I could be my own personal assistant?
July 21, 2017 6:51 PM   Subscribe

I have a classic problem, which is that I'm productive as you could like all morning during work hours... just not at the right things.

I've never been a morning person (which is to say that I've never been known to do quality work in the morning) but I've become pretty good at regulating my schedule so that I'm awake and ready to go in the morning without needing to bolt out the door. Once I get to work I make coffee, boot up my computer, make a todo list for the day... and promptly remember 5,000 things that need doing in my personal life. So I take care of all those things in my personal life, such as bills, online shopping, putting in maintenance tickets, researching things I need to know about... and next thing you know it's lunch time and I've accomplished very little ACTUAL work and I'm pretty bummed out.

I know the preferable thing would be to get some work done in the morning! But my aversion to big tasks at work and the sweet siren song of easily accomplished personal todos are both too strong. Even when I firmly resolve to get my work done, I somehow slip into computer errand mode anyhow. And I'm very productive at it! At home, the trains run on time. But when it comes to my work, I always feel guilty and I probably don't perform as well as I should.

"Luckily" work for me right now is mostly academic work, not work on the clock (but I work on research projects so it is real work in a lab with supervision, etc.) I also know from past work experience that this happens in a regular 9 to 5 job as well; it's just more likely to be a problem then. At the moment I can just push my work into the evening and awkwardly finish it up then.

My theory is that this is a manifestation of two things: 1) anxiety and perfectionism, which make me avoid challenging engineering tasks I need to do and tying into that 2) the fact that I get a lot of simple, straightforward positive reinforcement from accomplishing personal things on my todo list that are not really dependent on my performance (i.e., paying a bill feels good, and it's unlikely I will do it poorly, or feel inadequate about it). The fact that I'm more sleepy and less adroit than most in the mornings is probably a big part of this too.

I'm on some meds but not anything ADHD/ADD related (have no idea if my problem is that, just anticipating the question). I'm about to start a pretty important job in about a month that is huge for my career so I'd like to start practicing better behaviors now, if possible. I read recently that the best way to get up on time consistently is to hop out of bed when your alarm goes off and accomplish something quickly so that you feel the positive reinforcement of doing the right thing. I'm brainstorming how to apply this principle to my work life but thought folks here might already have some ideas.

(I also suspect mindfulness could play a role here, but I'm not quite sure where to start?)
posted by stoneandstar to Work & Money (11 answers total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I have always been like this too. Not the best advice, perhaps, but I just go with it. I get to work at 8:30 and do whatever I feel compelled to do until 9:00. I intentionally arrive this half an hour earlier than my boss and co-workers so I am sort of not yet on the clock. Then if I'm having a really hard time switching gears I turn on a Pomodoro timer (25 mins work / 5 minutes break, longer break after 3 work sessions).
posted by karbonokapi at 7:34 PM on July 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Can you make a list of these tasks as you think of them and then use 'break' time to do some of them? So it's a kind of compromise? 40m office work, 10m personal work? Imperfect perhaps but a better ratio.
posted by jojobobo at 7:53 PM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Just to add to why I think this might work: writing the list takes away the anxiety of not remembering them/having that possibility hang over you; doing them that morning gives you the little feeling of success that comes from getting these done without letting it consume you; generally, compromise in these matters is more effective than all or nothing.

Also- reframe this as procrastination because that's what it is...being honest about that can help you see it as a reward instead of a virtue. Sorry if that sounds harsh. Obvs they are important jobs but they are not the job at hand.
posted by jojobobo at 7:56 PM on July 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Best answer: One thing that has helped me in the past: at the end of the day, make sure there are one or two easy things remaining to do the next morning. This often means stopping work when it feels like I want to continue, because it would be so easy to finish those one or two things, or rather stopping in the middle of a longer task.

Often the hardest parts to start are the set-up of something: downloading and installing software, getting a spreadsheet set up, finding potential vendors for something you need, creating the file structure and basic template for a new programming project or graphic project.

Once that overhead is taken care of, the "fun" part can begin -- the part where you really feel like you're accomplishing something, where you can be creative, where it's clear what to do next. If you had that kind of task waiting for you first thing, it would be something to look forward to.
posted by amtho at 9:07 PM on July 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I do exactly what jojobobo describes and it works great. In the morning I write all the personal tasks that my busy brain suddenly realizes I have to get done, start my work-work like I'm supposed to, and take a break later on in the workday to tackle those tasks (plus any left over from the previous day). It definitely helps minimize the anxiety of both worrying those tasks may not get done and of procrastinating on work to do the tasks.
posted by rhiannonstone at 9:45 PM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


You could try using a website blocker like Freedom. You can create your own blacklist of websites the software will prevent you from accessing.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:27 AM on July 22, 2017


Best answer: What has worked for me at times is to do one pomodoro of such small rewarding tasks (I call it a dash) and then three on bigger tasks (amble). I feel you on this one. For me it's better to get the small lures out of the way first, so I don't keep thinking about them or lose momentum, but limit how much time they get.
posted by meijusa at 12:55 AM on July 22, 2017


I have a similar sort of job and I find that walking into the lab first thing in the morning without turning on my computer sets me up for a much more productive day even when I come back to the desk. Those easily-achieveable concrete doable things live in the lab, too, and there is no reason to sit down and chill with a coffee when you just spent the last 8-12 hours recharging. Write the to do list on paper the night before or as you remember things throughout the day. Writing down non-work tasks into a to do list seems to fool my brain into not being distracted by them for a while.
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:41 AM on July 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


Best answer: ADD meds help me with this (I have no idea if this is an issue for you or not). However I do have trouble at times as I think of non-work things I want/need to do. As I think of things I send emails to my personal account with the task in the subject line, and when I get home I can evaluate and decide what to do about it. That eases my anxiety that if I focus on work I might forget about something important.

Another thing you can do is break up your work into small tasks. If you have a 300-page document to read, your task might be to read the first 5 pages. Or even the first page. If you have to write something, your first task might be checking to see if if the library has a particular resource you need. (The book Getting Things Done talks about breaking up large projects into small tasks, in a way that was helpful for me).

At the end of every work day, think about how you want the next morning to go and jot down your (small) next steps for the things you're working on. Leave the list in a spot that will be easily visible to you in the morning.
posted by bunderful at 6:22 AM on July 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've been using SkedPal for a couple of weeks. It's an automatic scheduler: you put in your to-do list and projects, map out times where you are most productive (on a traffic light/green-yellow-red system), press a button, and TADA! Everything you need to do is scheduled out for you. It's in beta, so it may have the odd bug or two, but the developers are super responsive and compared to others of its kind it's free.

It takes a bit to set up (especially the time maps part), but I've found that I've gotten much more done when I see it scheduled out for me compared to when I'd have the time but be too paralyzed trying to think of what to do next. Hell just today I thought I'd run into a bug where nothing was being scheduled despite having time...then I realised this was because I'd put in less projects than I thought I did (I have a running list of them) and thus there was nothing else to schedule!
posted by divabat at 6:34 AM on July 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh man, do I ever feel this. I do this A LOT, for sure.

One thing (beyond Pomodoro, GTD, etc.) that I've been doing recently with surprising success is to write out my work to-do list for the following week on Friday before I leave for the weekend rather than first thing on Monday morning like I used to.

If I had to analyze it, writing out my to-do list on Friday rather than Monday has worked for me because:
-You can use the end-of-week "ohcrapohcrap" wave of productivity to actually get it done.
-You've probably JUST remembered all of the things you meant to do this week, but did not. Write them down!
-Having your tasks for the week already laid out when you get to work means you can just START rather than waffle over what to put on your to-do list.
-It feels less arbitrary, especially for tasks without hard deadlines. Writing my list out on Monday feels like I'm making junk up to fill the time; writing my list out on Friday feels like I'm being proactive about priorities and have a plan.
-If your boss asks, you already know what you're doing. This makes you look on top of things. Ex: "Can we meet Wednesday?" "Sure! Wednesday is my research day, so any time is good!" BOOM. Boss mind BLOWN.

Also, I only leave space for four things per day on the list, which keeps my to-dos theoretically more manageable.* Anything else I manage to get done in a day feels like a bonus. Because it is!

Good luck!

*If I need to add something else beyond the four-per-day tasks, I'll add it to the free space at the bottom of the page so I don't forget it and can either do it when I finish my daily tasks or add it as a to-do for the following week. I use a notebook for work to-dos.
posted by helloimjennsco at 11:14 AM on July 25, 2017


« Older More sites for "Make Your Own Magazine Cover" type...   |   Accidentally sent BIG amazon package to old... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.