Rachel asked how I handle it when there are slow times at work:

How do you keep yourself constantly busy? If I’m stressed out, but occupied, I’m great. But the nature of my work means the busy times come in waves and spurts – and a lot of time I find myself with nothing to do, which makes for LONG, even agonizing, days. I’m not a slacker, my work is never neglected – I just run out of work - and then I lose my motivation/will to get out of bed, completely. Do you ever go through phases like that at work?

Absolutely. I will start by saying that I wrote this post at work.

I am extremely project-oriented, and need to have some sort of goal to focus on in order to keep my mind stable. When I first graduated from college, I got a desk job in which my bosses left the office at 3pm every day to avoid rush hour traffic. It was one of those jobs where if my bosses weren’t around to give me work, I didn’t have anything to do.

Now, I could have asked Bob the Marketing Guy if he had any special projects for me, but Bob was one of those people who refused to admit that there was nothing to be done, so he would make up stuff that was so mundane and useless that I’d find myself wishing I could just watch flies get sucked into the fan. Projects like “Go through this list of 3,000 customers and Google them to see if you can find email addresses,” or “Read everything in this 10-foot wall of filing cabinets to see if there are any good case studies to put on the website.”

It was during that job that I learned a lot about The Art of Looking Busy.

Here are some things I do on occasion when my brain needs something to focus on:

• Start a New Work Project. When there’s nothing to do, I start making things up. I try to think of things that would improve our distributors’ lives and company’s image. If it’s any kind of marketing or promotional material, I usually have the freedom in my job to commence on the project after a preliminary go-ahead from the Powers That Be. I find that if the project is my idea and I get to take charge of it, I’m more motivated to think of it as a challenge rather than a chore. Past projects have included:
  • Computer illustrated product demonstration CDs
  • Distributor Guidebooks
  • Revamping the website so it’s more functional and looks less “1996″ (unfortunately, I never got to finish that one)
  • Reformatting some of the already-existing documents we distribute so they looked better
• Research. I love to learn about things, so when I find myself lacking something to concentrate on, I’ll pick a new area of interest and Google until my heart’s content. I think my most recent foray was Biblical Textual Criticism. If I’m doing a project outside of work that I can’t make progress on while I’m in the office (for instance about 2 years ago I was making blueprints for and building a model castle…another come-and-go hobby) I’ll do research while I’m at the office on things I can put into action once I get home.
• Self Education. Along the lines of research, I like to learn how to DO things, which is how I picked up HTML/CSS, Photoshop, and all the other things I have a working knowledge of. This is a great one for work because I can usually find a way to justify it. For instance, “Actually, Mr. Boss, while I may appear to be surfing the internet, in reality I am furthering the company’s interest with this project because I’m learning how to do Flash Animation, which I hope to use to improve our company website. In fact, you might want to consider paying for me to take a class in this, which will make me a much more valuable employee. And at the very least, you should probably purchase this software for me to use.”
• Blog Design. This is one of my favorite come-and-go hobbies yet because it’s entirely contained in the computer (unlike scrapbooking) so there’s no mess, and I can do it at work without creating a lot of suspicion about how I’m spending my time. And I believe it’s the first hobby I’ve ever had that actually pays for itself. Imagine that!
• Instant Messenger. I’m on all day anyway because this is our primary means of communication with the IT guy. Though I will admit that this activity was a lot more fun when the people I knew were actually using and available on Instant Messenger. Lately it’s been pretty quiet online.
• Bejeweled 2. I don’t spend a lot of time playing computer games. One of the women I work with spends hours every day playing Solitaire. I don’t have that kind of attention span for computer games, but Bejeweled is a personal favorite of mine.
• Bowman. Another stupid, yet addictive, computer game.

Again, I can totally relate to the sluggish dip that comes from not having a project or challenge to concentrate on. Recently, there has been a lot of downtime around here and our company is, I believe, seeing the dusk right before some major transition - so my motivation to start new projects until I know which direction we will be heading is pretty low. So I’ve been doing a lot more hobbying and computer gaming than usual.

But my general rule of thumb is, if there’s not a project to be excited and motivated by, INVENT ONE! (Even if it’s not “work-related” in the truest sense)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Ask Amy, Daily, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.