After a decade spent practically living in the office, I am trying a new regime. I do my work during working hours — I get in at 9 and leave at 5.30. I’m getting more done than when I spent 11 hours inefficiently in the office. But my workmates don’t like it, and keep making sarcastic comments about my slacking and working to rule. Is it possible to keep a reputation for hard work and commitment when you leave work punctually every day? Publisher, female, 38

I am not at all surprised to hear that you can dispatch all your work between 9 and 5.30. There is hardly an office job in the country that can’t in theory be done within a normal working week.

Yet one of the snags with office work is that what you do is not just invisible, it is subjective. That is why people do not measure what comes out (ie work) but what goes in (ie hours) instead.