Tag Archives: productivity

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Responsibility. As a grown ass adult, you have certain responsibilities. One of those is to be where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there. That goes double if you’re going to try passing yourself off as a professional. Yep, sometimes that means you’re going to have to play hurt, or when you have other things on your mind. It’s the way of the world, so suck it up, Rolling Stone Bomberbuttercup. When you’re the only one impacted by your piss poor decision making skills, I say do what you want and God bless… but when your decision make someone else deal with the consequences, you’re pretty much just as asshat.

2. Rolling Stone. From the perspective of having any tact or class as an organization, Rolling Stone has basically let the world know for sure that they have none. Look, if they want to run a magazine with the Boston bomber on the cover, they’re perfectly within their rights. All I’d ask is that don’t hide behind the cover of being responsible journalists tackling a hard story head on. If they came out and admitted they put that douchenozzle on the cover because they thought they were going to sell a gagillion copies of it, I’d say thanks for the truth and God bless. They’d be right and it would collectively be our fault because we Americans will buy up those magazines by the bushel basket. The only reason that smug bastard is looking out at us from the newsstand is because we’ll eat it up and pay for the privilege. Rolling Stone knows that… and we live through another example of the citizens of this fine country not having the common sense God gave a goose.

3. Standing by to stand by. I think by now we all know how I feel about meetings in general. In a decade’s worth of work, I’ve attended less than a handful that left me feeling like they were time well spent. That’s situation normal in the bureaucracy. What really grinds my gears, though is the mentality that the average drone has nothing better to do than sit around and wait for the next meeting to start. Don’t schedule something at 11:00, then slip it to 11:30, then pass the word to wait and see, and to be prepared to stand by to stand by until further notice. In a world of 32 hour work weeks and 80% pay, the least we can expect is that the limited time we do have on the clock is respected and used productively. Or maybe that’s a bridge too far.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Paid subscription to online “newspapers”. Um. No. I’m not paying for content that’s free elsewhere. If I were to pay for access, I would expect the content to be advertisement free, but since you’re not going to do that, I’ll keep my cash right where it is. I don’t mind paying for pay-wallservices and I don’t mind targeted advertising, but I’m not generally going to be willing to pay for the privilege. There’s nothing in the Cumberland Times-News, Baltimore Sun, or Washington Post that I really need to read, so instead of paying them for the service, I end up using news aggregator sites, blogs, and alternative media, which further reduces ad revenue for the newspapers, which further harms their business model. It’s some death spiral they’ve tucked themselves into.

2. Small talk. Not surprising for a guy who writes as a hobby/inspirational career, I don’t consider myself much of a talker. Most things I have to say tend to come across better in writing anyway, although that’s not really the point. Maybe it’s a social failing on my part, but I don’t like small talk. I don’t want to engage in it. If I’m not showing the least interest in your monolog about the week you’ve had, please take the hint that I legitimately don’t have any interest in the conversation. That should be your cue to back away slowly and let me get back to doing something that’s nominally productive. I’m happy to talk when something needs to be said, but idle chatter just for the purpose of having something to say isn’t my style. It’s never going to be my style. And if you force it on me repeatedly, I’ll consider you an irredeemable asshat and proceed to ignore you as much as possible, while seething silently inside because it’s considered bad form to punch you in the throat.

3. The New Friday. It’s finally New Friday here, which roughly translated means on this first week of furlough, it’s officially furlough eve. While I usually await time off with great anticipation, I’ve been sitting here ticking off the list of things I wouldn’t mind getting done around here. That’s good. I like having lists and like checking things off of them even more. Then, of course, the practical implication of why I have this abundant free time occurred to me and made most of the checklist a moot point. Since getting productive things done generally seems to cost money, well, let’s just say I’m sitting here looking at the first of what will probably be eleven remarkably unproductive weekends. Maybe it’s time to sit down and start the editorial and design work on the 2013 edition of the What Annoys Jeff this Week eBook. At least that’s more or less free entertainment.

All go, all day…

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The problem with running all day like a house on fire is that you reach a point round about 5PM when all you want to do is sit down and sleep. That’s all well and good, but there’s also that little obnoxious voice in your head reminding you that there are still things that need done… like writing a witty and entertaining blog post on Saturday night. Yeah, I’m honestly not sure this post is going to be either witty or entertaining. I’m not really complaining. I really did get alot done today and since this has been my first weekend home in the last three, I feel good about that. Still, I’d rather not have looked up and realized it was going on 8PM. Maybe I should have cut off the productivity a little earlier. Of course then I’d be sitting here obsessing about the list of things that didn’t get done today. It’s a classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Just one of life’s little hardships.

I’m not going to lie, I’m looking forward to a much abbreviated to do list for tomorrow. Beyond blogging and taking on a few other odds and ends, my only hope is that it’s a good day to get a little more writing done. Sitting down with a good book for an hour or two would just put the day over the top. I’m trying to manage my expectations.

That old, unpleasant “off” feeling…

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I’m a guy. I don’t do “sick” well. It’s just one of the charming aspects of the gender that I know all the women-folk out there enjoy. In keeping with that theme, one of the things we guys like to do is complain loudly and at length about how bad we feel. Since this is my megaphone of choice, that means you all are along for the ride.

Let me say for the record that I don’t feel awful, just not as good as I think I should. Not achy and full of snot. Not shivering and covered in blankets. Not sneezing and yacking up lunch. It’s just a more generalized “blah” kind of feeling that lets you know something in your system is minimally off. Since there’s no real symptoms besides this generalized blah, there’s really nothing to be done other than load up on fluids and vitamin c, try getting to bed early, and hope to wake up feeling ok in the morning. Even if I wake up feeling less than ok, this isn’t a good week for it. Tempting as it might be to spend the whole day on the couch watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (my go-to sick on the couch activity of choice), I’ve done a far too successful job of hoarding information this week and have, unfortunately, made showing up at work tomorrow not an optional activity. That one part of my conscience that isn’t dead or numbed out by life won’t let me throw someone under the bus if I can avoid it.

Since tomorrow is a work day whether good or ill, I’m going to go heavy on the hope that this is a passing funk that will clear the system overnight so I have some kind of chance of being at least a marginally productive employee. In case you’re wondering, that’s about as selfless a statement as you’re every going to drag out of me, so go ahead and enjoy it.

Water under the bridge…

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Apparently I missed summer this year. I know I stayed busy and got plenty of things done, but I can’t quite put my finger on where the last four months went. The last thing I remember clearly is having birthday dinner and then suddenly waking up in September. And somehow I managed to let the time sail by without making it to the beach yet this year… which is made all the more ridiculous because it’s only an hour from the house. Sadly, that makes getting my toes in the sand just another victim of the list of things I had good intentions of getting done this summer but just didn’t get around to actually doing.

I like to think I spent the summer being highly productive, but it’s a bit of a stretch since I can’t point at anything concrete and say “Look what I did” while the warm weather got away from me. Maybe I should go ahead and start taking weekly pictures of cleaned rooms and a well turned out lawn. At least then I wouldn’t be so surprised when ninety or a hundred days blow by without even the common courtesy of a heads up.

As I’m sitting here writing this on Friday afternoon, I know it’s going to be Monday before I know it. I’ll do my best to cram as much into these two days as possible, but if someone has any tips on how to slow this ride down before it’s all water under the bridge, you’ve got my undivided attention.

The best thing…

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The best thing about running your own blog is that when you don’t want to write, no one is standing over your shoulder forcing you to do it. Sure, there’s that nagging voice in the back of your head telling you what you “should” do, but listening to him is pretty much an optional exercise.

Since I’m basically vamping this whole post and have no idea why or what it’s going to be about, how long it will last, or what I really want to say, here are some fun facts for you to consider. Since September 2011, I’ve written and published somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 words for books that I’m secretly selling on Amazon under an assumed name (and that are doing respectably well since they’ve had basically no marketing at all, thank you very much). In the same 8 months, I’d estimate I’ve written another 40,000 words here for your reading pleasure. That 40,000 number assumes I post 20 times a month and each post is 250 words, so it’s a lowball to be sure. Add in the few other odds and ends I’ve written for other blogs, and the endless stream of memos that come off my desk at work, and I’d I’m somewhere well north of 300,000 written words in the last eight months.

You’re just going to have to take my word for it that 300,000 is a metric shit ton of words, ok? But you know what? For the last month I feel lucky when I can string a sentence or two together without drooling all over the front of my shirt. I love writing and the sheer power of the written word, but I feel like I’ve poured alot out of my brain and need to take some time and let the well refill. I don’t know if it’s possible to run out of words, but it feels like it is right now. So yeah, I’m officially in recovery mode from a great spurt of fantastically productive creativity. I like to imagine that I’m going to take a month and not do any more writing than is required to keep a fresh face on the blog, but really that’ll probably last all of three days before I have some other slightly warped idea that I can throw at unsuspecting consumers thanks to the wonder of electronic publishing.

Useless…

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There may be nothing in this great land of ours more useless than an government office on the Friday before a federal holiday. If you’ve ever worked in one, you know that’s not an exaggeration. Between people taking leave and the magic that is the Alternate Work Schedule program, no more than half the staff shows up to begin with. Around noon another 10-20% disappear to start their weekend. If anything was getting done to begin with, you can forget it after 2:00. The handful of people manning their desks are just a skeleton crew, left behind to give the illusion of productivity and even at that they’re not working very hard. Every eye falls on the minute hand as it sweeps its way around the clock to the earliest possible moment for departure.

I’ve always worked with a lot of people who take these days off since “nothing’s going to happen anyway.” I’m a bit of a contrarian about time off, though. Why burn up eight perfectly good hours of leave on a day when no real work is going to happen even if you do spend the whole day at your desk? I’d much rather save my time off for days when all hell is breaking loose. It’s a matter of extracting maximum value from every hour away from the office. Time off isn’t much good when I’m relaxed already. Feel me?

If Uncle wanted to save some scratch, he’d go ahead and shutter every office on the Friday before a holiday weekend. Whatever small amount of productivity happens is almost purely accidental and can’t come close to offsetting the cost of just turning the lights on.

Stupid lists…

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I start nearly every day of my life with a list. Sometimes it’s a real list written on paper or filed away in a “to do” app. Other times it’s a simple mental check list of things I want to get done before the lights go out sometime between 10-11:30 that night. The only thing all of these lists have in common is that I haven’t managed to work my way all the way to the last item on any of them since before I can remember. Some days these damned lists are longer at the end of the day than they were at the beginning. That feels wrong on so many levels. At the rate I’m tacking things to do onto the bottom of my most current list, I should be catching up sometime around summer 2015.

Now let’s face it, I’m a pretty productive guy. In fact, I take great and perverse pride in my ability to get things done. Even so, I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a better way. Maybe it really is time to outsource some of the domestic responsibilities around here so I’ve got a snowball’s chance of getting caught up any time in the near future.

The eternal meeting…

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We have the same meeting every two weeks. I don’t mean just a regularly occurring staff meeting or anything, but rather a meeting where we all get together and discuss the exact same issue, come to the exact same conclusions, and then part company knowing full well that we’re going to do it again in 14 days just like clockwork. Nobody, myself included, has the intestinal fortitude to recommend that we stop having this meeting so it seems possible that it will continue on indefinitely into the future, just as it has been held for as long as any of the current participants can remember.

As far as I can tell, meetings are the great enemy of government work – probably work in any large organization. I’m not saying if we cancelled this meeting that my productivity would suddenly jump by 200%, but it would free up an hour or two every week to do something, anything that might be even marginally productive. After all, when what you’re currently doing is complete dead time, even a fractional improvement in how you spend your day is a huge improvement in productivity. That’s not even counting the morale bump that would come from permanently cancelling time sucks like this one. Of course the likelihood of any of that coming to pass is somewhere between slim and none, so if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to go to.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

The first twelve minutes…

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It’s Monday. I’ve been at my desk for about 12 minutes this morning. And someone just wandered by to ask if I had read the 15 separate issue papers that arrived over the weekend. Of course I’ve read them. Somewhere between finding the coffee pot, hanging up my coat, and waiting seven minutes for my computer to boot up. I know that some people spend the weekend thinking about these things and rush breathlessly into the office on Monday to get in there and “make a difference.” I, on the other hand, am a bit like an old car. I need time in the morning to warm up before jumping into anything requiring a lot of horsepower or fine motor skills.

Even on my best day, the answer to “what have I done in my first 12 minutes in the office” is pretty universally “not much.” Check back in an hour – or 45 minutes if you’re really in a hurry – and there’s a fair chance I’ll have had time to get caffeinated and come up with whatever you need. Believe me when I say that standing there looking at me haplessly like a mammoth stuck in the tar pits isn’t going to help your cause. It’s pretty much just going to annoy me more than usual and slow down the whole process.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.