Aug

12

2011

Master of Efficiency

The other day I took a little break from work to check on the Twitter. Cordelia Calls It Quits linked to an interesting-sounding post from Zen Habits, so I clicked the link.

The post was indeed interesting. It suggested doing something only once and doing it immediately when it first grabs your attention. This resonated with me like you wouldn’t believe. I definitely have issues with this. I’ll open an email and not feel like dealing with it right then, so I’ll just close it and move on. But eventually I have to deal with it and I have to read it again to do so. Waste of time.

Or the time I did hours of internet research on places to go in Belgium in my initial excitement of deciding to go there for our 10th anniversary. I told myself I was just brainstorming. I didn’t bookmark stuff or make any real notes. Then a week before our departure, I had to scramble to do all that research again. So dumb.

About halfway through reading the Zen Habits post, I started feeling guilty about checking Twitter when I should be working. Without irony, I made a mental note to finish reading that post later…you know, the post about dealing with things only once.

It would be funny if it weren’t so pitiful.

How about you? Do you put things off that you could do right then or do you take care of them right away as they come up? How do you balance your own to do list with the things other people bring to you throughout the day?

Jul

15

2011

I Got No Patience and I Hate Waiting

Yesterday, when my dog wouldn’t come downstairs right away after I called him for his evening walk (what the hell, Chuck?), I realized the world is conspiring to make me ADD. My time management skills need work, and it is pretty easy for me to get sidetracked, I’ll admit it. But my distractibility is not all my fault. And I swear I wasn’t always like this.

I hate waiting. If I have access to anything even remotely interesting (let’s say for the sake of argument, the internet) while I wait, then I go off task.

While I waited for Chuck to get his fluffy ass downstairs yesterday, I got the idea for this post. I found some paper and a pen and started to jot down my thoughts before I forgot them. In the middle of this, Prince Charles Fluffbatten-Windsor finally decided it was time to walk. I made him wait. Apparently he doesn’t like to wait either, so he left the room. Vicious cycle perpetuated.

The ungodly slowness of my work PC has filled my soul with rage. It hates waking up in the morning even more than me. Each morning when I log on, it’s all “WHOA! You again? Back so soon? Hold up, you’re interrupting my REM sleep. I’m dreaming about crashing Outlook when you try to send an email it took you half an hour to craft.”

I hate wasting time, so waiting for my computer to respond to my commands for more than 30 seconds makes me mental. I’ve started angrily muttering to myself like a crazy person. This is charming, No really, take your time, I really don’t have time for this shit, I’d like to take you outside and beat you with a baseball bat, oh hi, Boss!

I start a task, my computer inevitably hangs, tempting me to do something else while I wait. Next thing I know, it’s an hour and a half later and my chai is cold, I have 12 browser tabs open, my iPad on my lap, and a finally-opened window on my PC I can’t remember the purpose of opening.

I wonder how much efficiency is lost due to whatever in the hell gremlin causes technology to screw with us. I guess I could make more effort to stay focused on the task at hand, but I just don’t believe anyone should have to focus on waiting. Plus, they pay me too much to stare at the hourglass on my PC and seeth.

My home computer is starting to behave like this too (Macs, they just work!), only instead of an hourglass I get the spinning beach ball of death. I worked from home today and the beach ball spun in Firefox for 30 minutes when I tried to check my work email.

Maybe my computers are trying to tell me something about work?