Erwaman's Personal Journal - September 2012

Work Mentality

A few weeks ago, there was a link in the Yale CS newsletter to a blog post by Michael Church (an alum) titled Don't waste your time in crappy startup jobs. I agreed with most of his sentiments, especially his comment at the end that most of the "so-called 'social media' space...is a pointless waste of talent and energy." Anyways, I read a few other of his posts and liked them a lot, so I subscribed to his feed. (This is actually the first feed I've subscribed to that isn't a feed of someone I know.)

One of his other posts that I really liked was his 4 things you should probably never do at work post. His four don'ts are:

1. Don't goof off.
2. Don't work on side projects.
3. Don't voice inconsequential opinions.
4. Don't work long hours.

I'm not going to discuss all of them; I actually just want to mention an idea he discussed while expounding on #1. The "counterintuitive and entirely selfish reason why wasting time on the clock is a bad idea" is that "it makes the time-wasters unhappy." Why? Michael points to a couple reasons:

• When you goof off, you create social anxiety for yourself because you're being unproductive and there's the fear of getting caught goofing off. People don't get fired for goofing off, or else, as the author points out, nearly all of America would be unemployed. It's just that when you waste time, you feel unproductive and you will feel embarrassed and stressed if your manager walks by or asks you about your progress. This reminds me of something else I once read: "People spend more time worrying about work than actually doing work." The best way to reduce work anxiety is to work! When you're goofing off at work for hours, there's always some low-level stress hanging over you because you know you're wasting time. That's probably not healthy for you and it certainly doesn't make the work environment any more enjoyable.
• Goofing off is actually more boring than actually working. Have you ever spent a whole afternoon watching YouTube videos or Wikipedia surfing and then feeling bored and lackluster? After wasting so much time, doing something you thought would be relaxing and rejuvenating, you now have even less energy and motivation to do real work. Instead, if you spent a whole afternoon working and being productive, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment afterward. In fact, I find that after working hard for a while, I usually don't feel tired; instead, I get an adrenaline boost from having been productive and tend to be in a good mood.

  There's also nothing worse than trying to "kill time". If you're "killing time" by goofing off at work, time is going to pass by very slowly and your social anxiety is going to rise. Start working and get into a project, and time will fly by.

Just like most of us, I've experienced work-place anxiety and I've certainly goofed off at work before. As a person with much procrastination experience, I also know the stress that putting off work can cause. However, I never thought that avoiding work might actually make me unhappy. After reading this post, I realized that sometimes I have regrets because I planned to work on several projects, be it over an afternoon, a weekend, or a summer, but then I get distracted or am lazy and end up not working on these projects at all. Once you do get started on a project, it's usually more interesting and stimulating than just whiling away your time. Instead of thinking about these projects so much, we should just start working on them. Like the Nike slogan, "Just do it."

So, inspired by this thinking, I finally decided to write those lessons-learned posts, which had been brewing around in my mind for a while.

I realized that when I'm actually working, I'm not usually bored. I might be frustrated because I have writer's block or because I don't understand how to do something. I might also feel a bit overwhelmed because of the magnitude of a project. However, these feelings are distinct from boredom. Pushing through when you're feeling frustrated or overwhelmed can actually be stimulating because it's like trying to overcome a challenge.

Work mentality is a really interesting thing to me, and reading Michael Church's blog post got me thinking about it again. As a person who has procrastinated a lot (I did win the senior class superlative for class procrastinator in high school), I've thought a lot about and experimented with many methods to motivate myself to work. Honestly, I think I've gotten better at procrastinating less. But I still think I could improve and be more productive. This blog post definitely gave me some new ideas to think about.

Work Strategies

I've read about and experimented with several methods of getting stuff done and motivating myself to do work. I'd like to share some of these strategies I've tried:

• Work for 5 minutes (or 15 minutes). This is a strategy to use when you are feeling lethargic and don't feel like doing any work. This often happens after a day of work or a day out, and you were originally planning to work on a personal project, but now you're feeling tired and lazy and don't feel like doing anything anymore. Well, here's a strategy to try for these moments. Instead of just idling in front of the TV the rest of the evening, force yourself to work on something for 5 minutes (or 15 minutes or some other small time amount). If after those 5 minutes, you still don't feel like working, go back to whatever you were doing before (watching TV, goofing off on the computer, etc.). However, oftentimes starting something is the hardest part, and after you've invested those 5 minutes (which often have the most friction since you're just getting started), you'll want to keep working and then you'll end up having a productive session.

• Working is less boring than goofing off. You ever hear from friends during the summer that they are "bored out of their minds"? I think this happens when you relax too long and aren't working on personal projects or doing something productive. You're just watching YouTube videos or TV shows all day and after a while, you get into this torpid state. That's what too much "goofing off" can do to you. If you're at work, feeling torpid is one of the worst feelings because you don't feel motivated to do work, you might feel sleepy, and time seems to pass even more slowly. As I discussed in my previous post, to avoid all this, just work!

• Make your bed. This was a suggestion I got from Cal Newport's book How to Win at College, which Andy Tien lent me. The idea behind doing this is to set the tone for your day. By making your bed when you wake up, you're telling yourself to be organized and responsible during the day. It's similar to some of his other tips, like waking up early and doing work on Sundays. By waking up early on Sunday (while others may be passed out or still overcoming hangovers) and getting work done, you're setting a standard for the rest of the week. By starting your week well on Sunday, Monday won't be such a struggle bus and chances are, you'll have a much better week.

  This tip was also intended to help people stay organized. By always making your bed, you get into a habit of staying organized and always cleaning up after yourself.

• For every minute that you practice your instrument, you can goof off for 1.5 minutes. This was a thing my brother and I tried out when we were younger and both living at home. I was taking piano and clarinet lessons, and he was taking flute lessons. Both of us were last-minute practicers, who would mostly practice just the night before or day of our lessons. To try to encourage ourselves to practice more, we made this mutual agreement where for each minute we practiced our instruments, we could play computer games (Midtown Madness 2 was the rage for us then) for 1.5 minutes. We joked that professional musicians would basically have unlimited play time under this agreement.

  The problem with a strategy like this is that you start practicing solely for the purpose of getting gaming time. This doesn't help you learn to enjoy practicing and to deepen your appreciation for your instrument.

• Get something productive done before you indulge in a pleasure. For me, one of my addictions is checking email. It's usually one of the first things I do when I wake up. It's a very enjoyable thing for me. Knowing it's something I look forward to, I use it as a reward for getting something done. Now, before I check email when I wake up, I'll try to get something productive done first, like starting a load of laundry, taking a shower, or writing up a blog post.

• When you check email, make it a policy to respond to any emails you can take immediate action on. They always tell interviewers to fill out their evaluation forms as soon as they can after finishing their interviews, while the interview and things the interviewee said are still fresh in their minds. As you put things off, you tend to forget details and you are less likely to do those things. I think this is especially true with email, considering how much we all receive each day. At my Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Stevens Institute of Technology after my freshman year of college, the director, Professor Yu-Dong Yao, encouraged us to respond to email as soon as we read it. He says when you do this, sometimes the sender will reply to your response before you're even done checking the rest of your email. Then you can get a quick series of emails going or can perhaps set up a phone call. If we put off emails, we tend to forget about them or never take action on them (until perhaps we receive an annoyed or angry reminder email). Taking action immediately is also a great way to prevent emails from piling up.

  Sometimes people send really long emails that seem too overwhelming to respond to. By forcing yourself to respond immediately, you're often able to boil their email down to a few main points and then you can respond to those in a shorter email, starting a dialogue.

• Make a list of things you need to get done and do them one by one. I find this strategy useful when I have lots of little errands to do. For example, a list might look like:
  • Pay credit card balance
  • Record expenditures and money found
  • Throw out trash
  • Put picture on website
  • Prune Facebook friends
  • Book bus tickets
  • Write blog post about work mentality
  I'll then go through the list (not necessarily in order) and cross off each item as I complete it. By writing out all your tasks first and then aiming to complete all of them, you're more likely to succeed.

• Make a work schedule for yourself and stick to it. This is similar to the last point but generally applies to larger tasks. One might plan out her morning schedule for a free day in Google Calendar:
  • 6-7 - Bike ride
  • 7-8 - Shower, eat breakfast, read newspaper
  • 8-9 - Pay bills, check emails
  • 9-10 - Practice clarinet
  • 10-11 - Read book
  By blocking out your schedule, you're less likely to let a free day go to waste and you often squeeze more productivity out of your time.

• Don't eat food, listen to music, watch TV, or have a chat client open while you're working. I really dislike parallel multitasking. I think it's inefficient and lowers the quality of everything you're doing. When I'm doing work, I try to do just that. No eating, listening to music, or chatting with a friend while working. Just working. My concentration is so much better this way and it's much easier to get into a groove when you don't have constant interruptions.

  I do like serial multitasking though. What I mean by this is starting a load of laundry in the washer, then showering, then eating breakfast, then moving the laundry to the dryer, then starting a second load in the washer, then checking your emails, then writing a blog post, then getting the first load and folding it, etc. A similar idea is to run many errands when you go out -- drop something off at the post office, then buy groceries, then go to the bank, etc. Same thing with projects or classes. You might have several going on, but just work on one at a time.

• Just do it. What I mean by this is to stop thinking so much about something and to just start doing it. For example, in rock-climbing, I often have doubts before starting a climb. The handholds look so small, the distances between them seem so large. I feel self-conscious about my novice skills, my poor technique, and my frequent slips and falls on "easy" climbs. My arms are already a little sore, my feet are hurting, maybe I should rest some more and study the climb more before starting. Sometimes thinking and analyzing too much is a bad thing. Sometimes you just have to turn off your brain and start. And fall. And then try something new. And then fall again. And keep doing this iterative process. Sometimes that's better than the slow, analytical approach.

• Stay focused on the task at hand. I'll wake up and plan to go to Macy's to buy new clothes. However, first I'll check my email and eat breakfast before I leave. I check my email and then see an interesting article someone sends me. Then I start Wikipedia surfing about the topic. When I do finally eat breakfast, it's already lunchtime, and when I start reading the newspaper, I get wrapped up in some interesting articles and end up reading the paper cover-to-cover. Before I know it, it's mid-afternoon and I have plans to meet a friend and no longer have time to go to Macy's.

  When there's a major thing you have to do, sure, you can do a few routine or preparatory things beforehand, but don't get sidetracked. Better yet, do the major thing first and when you finish it, then go back and do your routine stuff.

• Get enough sleep. Another couple of Cal Newport's tips are to never nap and to always sleep exactly the right amount, no more, no less. I disagree somewhat, but there's still truth in both of these points. The whole point of never napping is that if you're getting adequate sleep each night, you should never need to nap or feel sleepy during the day. However, inevitably, there are always days we screw up, like when we go out and stay up too late. We also might be fatigued from traveling and from the accompanying jet lag. On these days, sometimes rather than toughing through the day and being very unproductive, a power nap works wonders and still allows you to go to sleep at a normal time that night.

  As for sleeping exactly the right amount, I suggest everyone keep a sleep log for a few months and figure out what the average amount of sleep he gets each day is. Over a long enough period, your body will naturally gravitate towards a number. Once you have your target figured out, try to go to sleep and wake up the same time each day. By getting into a routine sleep schedule, your body's biological clock will sync up, which will further improve your rest and reduce sleepiness during the day. However, there are days when you really really think hard or do an exhaustive workout, and on these days, you should try to sleep an extra half hour to an hour (which might mean going to sleep earlier) in order to let your body fully recover.

  What I've realized is that the toughest barrier to work is not boredom or frustration or stress, it's being sleepy. Trust me, when your eyes are glazing over and you're not registering anything, you're not going to be very productive. Sleep is the solution to this.

• Do the hardest or least enjoyable thing first. Back in elementary school, as part of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program, Officer Kelly came to Mountview Road School to talk to us and do some skits with us. In addition to the peer pressure and how-to-say-no presentations, I remember he also mentioned once that studies have shown that when you have several things you need to do, you should always do the hardest thing first. This applies to homework. When you have several assignments, do you start with the easiest or the hardest? At that time, I said easiest because by doing the easier assignments first, I finish them faster and feel a sense of accomplishment, which helps motivate me to keep working.

  Now, however, I think Officer Kelly was right, and that you should always do the "hardest" thing first. Hardest doesn't necessarily have to be the most time-consuming or brain-intense thing. It could just be the thing you enjoy doing the least. For me, if I had multiple assignments, writing an essay would definitely be harder than doing a problem set. Exercise can also be difficult for me to start on, so if possible, I like to get my runs done early in the day and out of the way. Then I don't have the burden of thinking about the upcoming long, tiring afternoon run on my mind.

  When you're just starting to work, you're freshest and have the most energy. When you're fully charged, you have the strength to do "hard" things and that's why you should do them first. If you save the hardest things for last, when your energy has already been drained, you might not have enough power to do those things.

These techniques can be combined. For example, you can wake up, make your bed, start some laundry, then do a "hard" thing (like writing a blog post for me), and then reward yourself by doing something fun (like checking email for me).

I'd be interesting in hearing any other techniques you might use and which techniques you find most effective!

Happy being productive!