September 13, 2004 :: Coping in the Workplace: Scarcity

In this second installment of the Coping in the Workplace series, we'll talk about how to build on the skills from the previous lesson. There, you learned how to throttle your productivity to maintain your sanity and to keep yourself some breathing room in the office. Today, we'll talk about how to take advantage of your throttled down-time.

If you employ throttling in your job, by now you should have at least 50% of your work-time free. So what do you do with all this free time? This is where you learn to make yourself "valuably scarce" so that you can be out of the office while your coworkers still think of you as a hard-working, valuable resource. The key here is to make sure you are on more than one project, ideally staffed by different employees in different parts of the building, or even different buildings. In some cases, it means you have to volunteer for extra work. Don't worry, this will play to your advantage. Now, you have two projects to work on, and hopefully they are both separate enough that no one on one project knows what's going on with the other project.

This is where the fun begins. Now, at any given moment, if people see you are not in your office, the assumption will be that you are doing something with the other project, and that you are clearly working very hard. The very same scene for a person with only one project might lead them to believe that you were just skipping out on work. But not only are you clearly working hard, you volunteered for extra work!

So go ahead and take that 2 hour lunch... each project will think you are working on the other project, and you can rest assured knowing you will still get your work done because you employ throttling.

posted by Rainmayun at 10:11 AM -

September 07, 2004 :: Early riser

Most of you who know me know I'm not really a morning person. It's all I can do to drag myself to work at a halfway decent hour most days (although that may have a lot more to do with the morale at the job rather than my own predilections). I'm getting older though, and I've realized that I have to take better care of myself. Strangely enough, former president Bill Clinton's quadruple bypass surgery got me to thinking... he has access to the finest medical care in the world, spare no expense, and yet he still ended up needing major heart surgery. What does that mean for me, an average joe with rapidly spiraling health care premiums despite my apparent health, single childless status and relatively young age? So I decided I need to take better care of myself. I've been thinking about these kinds of things a lot as I approach the first major milestone birthday that's actually frightening... it's all downhill from 30, right? At least for men, it seems like you'd no longer have the excuse of youth for screwing up your life. Time to get it together.

So with my new perspective and resolve, I've decided to start going to the gym in the mornings before work. That means getting up (not just waking up, but actually getting out of the bed and getting moving) at 6:00 am or earlier. I recognize that lots of people do this on a regular basis, but this is a big deal for me. Being the analytic mind that I am, I had to do a pro/con analysis. First, the downside:

• Have to get up earlier EVERY DAY... I will get used to this after a while. though.
  
• This is bound to ruin my social life... not only can I not stay up late on any weekday, I probably won't be able to stay up late on weekends either, as my body clock will be shifted earlier.
  
• Extra commute distance. I absolutely refuse to shower in the gym, and trying to keep my clothes unwrinkled and getting dressed in the locker room isn't my style, so I'll have to drive back home after going to the gym. Probably an extra 7-10 miles roundtrip. Plus I have to deal with morning traffic coming back towards my house. Plus in a few months I'll be driving half-sleep in the dark during the coldest (and presumably iciest) part of the day
  

• It should help smooth out my workout schedule, so that other events coming up won't affect it the way they did when I tried to work out after work. Now, I can work out in the morning, go to work, then go to those spontaneous happy hours after work without feeling guilty.
  
• Working out more regularly will of course show health benefits...
  
• ... and I'll feel better about the $45 a month my gym costs, since I'll actually be using it more often.
  
• The gym is less crowded in the mornings... I didn't have to wait for anything. After work, its absolutely packed until 8 or 9 pm. That's ridiculous.
  
• Ruining my social life will have the beneficial side effect of spending less money on BS.
  
• Maybe this will result in me having more energetic, more productive days. We'll see about that.
  

posted by Rainmayun at 11:33 AM -