Work flow

Ok. I'm going to try and lay this out for you in a direct, coherent, and slightly funny way. If it strikes you in any other way (lacking directness, incoherent, rambly (it's a word), not funny) then I encourage you to use that post-editor in your head and punch it up a little for me.

What's a little rewrite among friends, right?

Or, if you'd rather not try mentally rewriting the post to resemble what I had meant to say, instead of what you've actually read, then I encourage you to leave a comment.

That statement could totally apply to everything I've ever written here. On, then, to the story:

I think we will start out by saying that I am not a morning person, but not in your stereotypical "not a morning person" way. I am not grumpy, I don't moan getting out of bed, I don't accidentally put my car keys in the toaster, or spread jam on my newspaper, or leave the house, get in the car, drive all the way to the office, and then realize I'm not wearing shoes, or anything like that.

I just don't function as well in the A.M. It generally takes me a while to warm up. Like your car engine on a February morning in New England that you had to run outside and start so you could let it idle for fifteen minutes while you finish breakfast, sportscenter, or regis & kelly. Except instead of a car engine it's my brain, and instead of fifteen minutes it's however much time there is between "now" and "noon o'clock."

In the morning I let the auto-pilot run all the lower-cognitive functions between waking up and lunch time (like: showering, getting dressed, getting to the train, and most of the work I had to do for my old job).

At the old job I would complete most of my daily work in the first forty-five minutes of the day, before my brain actually turned on. It was nice, and in a way, necessary. The mindless daily tasks helped the transition from "zombie-mode" to "work-mode" (later, food would help the transition from "work-mode" to "normal-person-mode").

I believe having mindless work to do in the mornings made me a more effective employee. It certainly made me more efficient, since I would have been unable to do any work that required higher cognitive function that early in the day. Get the zombie stuff out of the way while I'm a zombie, work on challenging and interesting stuff after my brain starts working.

I tried to set up a similar system here at the new job. Unfortunately, under the current structure, the tasks that fall under "mindless" take about fifteen minutes at the start of the day which leaves me with two hours (at least) in which I am totally unable to perform anything more complicated than zoning out to some music, or writing a blog entry.

Now, alternately, at the new job, we have monthly reports that need to be prepared which take priority over the daily work. These reports also require a lot of thinking, which makes them "after lunch" reports.

It would seem obvious, therefore, that I would arrive in the morning, midlessly process the daily reporting for fifteen minutes, and then wait patiently for my brain to start firing on all cylinders (noon) before tackling the monthly reports.

This is, in fact, what I have been doing, right up until yesterday.

Yesterday, at approximately eleven thirty A.M. my manager approched my desk and asked how I was coming along with the monthly reports. I told him that I hadn't started on them, that I would do so that afternoon.

He looked at me in disbelief. "What have you been doing all morning?" he asked. I told him I had been working on the daily reports.

"No." he said. "Work on the monthly stuff. We can put off the daily stuff for a few days to get the monthly reports done."

Finally, a few facts, and a conclusion:
The monthly reports are due by the fifteenth of the month. I am new, they gave me a small fund, the monthly processing would take, maybe, two afternoons. We are in no danger of missing deadlines. If I am not doing mindless daily reporting in the morning, then I'm not doing anything.

The instructions I've received from the manager have basically eliminated my morning workload for every day up to the fifteenth.

If I'm not going to be doing anything between nine and twelve for the first fifteen days of the month, then I should not have to come in before twelve on the first fifteen days of the month. Right?

I've gone from semi-productive complete days to barely productive afternoons. I'm getting paid to stare into my coffee for three hours, eat lunch, and work for three hours. There's an extra hour of web surfing in there too.

-t