes
Managing critical projects
Supporting important customer relationships
Making timely operational decisions

Other activities may also be necessary, but they should not consume the entire working day.

Examples include routine status requests, indiscriminate information forwarding, unnecessary meetings, or administrative tasks that could potentially be automated or delegated.

Effective leadership therefore begins with an honest assessment of how working time is actually being used.

The First Step: Making Working Time Visible

Many managers can state precisely how many hours they have worked. It is often much more difficult to explain exactly how those hours were spent.

Without a reliable empirical basis, assessments of personal productivity remain largely subjective. Stressful or unpleasant tasks can easily be overestimated, while dozens of small interruptions may barely register.

This is where TimeSpin can provide a practical foundation.

TimeSpin does more than record the beginning and end of a working day. It can be used to associate working time with specific tasks, projects, clients, or activity categories.

The physical TimeSpin dodecahedron can be configured with individually defined activity labels. Users record their time by turning the device so that the relevant activity becomes active, while the resulting data can be synchronised with the associated software.

This approach makes it possible to build a more realistic picture of how working time is actually being used without requiring users to repeatedly open an application or manually enter detailed time records.

For a manager, useful categories might include:

Employee leadership
Project management
Customer and escalation issues
Conceptual and specialist work
Internal coordination
Meetings
Administration
Email and communication
Strategic tasks
Unplanned interruptions

The purpose of recording this information is not to collect data for its own sake. Its value lies in identifying working patterns and creating a basis for deliberate improvement.

Personal Self-Management Rather Than Mere Time Recording

TimeSpin can be used as an instrument for personal self-management.

The relevant question is not simply:

How long did I work?

Instead, managers can ask:

How much time did I devote to my most important responsibilities?
How often was focused work interrupted?
What proportion of the day was consumed by meetings?
How much time was spent dealing with operational problems?
Which activities could have been delegated?
Did I allocate enough time to leadership and employee development?
Were there sustained periods of work without constant context switching?

The category of unplanned interruptions can be particularly revealing. It can make visible how much time is consumed by spontaneous questions, notifications, and short-notice requests.

The objective is not to eliminate interruptions completely. Some situations genuinely require immediate action.

The more important distinction is between legitimate priorities and a habitual culture of instant response.

If time data shows that several hours each day are repeatedly absorbed by short-term task switching, this may point to deeper structural issues such as unclear responsibilities, insufficient documentation, inadequate decision-making authority, or an organisational culture built around permanent availability.

Time tracking can therefore become a tool for organisational development rather than merely an administrative mechanism.

Concentration Requires Protected Time

Demanding managerial work requires uninterrupted periods of attention.

Strategic analysis, difficult personnel decisions, process improvement, and complex project evaluation cannot be performed effectively in the narrow gaps between meetings.

Managers should therefore deliberately schedule periods of focused work. During these periods, notifications can be disabled, email processing paused, and spontaneous meetings restricted to genuine exceptions.

TimeSpin can help make these periods visible. A dedicated category such as Conceptual and Focus Work allows managers to determine whether planned concentration periods were actually protected in practice.

A practical approach is to reserve at least one substantial focus block each day for the most important task.

The goal should not be to begin with the easiest item on the list. Instead, managers should prioritise the activity capable of creating the greatest value.

A manager who spends two concentrated hours each day on strategically important issues may ultimately accomplish more than someone who spends ten hours continuously reacting to incoming demands.

Assessing Meetings According to Their Actual Value

Meetings account for a significant proportion of working time in middle management.

They are necessary for preparing decisions, exchanging information, and coordinating collaboration. At the same time, meetings can consume substantial organisational capacity.

By recording different meeting types separately, managers can begin to determine which formats are genuinely necessary.

Possible categories include:

Decision-making meetings
Project status meetings
Employee meetings
Customer meetings
Information meetings
Internal coordination

During a weekly review, managers should assess which meetings produced concrete outcomes.

A meeting that results in neither a clear decision, a documented task, nor an agreed next step deserves closer examination.

The true cost of a meeting is also greater than its scheduled duration. Preparation, follow-up, and interruptions to other productive work must be considered as well.

TimeSpin can help make these patterns visible and provide a factual basis for reviewing how meeting time is being used.

TimeSpin as a Basis for Weekly Management Controlling

In addition to supporting individual self-management, TimeSpin can provide a foundation for structured weekly management controlling.

This controlling process should not focus exclusively on attendance times or utilisation rates.

For middle management, a more meaningful question is whether the allocation of working time corresponds with the organisation's current objectives.

A weekly management review might therefore address questions such as:

Which tasks and projects consumed the largest share of time?
Does this allocation reflect current priorities?
Which unplanned issues occurred?
Which tasks were completed?
Where are delays or bottlenecks emerging?
Which activities should be delegated, automated, or discontinued?
How much time was available for employee leadership and strategic work?
What changes should be made during the coming week?

In this way, TimeSpin connects operational time allocation with leadership and project management.

Weekly controlling should remain concise. The objective is not to justify every individual time entry. Instead, the goal is to identify patterns and translate them into practical management decisions.

For example, a weekly distribution might look like this:

Activity	Share of Time
Project management	30%
Meetings	20%
Employee leadership	15%
Operational problem solving	15%
Administration	10%
Strategic work	5%
Unplanned interruptions	5%

Such a distribution is not inherently good or bad. It must always be interpreted in the context of current responsibilities.

If a major project is in a critical phase, a high proportion of operational management may be entirely appropriate.

If strategic work and employee development receive virtually no time over several consecutive weeks, however, the data may indicate a structural problem that deserves attention.

Time Tracking Must Not Become Surveillance

The value of time data depends fundamentally on how it is used.

If TimeSpin is used as a surveillance instrument in which individual minutes are scrutinised or employees are constantly required to justify their time, resistance can emerge quickly.

Data quality may deteriorate, records can become distorted, and the original objective of improving working processes can be lost.

A productive approach to time data requires transparency and a clearly defined purpose.

The data should help organisations:

Identify overload
Review priorities
Improve processes
Detect recurring bottlenecks
Understand resource allocation
Support better management decisions

The same standards should apply to managers and employees alike. Leadership should also be prepared to critically examine its own use of time.

When teams understand that time recording is intended to identify organisational obstacles rather than monitor individuals, acceptance can increase.

The tactile nature of TimeSpin can also reduce the administrative burden associated with conventional time recording. Activities can be recorded through a simple physical interaction, allowing time tracking to become part of the working routine rather than another administrative task.

Using AI and Automation Selectively

Another important lever for improving productivity is the automation of repetitive activities.

Artificial intelligence can assist with tasks such as:

Summaries
Initial text drafts
Meeting minutes
Evaluations
Information structuring
Processing large volumes of information

The decisive question, however, is not simply whether an activity can technically be automated.

The more important question is whether automation actually produces a measurable reduction in time expenditure.

TimeSpin can provide an empirical basis for evaluating that change.

If several hours each week are consistently spent on comparable administrative tasks, those activities may be suitable candidates for automation.

After introducing an automation solution, the organisation can compare the relevant time allocation again to determine whether the required time has actually decreased.

This transforms an assumed efficiency gain into a measurable improvement.

The principle becomes increasingly relevant as organisations expand their use of AI: productivity gains should not merely be claimed. They should be measurable.

Common Mistakes in Personal Productivity Management

Many productivity initiatives fail because they simply introduce additional rules, processes, and tools.

One common mistake is attempting to schedule every minute of the working day.

Managers need sufficient capacity to respond to unforeseen developments. A calendar with no buffer means that a single unexpected event can disrupt the entire schedule.

Another mistake is creating too many time-recording categories.

A system that requires a complex decision every time an activity changes is unlikely to be used consistently in everyday practice.

Categories should therefore be as differentiated as necessary but as simple as possible.

This is one of the practical advantages of the TimeSpin concept. Each device can be configured with individual activity labels so that the physical interface reflects the user's actual responsibilities.

Switching between activities requires a simple turn of the device, while the recorded data can subsequently be synchronised and analysed.

Assessing individual days in isolation can also be misleading.

Management work naturally fluctuates. Trends over several weeks are generally more informative than individual daily results.

Finally, productivity should never be confused with permanent maximum utilisation.

A manager whose entire capacity is scheduled at all times loses the ability to respond flexibly to new and genuinely important developments.

A degree of unallocated capacity is therefore not necessarily evidence of inefficiency. It can be an essential component of effective management.

From Time Tracking to Deliberate Leadership

The real value of TimeSpin does not lie in recording time itself.

It lies in the decisions that can be derived from the resulting data.

Following a weekly review, a manager might decide to:

Consolidate two recurring meetings
Process emails only during defined time windows
Reserve a daily focus block
Delegate operational questions more consistently to team leaders
Document frequent interruptions and address their root causes
Automate repetitive administrative tasks
Allocate more time to employee development
Manage project status through more standardised reporting

This makes productivity tangible and manageable.

The objective is not simply to work faster.

It is to make more deliberate decisions about which activities deserve attention and which do not.

TimeSpin can also be integrated into existing software environments. Recorded data can be transferred through a REST API and made available for further processing in project management, ERP, merchandise management, accounting, or other business systems.

Depending on organisational requirements, data can also be exported or transferred to systems such as DATEV or Sage.

This means that the same time data can potentially serve several purposes:

Personal self-management
Project accounting
Management reporting
Operational controlling
Integration with existing enterprise processes

Conclusion: From Working More to Working on the Right Things

Productivity in middle management is not created by permanent time pressure or by maintaining maximum utilisation throughout the working day.

It results from clear priorities, protected periods of concentration, deliberate communication, and regular reflection.

TimeSpin provides an objective basis for this process by making working-time allocation more visible and connecting personal self-management with structured weekly management controlling.

Used appropriately, TimeSpin is more than a conventional time-recording system. It can support managers in identifying overload, reviewing project-related time allocation, understanding working patterns, and continuously improving individual and organisational processes.

Its tactile dodecahedron makes activity changes intuitive: each device can be configured with individually defined activity labels, allowing users to record different activities through a simple physical interaction.

The crucial question at the end of the working week is therefore no longer simply:

How much did I work?

It is:

Did I spend my time on the right things?

Key Takeaway

For middle managers, effective time management is not about filling every available minute.

It is about understanding where time goes, protecting attention for high-value work, reducing unnecessary interruptions, evaluating meetings based on outcomes, and using reliable data to make better management decisions.

Time tracking becomes most valuable when it leads to action.

Measure the work. Understand the patterns. Protect the focus. Improve the decisions.

Project Management Without US Providers: European Alternatives for Greater Digital Sovereignty

Thomas Delfing — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:02:56 +0000

Why businesses should look beyond features when choosing project management software — and consider the provider, infrastructure, data sovereignty, and actual work activity

Trello, Asana, Monday.com, Jira, and Microsoft Planner have become part of everyday digital work for many companies. These platforms help teams organize tasks, coordinate deadlines, and maintain visibility into project progress.

At the same time, project management systems often contain highly sensitive business information, including customer and project data, internal communications, responsibilities, budgets, deadlines, documents, and strategic plans.

This makes the choice of project management software an important business decision.

In addition to functionality, usability, and cost, companies should increasingly consider:

Where the software provider is legally based
Where business data is stored
Which infrastructure and cloud providers are involved
Which subcontractors have access to the service
Whether data can be fully exported
Whether the software can be operated on a company's own infrastructure
How easily the company could switch to another system in the future

A recent comparison by t3n highlights MeisterTask, Zenkit, Tenzu, and Focalboard as alternatives to established US-based platforms. The examples demonstrate that European and open-source solutions can offer competitive approaches. They also show why terms such as "European provider," "free," and "independent of US technology" should not automatically be treated as synonyms.

Digital Sovereignty Requires a Closer Look

The legal headquarters of a software provider is only one factor in determining digital sovereignty.

Companies should examine at least four different levels when evaluating a project management platform:

Where is the provider legally based?
In which country is the data stored?
Which infrastructure and cloud providers are used?
Can the data be fully exported, and can the software be operated independently?

For example, a European software company may operate its application in a German data center while relying on the infrastructure of a US-based cloud provider.

That arrangement can be organized in a way that complies with applicable data protection requirements. However, it still represents a technical dependency.

Digital sovereignty therefore does not come solely from having servers located within the European Union.

It depends on a combination of:

Transparency
Controllable dependencies
Open interfaces
Data portability
Self-hosting options
A realistic exit strategy

For businesses handling sensitive customer, financial, or strategic information, these factors can be just as relevant as the software's feature set.

MeisterTask: Easy to Use With German Hosting

MeisterTask is offered by the German company MeisterLabs GmbH and focuses on straightforward, visual task management.

Its Kanban-oriented interface makes it particularly accessible for smaller teams because projects can be structured without extensive training.

The free plan currently includes unlimited tasks and team members, but is limited to three projects and five notes. This can be sufficient for testing the platform, managing individual customer projects, or supporting smaller teams.

More advanced features — including automation, timelines, comprehensive reporting, administration functions, and full API access — require paid plans.

According to the provider, data is stored in an ISO 27001-certified data center in Frankfurt.

MeisterTask: Pricing and Hosting

For businesses looking for an easy-to-understand alternative to Trello or Microsoft Planner while placing importance on a German provider and German server location, MeisterTask is therefore one option worth considering.

Zenkit: Comprehensive Features, but Not Fully Independent of US Infrastructure

Zenkit is developed by the German company Axonic GmbH in Karlsruhe and offers considerably more than a conventional task board.

Projects can be displayed in several formats, including:

Kanban boards
Gantt charts
Calendars
Team communication
File management
Automation

This makes Zenkit suitable for more complex projects where different planning views and multiple teams need to work together.

However, the platform is not permanently free under its current pricing structure. The smallest regular plan starts at €8 per user per month plus VAT, with a 14-day trial period available initially.

Zenkit: Current Pricing

The term "without US technology" also requires some differentiation.

Zenkit stores its data in Frankfurt and has a European contractual partner in AWS Luxembourg. However, its technical operation is based on Amazon Web Services.

Zenkit can therefore be described as a German software solution with data storage in Germany, but not as a platform that is completely independent of US infrastructure.

Zenkit: Security and Hosting Information

This distinction is important for companies that want to assess digital sovereignty beyond the physical location of their data.

Tenzu: Promising Open-Source Project With Development Risks

Tenzu is a European open-source project designed to support digital project teams with workspaces, individually configurable Kanban boards, and collaborative real-time editing.

From a digital sovereignty perspective, two aspects are particularly interesting:

The source code is openly available.
The application can be operated independently.

However, businesses should currently approach production use with caution.

The project itself states that the software is not yet production-ready and that development versions may be unstable.

Tenzu is therefore currently more suitable for:

Pilot projects
Testing
Technical evaluations
Technically experienced organizations willing to participate in development

For business-critical customer and development projects, the current level of maturity and long-term operational reliability may not yet be sufficient.

Tenzu on GitHub

This illustrates an important principle when evaluating open-source software: access to the source code does not automatically mean that a solution is ready for enterprise use.

Focalboard: Self-Hosted, but No Longer Maintained

Focalboard is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to tools such as Trello, Notion, and Asana.

The software can be operated locally or on a company's own infrastructure. This gives organizations fundamental control over their data and reduces dependence on a centralized cloud service.

The major issue, however, is ongoing product maintenance.

The standalone Focalboard project is currently no longer maintained. For business use, this creates a significant operational risk because security vulnerabilities, bugs, and technical incompatibilities may no longer be addressed.

Using Focalboard would therefore only be a reasonable option for organizations that have sufficient internal development and IT operations capabilities to manage the software themselves.

Focalboard on GitHub

The broader lesson is important:

Open source alone does not guarantee a sustainable business solution.

Companies should also evaluate:

Community activity
Release frequency
Security updates
Long-term maintenance
Documentation
Available support
Internal expertise
Operational responsibility

OpenProject as a Further European Alternative

Companies looking specifically for a German provider, open-source software, and the option of self-hosting should also consider OpenProject.

The free Community Edition can be operated on a company's own infrastructure with unlimited users and projects. It is actively developed and supports both traditional and agile project management methodologies.

The provider also offers cloud versions with data hosting within the European Union, including Germany on request.

This combination gives businesses access to a broad project management feature set while maintaining comparatively extensive control over their software and data.

OpenProject Community Edition

For organizations evaluating European project management software, OpenProject demonstrates how open-source development, self-hosting, and professional project management functionality can be combined.

Free Software Is Not Automatically the Most Economical Option

Small businesses and freelancers often begin by looking for free project management software.

For initial testing, this can make sense.

However, long-term software selection should not be based solely on licensing costs.

A free platform can become expensive if it lacks essential capabilities such as:

User permissions
Integrations
Reporting
APIs
Data exports
Administration features
Automation

Open-source software can also create costs when operated internally.

Self-hosting requires resources for:

Installation
Updates
Backups
Monitoring
Security
Infrastructure
Troubleshooting

The relevant metric is therefore the total cost of ownership (TCO) over the entire software lifecycle.

This includes not only licensing fees, but also:

Implementation
Training
Administration
Integration
Data migration
Maintenance
Potential system replacement

A low entry price does not necessarily translate into low long-term costs.

A Task Board Alone Does Not Create Effective Project Management

Project management systems primarily answer three basic questions:

What needs to be done?
Who is responsible?
When should it be completed?

Those questions are essential, but they are not enough for effective financial and operational project management.

Businesses also need to understand:

How much time was actually spent on a project?
Which activities caused that workload?
Where did planned effort differ from actual effort?
Which projects, customers, or fixed-price contracts are profitable?
Where do interruptions, rework, or avoidable activities occur?
Which processes can be standardized or automated?

A task marked "completed" only documents an outcome.

It does not show whether the task required two hours or two days.

That information can be critical for:

Project costing
Resource planning
Project billing
Post-calculation
Profitability analysis
Process optimization

This is where conventional project management software can benefit from accurate activity data.

Why Traditional Time Tracking Can Fall Short

Traditional digital time tracking often leaves gaps in the picture.

Employees may have to:

Find the time-tracking application.
Select the correct project.
Choose the relevant activity.
Start or stop a timer.
Enter missing information later.

When time is recorded retrospectively, employees may have to reconstruct their working day from memory.

This can lead to:

Missing entries
Rounded time values
Incorrect project assignments
Incomplete activity data

Acceptance can also decline when time tracking repeatedly interrupts the actual workflow.

For businesses that depend on accurate project costing and resource planning, the challenge is therefore not simply to provide a time-tracking system.

The challenge is to make accurate activity recording as effortless as possible.

TimeSpin: Adding Real Activity Data to Project Management

This is where TimeSpin provides a complementary approach to project management.

TimeSpin is a European solution for tactile time and activity tracking.

The TimeSpin Dodecahedron has twelve individually configurable sides. Each side can be assigned a sticker representing a project, customer, mandate, or specific activity.

When the user changes activities, they simply rotate the Dodecahedron to the corresponding side.

TimeSpin detects the orientation, automatically starts the appropriate time recording, and can initially store the data offline when required.

When the device reconnects, the entries are automatically synchronized with the cloud software.

Time Tracking Without Interrupting the Workflow

The tactile interface reduces the recording process to a deliberate physical movement.

Users do not have to:

Open an application
Search through menus
Enter project numbers
Reconstruct activities at the end of the day

The result is a time-tracking process that is designed to remain close to the actual moment of work.

This can support better data quality and user acceptance because activities are recorded when they happen rather than reconstructed later.

From Task Status to Actual Project Effort

Project managers normally have access to planned values and task statuses.

TimeSpin adds information about the actual activities and effort associated with those projects.

This makes it possible to compare planned and actual effort, validate fixed-price projects, document billable services more completely, and improve future project estimates.

For example, if a fixed-price project repeatedly requires substantially more effort than originally estimated, actual activity data can help identify that discrepancy.

Over time, this information can support more realistic project planning and resource allocation.

The goal is not simply to record more data.

The goal is to obtain better operational data that can be used for business decisions.

Data Protection, Hosting and Integrations

TimeSpin is operated in compliance with the GDPR, with servers located in Germany.

Through its REST API and structured export capabilities, recorded activity data can be transferred into existing:

Project management systems
ERP systems
CRM platforms
Business management software
Accounting systems

The data can also be further processed for workflows involving platforms such as DATEV or Sage.

TimeSpin: Features, Hosting and Integration

This makes TimeSpin complementary to project management software rather than a replacement for it.

The project management platform can remain responsible for planning, tasks, responsibilities, deadlines, and project progress, while TimeSpin provides a layer of real-world activity and effort data.

Conclusion: Plan With Confidence and Manage Projects Using Real Data

European project management platforms now provide serious alternatives to established US-based solutions.

However, companies evaluating these systems should look beyond the provider's country of origin and server location.

A meaningful assessment of digital sovereignty should also consider:

Technical subcontractors
Cloud infrastructure
Data portability
APIs and integrations
Self-hosting options
Maintenance and update policies
Security practices
Long-term operational reliability
Exit and migration options

At the same time, project planning alone does not provide a complete picture of project performance.

Effective project management needs to show not only which tasks were planned and completed, but also which activities actually took place and how much effort they required.

The combination of a sovereign European project management platform with the tactile activity tracking provided by TimeSpin can connect these two perspectives.

The project management system provides:

Planning
Responsibilities
Deadlines
Project status
Progress tracking

TimeSpin adds:

Actual activity data
Recorded effort
Project-related time data
A basis for comparing planned and actual workloads

Together, these data points can provide a stronger foundation for billing, project controlling, resource planning, profitability analysis, and continuous process improvement.

In other words, the objective is not simply to replace one project management platform with another.

It is to create a digital working environment in which businesses have greater control over their software, their infrastructure, their data, and — importantly — a clearer understanding of the work that actually happens inside their projects.

Daylight Saving Time Is No Longer a Time Problem — It’s a Systems Problem

Thomas Delfing — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:36:02 +0000

Daylight saving time begins earlier in some parts of the world than many people in Germany might expect. While Germany does not switch back to standard time until the end of October, other countries have already adjusted their clocks by September. Chile, for example, switched to daylight saving time in early September, while New Zealand follows later in the same month.

At first glance, this may seem like a minor detail. But for internationally operating businesses, it highlights a much broader challenge:

Time is not organized consistently around the world.

Some countries change their clocks while others do not. Some make the transition in September, others in October or November. In the Southern Hemisphere, daylight saving time begins just as Europe is moving toward standard time. There can also be regional exceptions within individual countries.

For people, this can quickly become confusing.

For modern business software, however, it should no longer be a problem.

International Collaboration Makes Time More Complex

Businesses increasingly operate across national borders. Development teams may be located in Europe and Asia, customers in the United States, and service providers in Australia. Meetings are scheduled digitally, projects are managed across time zones, and services are delivered regardless of geographical location.

As a result, time has become part of a company's infrastructure.

A meeting scheduled for 10:00 AM is not necessarily the same time for everyone involved. The situation becomes even more complicated during the weeks when some countries have already switched to daylight saving or standard time while others have not.

These transition periods demonstrate why businesses should no longer treat time simply as a fixed clock value.

Professional software therefore does not rely on a fixed offset such as UTC+1 or UTC+2. Instead, it accounts for time zones, local rules, and the applicable daylight saving time regulations.

That may sound technical. In day-to-day operations, however, users should ideally notice as little of it as possible.

Good Digitalization Means Hiding Complexity

One of the fundamental principles of modern business software is simple:

Complexity belongs inside the system — not with the user.

Nobody wants to think about whether a server has already switched to standard time, whether a colleague is working in another time zone, or whether a particular hour occurs twice during a clock change.

This is where the difference between a digital application and a truly digitalized process becomes apparent.

A digital timesheet is, at its core, still a timesheet displayed on a screen. A modern time tracking system, on the other hand, can handle numerous tasks automatically. Timestamps are processed correctly, data is synchronized, and differences between devices and time zones are taken into account.

Technology therefore solves a problem that previously had to be handled by people.

Time Tracking Should Work in the Background

This is particularly important when it comes to time tracking.

Employees who record their working hours or activities want to focus on their work — not on the technical administration of time.

After a daylight saving time change, an employee should not have to wonder whether the application has been adjusted correctly. They should not have to correct timestamps manually or change additional settings.

The time change should simply work.

That is exactly the principle behind modern solutions such as TimeSpin.

TimeSpin automatically accounts for time changes. The user's workflow remains unchanged. Activities continue to be recorded, timestamps are processed correctly, and the resulting data can be used for reporting, projects, analysis, or billing.

The time change therefore exists technically — but remains practically invisible to the user.

What Matters Is Not the Time — It's the Activity

The concept becomes even more interesting when we take a step back and reconsider what time tracking is actually supposed to achieve.

In many businesses, time is still primarily documented retrospectively. Employees enter their hours, allocate them to projects, and try to reconstruct at the end of the day or week how they actually spent their time.

But for effective business management, it is not only important to know when someone worked.

The more important question is often:

What was the work?

Which activities consumed the most time?

Which projects require more resources than originally planned?

Where are unexpected costs and workloads emerging?

Which activities make a measurable contribution to business results, and which ones continuously consume valuable capacity?

From this perspective, time tracking becomes a management and business intelligence tool.

TimeSpin therefore follows an activity-oriented approach. Time can be recorded as part of the work itself, allowing users to assign their time to an activity or project without constantly dealing with traditional time-tracking forms.

The focus shifts away from the clock.

Less Administration, Better Data

This is where the real value of modern time tracking software lies for businesses.

When systems handle technical processes automatically while making time recording easier for employees, the resulting data is more likely to reflect what actually happened.

For management, this is far more valuable than simply knowing that clocks change twice a year.

Reliable time data can support:

Planned-versus-actual project comparisons
Analysis of activity structures
More accurate resource planning
Budget and fixed-price project monitoring
Early identification of unexpected workloads
Better assessment of project profitability and efficiency

This changes the role of time tracking.

It is no longer exclusively a tool for recording working hours or supporting billing processes. Instead, it becomes a data foundation for business management.

The Best Time Change Is the One Nobody Notices

The debate surrounding daylight saving time and standard time will likely continue for years to come.

For modern businesses, however, the technical challenge should already be solved.

Software needs to understand which time zone applies. Systems need to account for time changes automatically. Business data needs to remain accurate regardless of whether clocks move forward or backward.

The user should notice as little as possible.

That is an often-overlooked quality of good business software: it handles complex processes reliably in the background, allowing people to focus on their actual work.

For modern time tracking solutions such as TimeSpin, daylight saving time should therefore no longer be an event that disrupts the workflow.

The clock changes. The work simply continues.

About TimeSpin

TimeSpin is a modern time tracking solution designed to make activity and project tracking easier for businesses while reducing administrative effort.

For companies looking to improve digital business processes, genese provides expertise and solutions for modern digitalization.

Explore how technology can simplify complex business processes and help organizations build more efficient digital workflows with GWeb.

Why We Need to Read More, Not Less, in the Age of AI

Thomas Delfing — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 03:53:11 +0000

AI can summarize a 20-page report in seconds. So why should we still spend time reading it ourselves?

Because in the age of artificial intelligence, deep reading may be becoming more valuable—not less.

AI has dramatically changed the way we access information.

It can summarize articles, analyze research papers, extract key findings, organize information, compare sources, and explain complicated subjects within seconds.

What once required 30 minutes of reading might now be reduced to a five-minute summary.

That is an extraordinary productivity advantage.

But there is a potential downside.

When AI performs more of the intellectual work for us, we need to be more deliberate about exercising the cognitive abilities that still belong to us.

And one of the simplest ways to do that is to read deeply.

What Is Deep Reading?

Deep reading is more than simply looking at words on a screen.

It means giving a text enough time and attention to:

understand complex ideas
follow an argument from beginning to end
connect information across multiple paragraphs
recognize contradictions
question assumptions
relate new information to existing knowledge
remember and apply what you have learned

That is very different from scrolling through social media, scanning headlines, or reading an AI-generated summary.

Deep reading requires sustained attention.

And sustained attention is increasingly valuable in a world where information is constantly competing for our attention.

Reading Is a Complex Cognitive Activity

Reading feels effortless when we are experienced readers.

But the brain is doing far more work than we usually realize.

There is no single "reading center" in the brain. Reading requires several systems to work together, including:

visual processing
attention
language processing
memory
meaning construction
existing knowledge

When we read a complex text, these processes have to work together continuously.

We need to recognize words, understand sentences, retain information, connect ideas, and build an overall understanding of what the author is trying to communicate.

This is why reading is not simply information consumption. It is a cognitive activity.

Your Brain Needs More Than Information

The phrase "brain training" can sometimes be misleading. The brain is not simply a muscle that becomes stronger every time we use it.

The reality is more complicated.

But one principle is important:

Cognitive abilities need to be used if we want to maintain and develop them.

Consider what happens when you read a long, complicated article.

You may need to remember an argument from three pages earlier.

You may need to compare two different ideas.

You may need to identify a contradiction.

You may need to connect something you have just learned with knowledge you already have.

All of this requires active mental processing.

Compare that with rapidly scrolling through dozens of short pieces of content.

The difference is obvious.

Scrolling moves your attention from one fragment to another. Deep reading asks you to stay with one idea.

The Attention Problem in the Digital Age

This distinction becomes particularly important in digital environments.

Our devices make it incredibly easy to interrupt ourselves.

A notification appears.

A new email arrives.

Another article catches our attention.

We open another tab.

Then another.

Before long, we have consumed dozens of pieces of information without spending significant time thinking deeply about any of them.

Research into digital reading has found that distractions can negatively affect text comprehension. The article's source material cites a meta-analysis of 32 studies that found a negative effect of attentional disruptions on reading comprehension in digital environments.

The problem is therefore not simply how much information we consume.

It is how much attention we give to each piece of information.

How AI Is Changing the Way We Read

Artificial intelligence introduces another major change.

Imagine receiving a 20-page business report.

Traditionally, you would read it.

Today, you can upload it to an AI system and ask:

"What are the five most important points?"

You can do the same with a scientific paper.

Instead of reading the methodology, results, and conclusions yourself, AI can extract them for you.

You can also provide multiple sources and ask AI to compare them.

From a productivity perspective, this is incredibly useful.

It can save time.

It can reduce information overload.

It can help you identify which documents deserve closer attention.

But there is an important distinction.

AI Assistance vs. Cognitive Delegation

Using AI to support your thinking is not the same as allowing AI to do all of your thinking.

The problem begins when assistance becomes permanent delegation.

If we always read the summary instead of the original, we receive the conclusion without necessarily experiencing the reasoning that led to it.

We get the result.

We lose some of the process.

That matters because the process itself can be part of learning.

As the source article notes, current research is examining how AI can support learning while also potentially bypassing parts of the learning process, depending on how the technology is used.

The important question is therefore not:

"Should we use AI?"

It is:

"When should we use AI—and when should we think for ourselves?"

AI Should Make Thinking Faster, Not Make Thinking Unnecessary

The answer is not to stop using artificial intelligence.

AI is an extraordinarily useful tool.

It can help us:

find relevant information
summarize large documents
identify patterns
compare sources
explain unfamiliar concepts
filter large amounts of material
accelerate research

The key is to understand when efficiency is the goal and when learning is the goal.

If you simply need to know when an event happened, there is little value in spending 30 minutes researching it.

But if you are trying to understand a new field, develop expertise, improve your judgment, or make an important professional decision, the situation changes.

In those situations, slowing down can actually be productive.

Sometimes You Should Not Summarize the Article

There is a temptation to use AI immediately.

Paste the article.

Generate the summary.

Extract the key points.

Move on.

But sometimes the struggle is the point.

Reading a paragraph twice because you did not understand it the first time is not necessarily wasted time.

Spending several minutes trying to understand a difficult argument is not necessarily inefficient.

Comparing two competing ideas in your own mind is not a failure of productivity.

That mental effort is part of learning.

For professionals, this matters even more.

People who make decisions, develop software, run businesses, conduct research, or provide consulting services cannot always rely on information retrieval alone.

They need judgment.

They need to determine whether an argument makes sense.

They need to recognize weak assumptions.

They need to understand context.

And they need to decide whether a conclusion is actually justified.

AI may make information cheaper, but it can make human judgment more valuable.

Deep Reading Could Become a Critical Skill

Perhaps we should start thinking about reading differently.

Not simply as entertainment.

Not merely as a way of collecting information.

But as training for focused thinking.

This does not mean reading every document from beginning to end.

That would be unrealistic, especially in professional environments.

AI can—and should—help us filter information.

The important part is what happens afterward.

Once AI identifies the information that matters, we should deliberately decide what deserves our full attention.

That might mean:

📖 Reading a professional book

Instead of relying on summaries, spend time with the original ideas.

🔬 Reading a study

Do not judge a research paper only by its abstract. Understand how the conclusion was reached.

📚 Working through a long analysis

Follow an argument across multiple pages rather than consuming isolated conclusions.

🧠 Spending uninterrupted time on one subject

Give yourself 30 or 60 minutes without constantly switching between sources.

These activities require something increasingly scarce:

attention.

The Most Valuable Resource Is No Longer Information

For much of modern history, accessing information was the difficult part.

Today, the situation is almost the opposite.

We have access to more information than we could ever consume.

AI makes that abundance even greater.

Information can now be summarized, translated, categorized, compared, and generated almost instantly.

But there is one resource that remains limited:

Attention.

This changes the way we should think about productivity.

Instead of asking only:

"How much did I accomplish today?"

we should sometimes ask:

"What did I actually give my attention to?"

That is a very different question.

Time Management Is Also Attention Management

This is where time management and cognitive performance become connected.

We often measure our days by hours worked.

Eight hours of work.

Two hours of meetings.

One hour of email.

Thirty minutes of administrative tasks.

But there is another measurement that can be useful:

How much time did we deliberately spend thinking?

If deep reading is important but never appears on the calendar, urgent tasks will usually take its place.

That is why making intellectual activities visible can be useful.

TimeSpin: Making Deep Work and Reading Visible

With TimeSpin, activities can be tracked and categorized so that you can see where your time is actually going.

This does not have to be limited to traditional work activities.

You can track meetings, project work, administration, research, learning, or reading.

For example, the source article describes activities such as "Genese ORGA" and "Gweb meeting", alongside a dedicated activity called "Professional Book." In the example, 1 hour and 24 minutes of time had been recorded for professional reading during the month.

That number may seem insignificant.

But it answers an important question:

Did I actually make time for reading this month?

The same principle can apply to work connected with Genese, research, professional development, or learning.

You can also consider how satisfying those activities felt.

TimeSpin does not measure whether you truly understood a book or how intensely your brain was working.

What it can do is make something visible that is otherwise easy to overlook:

Did you make time for the activities that matter to your long-term development?

What You Don't Schedule Often Gets Displaced

This is one of the biggest problems with modern knowledge work.

Urgent tasks are visible.

Deep thinking often is not.

Emails arrive.

Meetings appear.

Messages need responses.

Projects have deadlines.

Administrative tasks accumulate.

Reading can always happen "later."

And later often never comes.

That is why it can be useful to treat activities such as:

Deep Reading
Professional Reading
Research
Learning
Training
Writing
Strategic Thinking

as real activities rather than leftover time.

If something matters but is never scheduled, it will often lose to whatever feels urgent.

A Better Reading Strategy for the AI Era

The goal should not be to reject AI.

It should be to use AI more deliberately.

A simple approach could look like this:

1. Use AI to filter

When you have hundreds of documents, use AI to identify which ones are relevant.

2. Use AI to orient yourself

Ask for definitions, context, terminology, or an overview when you are entering an unfamiliar subject.

3. Choose what deserves deep attention

Not everything needs to be read in full.

Select the material where understanding matters.

4. Read the important material yourself

Do not automatically replace the original with a summary.

5. Think before asking AI for the answer

Try to form your own interpretation first.

6. Use AI to challenge your understanding

Once you have read the material, ask AI to identify alternative interpretations, counterarguments, or potential gaps.

This turns AI into a thinking partner rather than a substitute for thinking.

The Future of Productivity May Be About What We Don't Automate

AI will continue to automate more intellectual tasks.

That is likely to be one of its greatest benefits.

But automation creates an interesting paradox.

The more cognitive work machines perform, the more carefully we may need to choose which cognitive activities humans should continue practicing.

We do not need to manually perform every task simply because we can.

But we also should not automatically outsource every task simply because AI can do it faster.

The difference is important.

Efficiency is not always the same as learning.

And speed is not always the same as understanding.

Read Faster When You Need Information. Read Deeper When You Need Understanding.

This may ultimately be the simplest principle for reading in the age of AI:

Let AI summarize when speed matters. Read for yourself when understanding matters.

Use AI to reduce information overload.

Use it to discover relevant material.

Use it to organize complex information.

But when something genuinely matters, give yourself the time to understand it.

Read the book.

Read the research paper.

Read the long-form analysis.

Follow the argument.

Question the assumptions.

Think about what you have read.

And give your attention enough time to do its work.

The Question We Should Ask at the End of the Week

At the end of a busy week, most of us can answer:

How many hours did I work?

We may even know how many meetings we attended or how much time we spent on specific projects.

But there is another question worth asking:

How many hours did I give my brain to read deeply, think carefully, and understand something new?

That time may not appear urgent.

It may not produce an immediate notification.

It may not create an obvious productivity metric.

But in a world where AI can increasingly provide answers in seconds, the ability to understand, evaluate, and think independently may become more important—not less.

The future of productivity may therefore not be about consuming information faster.

It may be about becoming better at deciding what deserves our attention in the first place.

And sometimes, the best way to do that is surprisingly simple:

Close the summary.

Open the book.

And read.

Why IT Specialists Have a Strong Future — If They Can Do More Than Just Write Code

Thomas Delfing — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:54:58 +0000

Artificial intelligence is transforming software development. But rather than making IT specialists obsolete, AI is changing what it means to be a successful developer.

Artificial intelligence is changing software development at a rapid pace. At the same time, the IT job market has become more challenging for people entering the profession. Companies are hiring more selectively and paying closer attention to the practical skills candidates can actually bring to the table.

That does not mean that IT specialists or computer scientists no longer have a future. Quite the opposite.

Companies still need people who can develop, understand, secure, and adapt digital systems to real-world requirements. However, the role itself is changing.

Those who want to succeed in the future will need to do more than simply generate code.

Good Software Starts With Understanding the Problem

In professional software development, the starting point is rarely a perfectly defined technical specification.

Users might report that a workflow takes too long, information is difficult to find, or the same data has to be entered multiple times. But they cannot always explain exactly what technical solution is needed.

That is why a developer's job is not simply to turn instructions into source code. The first step is understanding the actual problem that needs to be solved.

This means getting to know how users work, questioning existing processes, and recognizing relationships between different parts of a system.

A seemingly small technical change can affect other features, databases, interfaces, security mechanisms, or even entire business processes.

IT specialists therefore need to learn to think beyond the individual programming task. They need to understand the broader environment in which they work and recognize how a technical decision can affect other areas of a system.

“Software development is not about writing as much code as quickly as possible. It is about fully understanding a task and developing a sustainable solution from that understanding.”

— Oliver Otto, Managing Director of Genese.de

AI makes this ability even more important.

An AI system can generate code within seconds. But it does not automatically know whether that code fits the company's processes, existing systems, architecture, or the actual requirements of its users.

Communication Is Part of the Profession

Anyone who develops software for other people needs to be able to communicate with those people.

According to Oliver Otto, communication should therefore be an integral part of training for IT specialists and computer science education.

“Developers need to learn how to listen to users, ask the right questions, and explain technical relationships in a way that is easy to understand. Only then can they develop solutions that genuinely help people in their everyday work.”

— Oliver Otto, Managing Director of Genese.de

Users and developers often speak different languages.

Users think in terms of tasks, deadlines, documents, customers, and workflows. Developers tend to think in terms of data structures, functions, interfaces, and technical components.

Professional software development has to connect these two worlds.

A good IT specialist therefore needs more than programming skills. They need to be able to conduct conversations, structure requirements, and determine whether a requested feature is actually the best solution.

Sometimes communication reveals that the real problem lies somewhere completely different.

Communication is therefore not simply an additional skill for developers who enjoy working with people. It is a core professional competency.

Modern Software Is Built by Teams

Collaboration with other developers is becoming increasingly important as well.

Modern applications consist of numerous interconnected components. User interfaces, databases, web applications, mobile apps, APIs, cloud services, and security mechanisms all have to work together.

Very few developers can completely understand a complex software system on their own.

“We work in an interconnected development environment. Developers therefore need to share knowledge, discuss technical decisions together, and document their work so that others can build on it.”

— Oliver Otto, Managing Director of Genese.de

This also means being able to read and understand code written by someone else.

Developers need to accept criticism, explain their own decisions, and work with colleagues to find better solutions.

The rise of AI makes this collaboration even more important.

AI-generated code needs to be reviewed, tested, and integrated into the existing architecture. An answer generated by AI can appear technically plausible while still being incomplete, insecure, or unsuitable for a particular system.

The responsibility ultimately remains with the developers.

Personal Skills Will Shape the Future

A degree or completed vocational training remains important. However, qualifications alone do not guarantee a successful career.

Personal abilities are becoming increasingly important.

Young people who enjoy solving puzzles, think logically, and do not give up when a task becomes complicated have a strong foundation for a career in software development.

Curiosity matters too.

Successful developers want to understand how things are connected and enjoy systematically searching for errors and finding solutions.

The willingness to keep learning is equally important.

Programming languages, development environments, and technical tools continue to evolve. The ability to analyze problems and solve them systematically, however, remains valuable in the long term.

Responsibility is another critical skill.

Software now influences central business processes. Errors can disrupt workflows, compromise data, or lead to incorrect decisions.

Developers therefore need to understand that their work has real-world consequences.

IT specialists and computer scientists continue to have promising career opportunities. But that future increasingly depends on their willingness to develop their skills.

People who simply wait to receive clearly defined programming tasks may find the profession more challenging.

Those who identify problems, take responsibility, communicate with others, and evaluate technical solutions within their broader context will continue to be needed in an AI-driven working environment.

Training at Genese.de: Learning Through Real-World Projects

For more than 25 years, Genese.de has been developing software solutions for managing patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property rights.

Its applications are used by patent law firms as well as patent departments within companies.

Trainees at Genese.de therefore learn much more than individual programming techniques.

They gradually work on real software solutions and learn how complex professional requirements can be transformed into reliable applications.

The training goes far beyond writing code.

Trainees work with existing software systems, databases, user interfaces, and APIs. They learn how to understand requirements, analyze errors, and make technical decisions that can be clearly explained and justified.

Each trainee is supported by a personal mentor who helps with technical questions, explains complex relationships, and supports the transition from basic knowledge to professional skills.

The goal is not to give trainees ready-made solutions as quickly as possible.

Instead, they are encouraged to think independently, ask questions, and develop their own approaches to solving problems.

Those are precisely the skills that will become increasingly important in the future.

AI Is a Tool — Not a Replacement for Understanding

Artificial intelligence will become a standard part of software development.

It can help developers write code, create documentation, suggest test cases, and identify potential sources of errors.

But a tool is only as effective as the person using it.

Anyone who does not understand the fundamentals cannot reliably evaluate AI-generated results either.

Developers need to determine whether a proposed solution is secure, maintainable, and technically correct. They need to know which questions to ask and which AI-generated results require particularly careful review.

Trainees should therefore learn how to use AI effectively without handing over their own thinking to it.

The future does not belong exclusively to people who work without AI.

But it does not belong to people who blindly accept every answer generated by AI either.

The developers who will remain valuable are those who use modern tools while retaining professional and technical control over the results.

A Career for People Who Enjoy Solving Problems

Training as an IT specialist remains a strong career path for young people who have a technical mindset, enjoy logical thinking, and like solving problems.

It is particularly suited to people who want to understand how software works and who want to build applications themselves rather than simply use finished products.

A willingness to collaborate with colleagues and users is equally important.

Programming is not going away.

But it will continue to change.

Some routine programming tasks will increasingly be automated. At the same time, analysis, architecture, communication, quality assurance, and the ability to understand complex relationships will become more important.

This does not make the profession less interesting.

It makes it more diverse.

Training With a Future in Mind

Genese.de gives young people the opportunity to develop their technical skills in a professional environment.

Existing programming experience or school grades are not the only factors that matter.

Curiosity, reliability, logical thinking, and the willingness to engage deeply with a problem are equally important.

Applicants should enjoy asking questions, discovering new connections, and developing solutions together with others.

For those who bring these qualities, software development will continue to offer strong professional opportunities.

Companies will continue to need IT specialists and computer scientists.

But they will need more than people who can write code.

They will need people who understand problems, take responsibility, communicate effectively, and turn technological possibilities into solutions for the real world.