Managing worktime
Oct. 8th, 2009 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberBecause I work from home, I keep a work log with what I did each day and how many hours I put in. This is a habit I started a couple of years ago (during the divorce-- why are my self-improvement projects always in the throes of breakups?) to allow me to look back and show myself that, yes, I did actually do something that day, and that I have worked or am on-track to have worked my 40 hours for the week, so I can chill. There's another post's worth of talk about the fact that I still feel a swell of pride instead of a sense of failure when I go over that number and work my ass off on something, but that's another post.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I went through the hours-worked data for the last 50 or so workdays and graphed them. The results were... interesting. Important note: this does not show weekends, which I'm pretty good at taking off from work, nor some weekdays when I didn't keep good records, so the important thing in this graph is not the frequency, but the amplitude. Each point is a day, and the Y-axis is the number of hours worked.
This actually backs up my current suspicion that my problem is not over-work per se, but over-stress. If you take the average of all these days, you get about 9.5hrs/day, which at least by IT standards as I understand them is pretty normal. What strikes me most here is the wild inconsistency of the workday lengths. I expect that if I graphed the start/end hours of my workdays, the graph would be similarly erratic.
I keep going back-and-forth on how to look at this data. On the one hand, the fact that despite the long days the average is still, well, average, indicates that I have been successful in my original goal of giving myself chill days to balance out the long ones, so maybe the problem isn't the work but the efficacy of my chill-time. I can think of very, very few things I can do on my own that give me back spoons. Usually my "chill-time" is just feeling burnt-out and puttering around on the net doing things half-assedly, which doesn't really help. But looking at the data another way, I'm killing myself on those 12+ hour days, despite having an average-ish number of total productive hours overwall, so maybe I'd be happier with a smoother graph.
When I showed this to Mr. Therapist (whom, since therapist pseudonyms seem to be the in thing nowadays, I'll call "Mr. T", appealing to brevity and humor) his reaction surprised me. He said to remember that my hyperfocus can be a gift as well as a curse. He talked about how there are managers and makers. Managers organize things, and benefit from a set schedule, but makers have to follow their muse and over-structuring them can be counter-productive. This is the kind of attitude that makes me really like this guy in that he's obviously not just looking to throw pills at me and make my personality go away, and yet... this complicates efforts to find a simple solution.
I know I'm not the only creative/ADHD/geeky person I know, so I'm curious: Does this graph look familiar to any of you? Is it a detriment, or have you found ways to integrate it into your life? How? If it was/is a detriment what did/do you do about it?
Sometimes I think the solution might be as simple as actually going into the office instead of telecommuting. When I lived in Arlington and could catch the shuttle from Alewife every morning I found that it was very helpful for putting clear start and end points on my day, despite the shuttle leaving Arlington at 8:30am and returning around 7pm, meaning my days were a little longer than optimal. The current house is a lot less convenient than when I was in Arlington, though. I'd have to be out the door at 7:45a to take a bus to the train to the shuttle, and I also know from experience that unless I'm going to bed by no later than 11 consistently, that's not enough sleep for me to stay sane, and that's assuming my brain gives me a say in when I get to sleep. I could drive, but that is not really an option I'm considering. I know from experience that that 70-90 minutes each day when I'm neither working nor playing does me no good at all.
I'm sure all the Real Grown Ups reading this are thinking "aww, poor baby can't stay up at all hours and has to get up at 7:30 for work", but hey, maybe I can keep pretending I'm in college for a little longer? Maybe?
Meh. This is starting to depress me, and I really, really, don't need help being depressed today. Whatever. The point is, as part of Operation Quick Being a Fucking Stressball, I am looking for suggestions as to how/whether to manage work habits like the above. Do you agree with Mr. T, or do you pitty the fool who doesn't know when he's going to start or stop work on a given day?
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I went through the hours-worked data for the last 50 or so workdays and graphed them. The results were... interesting. Important note: this does not show weekends, which I'm pretty good at taking off from work, nor some weekdays when I didn't keep good records, so the important thing in this graph is not the frequency, but the amplitude. Each point is a day, and the Y-axis is the number of hours worked.
This actually backs up my current suspicion that my problem is not over-work per se, but over-stress. If you take the average of all these days, you get about 9.5hrs/day, which at least by IT standards as I understand them is pretty normal. What strikes me most here is the wild inconsistency of the workday lengths. I expect that if I graphed the start/end hours of my workdays, the graph would be similarly erratic.
I keep going back-and-forth on how to look at this data. On the one hand, the fact that despite the long days the average is still, well, average, indicates that I have been successful in my original goal of giving myself chill days to balance out the long ones, so maybe the problem isn't the work but the efficacy of my chill-time. I can think of very, very few things I can do on my own that give me back spoons. Usually my "chill-time" is just feeling burnt-out and puttering around on the net doing things half-assedly, which doesn't really help. But looking at the data another way, I'm killing myself on those 12+ hour days, despite having an average-ish number of total productive hours overwall, so maybe I'd be happier with a smoother graph.
When I showed this to Mr. Therapist (whom, since therapist pseudonyms seem to be the in thing nowadays, I'll call "Mr. T", appealing to brevity and humor) his reaction surprised me. He said to remember that my hyperfocus can be a gift as well as a curse. He talked about how there are managers and makers. Managers organize things, and benefit from a set schedule, but makers have to follow their muse and over-structuring them can be counter-productive. This is the kind of attitude that makes me really like this guy in that he's obviously not just looking to throw pills at me and make my personality go away, and yet... this complicates efforts to find a simple solution.
I know I'm not the only creative/ADHD/geeky person I know, so I'm curious: Does this graph look familiar to any of you? Is it a detriment, or have you found ways to integrate it into your life? How? If it was/is a detriment what did/do you do about it?
Sometimes I think the solution might be as simple as actually going into the office instead of telecommuting. When I lived in Arlington and could catch the shuttle from Alewife every morning I found that it was very helpful for putting clear start and end points on my day, despite the shuttle leaving Arlington at 8:30am and returning around 7pm, meaning my days were a little longer than optimal. The current house is a lot less convenient than when I was in Arlington, though. I'd have to be out the door at 7:45a to take a bus to the train to the shuttle, and I also know from experience that unless I'm going to bed by no later than 11 consistently, that's not enough sleep for me to stay sane, and that's assuming my brain gives me a say in when I get to sleep. I could drive, but that is not really an option I'm considering. I know from experience that that 70-90 minutes each day when I'm neither working nor playing does me no good at all.
I'm sure all the Real Grown Ups reading this are thinking "aww, poor baby can't stay up at all hours and has to get up at 7:30 for work", but hey, maybe I can keep pretending I'm in college for a little longer? Maybe?
Meh. This is starting to depress me, and I really, really, don't need help being depressed today. Whatever. The point is, as part of Operation Quick Being a Fucking Stressball, I am looking for suggestions as to how/whether to manage work habits like the above. Do you agree with Mr. T, or do you pitty the fool who doesn't know when he's going to start or stop work on a given day?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 12:15 am (UTC)Having said that - I am getting slowly better about not being a ball of stress all the time. I used to think that the key to not being stressed was regularizing my work schedule and quitting the procrastinating, but I'm realizing that that is both impossible and unhelpful.
What's been working for me is 1. setting concrete and realistic goals (for me that's usually something like "I will read half this book today") 2. Thinking about the worst case scenario (which is in almost all cases not actually that bad) 3. Realizing how fucking awesome my life is even if it does have some stressful bits, and finally, 4. exercise (this is the only truly "easy" solution to stress that I have come across - it really does help, especially with my insomnia).
I do still have moments where I dearly wish I were more "organized" and could actually get my act together enough so that I could do things like actually get out to Boston to visit you one of these weekends though.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 03:39 am (UTC)Plot a scattergraph with x = t(0)..t(n-1) and y = t(1)..t(n) and see what it looks like!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 05:14 pm (UTC)Being in an office did help and does help me with consistent productivity, but I was never in a role where I have to field constant interruptions. From what I understand, that's the biggest issue with working in an office. I'm also pretty good at focusing with just about anything going on.
Caffeine also plays a role. It seems exceptionally difficult, these days, for me to work without it.
I also wanted to point you in the direction of this article I read yesterday: http://millionairemommynextdoor.com/2009/10/self-control-willpower-i-need-me-some-of-that/
no subject
Date: 2009-10-10 03:55 pm (UTC)1) What caused the leveling off at the end of the chart? You worked eight to ten hours per day for a full seven days.
2) About going into an office: YES! In general, studies show that people with ADHD respond really well to structure, especially involving scheduling. I find that when I telecommute, my hours tend to look like yours. When I have external factors though, such as going to a different place, setting up an incentive-reward system (e.g. "I will work 2 hours and then I will play 10 minutes of Plants v. Zombies"--that one pretty much SINGLE-HANDEDLY got me through the last few weeks of studying for the bar), or integrating work into a larger schedule (e.g. "I have to work for four hours, because in four hours I am going to rehearsal and I won't be able to work at rehearsal), I always work more consistently than when I am left to my own devices.
If you don't have an office to go into, or don't want to travel so far just to have a consistent schedule, you could try making an "office" out of a local coffee shop or library.
Oh also, about following your muse: There is something to be said for that, but my sense of your job is that it combines inspiration and perspiration. You can probably figure out a way to make a regular schedule work, if that continues to be a goal of yours.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 11:01 pm (UTC)