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.

(more…)