Reflections on Repitition
Finally I get a day off to reflect on work. There are several conclusions and goals that I've made generally and technically, and these came only after a myriad of ToDo lists that I've offloaded to my Palm and Outlook.
The most important conclusion is that I'm relatively better at keeping appointments and finishing projects when I can use a system other than my brain to input tasks, set reminders, keep notes, etc. I joked with my boss that it's like a processor; I'm frequently interrupted by customers or servers, so something else needs to manage my time. In techie speak, I was talking about a scheduler. Sadly he didn't take that analogy kindly; it seemed like he thought I was being arrogant by comparing myself to "brain".
Actually I think people don't need to be bothered with all this temporal crap. We spend too much time thinking about time. Examples include trying to remember grocery lists by brute repetition, like self-talk, or keeping ToDo lists in our brains with mnemonics. *ugh* Total waste of brain power. Instead we could be using our brains to create things, analyze stuff, solve problems, -- I mean, that's where you get to enjoy working. The latter isn't just abstract fluff. There are many feelings wrapped up in the temporal crap. Most people, including myself, get pissed off when they're stood up. At the same time, I'm not necessarily impressed by someone who remembers everything they went to get at the grocery store. It's far more impressing to solve a problem after the solution was due. :)
My secret, self-destructive motto at work goes something like, "If I'm really good, I can automate my position into oblivion." Serious. Everyone's daily tasklist at work could be converted into a program and ran by a computer somewhere. That realization makes people either 1) shove a fist down your throat (to feign job security) or 2) resign themselves to boredom at work. To some extent everyone should be able to program so they can wipe these repetitive tasks off their plates. That was the idea behind Roddenberry's LCARS. It's science fiction but when anyone can write a macro that automatically responds to email, then we can actually move on to the juicy stuff.
I'm getting there via cmd, perl, bash, and vbscript.
The most important conclusion is that I'm relatively better at keeping appointments and finishing projects when I can use a system other than my brain to input tasks, set reminders, keep notes, etc. I joked with my boss that it's like a processor; I'm frequently interrupted by customers or servers, so something else needs to manage my time. In techie speak, I was talking about a scheduler. Sadly he didn't take that analogy kindly; it seemed like he thought I was being arrogant by comparing myself to "brain".
Actually I think people don't need to be bothered with all this temporal crap. We spend too much time thinking about time. Examples include trying to remember grocery lists by brute repetition, like self-talk, or keeping ToDo lists in our brains with mnemonics. *ugh* Total waste of brain power. Instead we could be using our brains to create things, analyze stuff, solve problems, -- I mean, that's where you get to enjoy working. The latter isn't just abstract fluff. There are many feelings wrapped up in the temporal crap. Most people, including myself, get pissed off when they're stood up. At the same time, I'm not necessarily impressed by someone who remembers everything they went to get at the grocery store. It's far more impressing to solve a problem after the solution was due. :)
My secret, self-destructive motto at work goes something like, "If I'm really good, I can automate my position into oblivion." Serious. Everyone's daily tasklist at work could be converted into a program and ran by a computer somewhere. That realization makes people either 1) shove a fist down your throat (to feign job security) or 2) resign themselves to boredom at work. To some extent everyone should be able to program so they can wipe these repetitive tasks off their plates. That was the idea behind Roddenberry's LCARS. It's science fiction but when anyone can write a macro that automatically responds to email, then we can actually move on to the juicy stuff.
I'm getting there via cmd, perl, bash, and vbscript.