Taking Care of Things Today

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Taking Care of Things Today

  • Yes, thanks for cheering me up. It's often as boring as watching the shopping channel. My only trick is to try and do the boring stuff when my brain needs the rest 🙂 which is fairly often these days...

  • Steve, if you want to get more time for something else (or just getting plain lazy), automate stuff 😀

  • Steve,

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I, too, am guilty of procrastination, and it can be so detrimental, especially in the area of documentation. It is always best to get things documented while the information is still fresh in your mind. The New Year is always a time when I try to catch up on things I've been procrastinating over the past year. Plus, it's good to document my accomplishments from the previous year, and get good solid metrics on the databases I'm supporting. Thanks for providing the motivation!

    Amy Hulsizer

  • Looking back at past jobs, I can say from experience that, sometimes procrastination is really just lack of motivation. For example, when the department's IT strategy for the coming year (and the past couple of years) can basically be summarized as "hunker down" or operating in "cruise control" mode, or when the requirements for a large project are unclear, or when managment is disengaged from day to day activities, or when a project that we just completed ultimately gets canned before it even goes live, then that creates an environment of low engergy.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • I go in spurts. Sometimes I just go and get a ton of things done. Then there are those periods when I will do anything other than what I should be doing.

  • Megistal (1/19/2015)


    Steve, if you want to get more time for something else (or just getting plain lazy), automate stuff 😀

    😛

  • One of the ways I've found to lessen the tedium is to combine stuff like this with a "learning day". I have days set aside to slog through the drudge work, but I also use those days to continue my education. I set aside all my other projects and either read or view some kind of online video while lengthy tasks are running or after everything is finished.

    If I'm not actually studying up on something, I have a bunch of "PBIs" (partly-baked ideas) I dabble with. Typically these are scripts I've wanted to write or possible solutions I've wanted to explore but haven't had the time. Sometimes they actually produce something I can use but they are generally throwaways.

    This may sound trite and likely is, but it puts me in mind of a line from Mary Poppins: "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and - SNAP - the job's a game!"

    Now if I could just automate via snapping fingers, life would be great... 😀

    ____________
    Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.

  • Iwas Bornready (1/19/2015)


    I go in spurts. Sometimes I just go and get a ton of things done. Then there are those periods when I will do anything other than what I should be doing.

    Yep, that's me... Like right now, when I should be working on my next major project but can't seem to get moving on it, so I'm catching up with the SSC emails from the last few days.

  • I schedule time for these. Not because I am organised but, the opposite, because I am so disorganised. I tend to group tasks together and put it in an electronic scheduler (years ago it was Schedule+ ;-)) and ensure that any task is not to big to avoid due to workload and no task is too small that I will attempt to delay it to group with some other task (unless I regroup things in the tool).

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

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