Chris’ Blog

So I graduated in April, and started full time work. It has been tough working for 8 hours a day. My work is very flexible in what times I need to work, and I started with the best intentions of getting in early and leaving early. Well it has been really really difficult to keep myself motivated enough to do the work solid for 8 hours a day. This week however my work has been running a conference, and as one of the IT guys I have been in charge of making sure that things are recorded and working correctly. This led to early mornings and late afternoons, and even though I took a vacation on Monday (Memorial Day) I have already worked over 40 hours - and I still have a couple left today. So this has led me to some realizations:

1. I can get up every day and get into work before 8 (usually about 7:30).
2. 8 hours a day is gonna be great (for now)

I recognize that this frame of reference will dwindle as time goes on, and I have no desire to work 8 hours a day the rest of my life, but for now, I can do 8 hours a day. Hey, it will feel like a bit of a vacation compared to this week!

Well, a few weeks back I found a program called RescueTime. Cleaning out my RSS feeds today I found that JD at Get Rich Slowly had a similar post earlier this month discussing this program. I decided that I wanted to chime in myself. What this program does, is run on your computer in the background recording the programs that you are using (only the active one, not all the ones you have open.) It then updates this information to your account on the website - where you can view your statistics. I installed it on my work computer because I wanted to see how much time I spent doing what at work. I felt like I was wasting a lot of time and not working on what I was supposed to be working on. Turned out, I was spending a lot of time on my computer not doing work!

Now its not gonna be perfect because if you walk away from your computer it still records whatever is open. One way I found to increase the accuracy of the reporting was to assign a particular website as “Meeting”, “Out of Office Business”, or even “Not At Computer” (for bathroom breaks, or other things) and I just click a bookmark that points to the particular page when I am leaving the computer - then when I get my report it is more accurate.

I really like this product. It seems to do a great job at reporting the information and from the first day that I installed it I have been more careful with my time because I know that it is being recorded! (And I’ve realized how much I spend!) I think I’ll set it up on my laptop here too.

So today when I logged into gmail I noticed something - for one thing it didn’t just say “Loading…” it said “Loading XXXXX@gmail.com…” - AND it loaded faster - or seemed to. I thought well maybe it was just a figment of my imagination because I was reading the loading thing and didn’t notice the time (It really did make me feel good to see my email address there on the screen… Kinda like hey! That’s me!) Well to test it again, I logged out and logged back in with another email address… Sure enough if seemed to load faster! So I headed over to the latest post at the gmail official blog and this is what I found! A need for speed: the path to a faster loading sequence. Well sure enough it is faster! If you don’t believe me, log in and find out! (and don’t forget to notice your email identity there on the screen while it loads! You will have to be quick, because it doesn’t stay there too long.) And although they weren’t sure people would notice or care, I noticed… I hope that makes you Google programmers a little happier. Your work does have meaning. Thanks for caring about even a few seconds of my time.

Ok, so first of all I didn’t get all of my goals accomplished today.  It really was a pretty good day until I started to write this post.  I then got a phone call from a previous project manager - for a project I have yet to be paid.  The project was a terrible one in which the client was given the ability to keep making changes as the project went on.  At one point the whole thing was sent back to the designer after I was well into programming it.  Anyway, everyone is taking a hit on the number of hours that they were supposed to get paid because I went over my hours.  That sounds pretty selfish, but I was up late so many days in a row trying to get all the work done that they were asking for - I didn’t inflate my hours, in fact I billed for less than I really put in.  In the end I lost $125 worth of work I did because the project manager didn’t do his job right. - Now that I’m done with that, I’ll move on to the rest of my day.  Well I didn’t accomplish all my tasks.  First of all, I didn’t get up when I was supposed to.  I slept in because I didn’t go to bed on time.  The moral of this lesson is that the later a task makes you going to bed, the less worth it is to try to get it accomplished.  I would have been much better off had I not spent time last night trying to get things done and I just went to bed and got up on time in the morning.  I also did not make dinner.  I was going to come home early and make it up tomorrow so that I could still meet my goal, but Kristine had an idea for dinner already, and she was all excited to cook it.  I decided not to spoil her excitement and I stayed to finish work.  At work I made some great progress on the project I was working on, but I also did not get that completed.  It didn’t help that I got blindsided by a new project to work on by the end of the pay period.  I also got distracted and got all excited about the possibility of getting a full size server rack from craig’s list…  It would be my graduation present.  I did however accomplish one of the tasks I set out to today (not counting all the subtasks.)  I did go to my meeting.  There it is… me being selfish again - the only task I fully completed that I wanted to was mine!…  Oh well… Today wasn’t bad, but tomorrow will be better.

So what do you do when life just runs away from you?  I thought after I graduated things would settle down… but it seems the opposite happened!  I think what it happened is that I felt like I should have more time to do things, so I got these ideas of catching up on all of my projects, and I have been so overwhelmed by everything else going on!  It’s been crazy!  So, I decided that stress comes from not living  up to the expectations that you set for yourself…  So I am going to take a few  minutes now, and set some expectations for tomorrow - super simple things - just 3 of them that I can do to get better.

One will be something for work - probably a bigger thing with subparts - I am going to get the tracking portion of the registration system working (including viewing the reports of users individual information - even if just basic.)

Two will be something for my family - I will make dinner tomorrow, and do the dishes.

The third will be something for me - I have a meeting at 6 that I would like to attend.  I’m hoping it only takes an hour, but it could be two.

Those are my expectations and goals for tomorrow.  Now the next part of a S.M.A.R.T. goal is to set ways in which I will accomplish them - I think the best thing that I can do to get these things finished is to get up and get into work early so I have time before my meeting to get things done.  I also need to read some tomorrow, so although this will not be easy, I need to get up on time tomorrow morning, read my book and get ready, and then head into work.  This will provide me the ability to get started early before all the distractions of work so that I can get that task done, and it will give me a chance to get home with time to make dinner and do the dishes before I leave.   I’m going to use this blog for a little while as a place to set expectations of myself, and to follow through with them.   Thanks for the support!