Rest at work
Wednesday, 13 June, 2007
I've only been in the workforce for about 11 years. My first job was a casual retail assistant at Dymocks (which I only got because Erin worked there and she put in a good word for me). After we got married, I switched to temping, which took me place like the AGSM, UNSW and DEST (it was called something else then). I spent roughly three years doing various jobs at UNSW (School of English and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) before we moved to Wollongong. There I worked first for CAPSTRANS and then RAID, and now MM and CASE.
With the exception of Dymocks, all my previous jobs before MM were in administration—an area which I don't think is my forte (or perhaps it's that certain types of administration like logistics and dealing with humans aren't my forte) but an area in which I was fairly skilled. There were things I liked about administration: it had concrete achievable goals (in contrast to MTS), it had a lot of variety, it appealed to my neat efficient organisational side, and it was the kind of work I could do half asleep (which was frequently the case). It was also relatively easy (“For some,” add Greg and Gordon). And I could do it for hours and hours.
I was very fast at it too. It seems to me that in Australia, if you're fast, people think you're out to impress someone. But I wasn't out to impress anyone—I just like being fast. I walk fast. I type fast (106 words a minute). I even like driving fast. I like that sense of accomplishment when it's done—it's completed—you can put it to one side and forget about it. I think I'm the kind of person who likes to get everything done first and then survey what I've done with a great deal of satisfaction ... and then rest.)
Unfortunately being this sort of person works against me in all sorts of areas. Firstly, often the work never runs out, and I move from task to task to task with no end in sight. There are some things I just can't leave; I need to do them now otherwise the consequences will come back to bite me later. Secondly, it makes me fairly bad at taking rest. Just about every counsellor I have ever seen in recent years has told me I need to rest more and to plan to do nice things I enjoy instead of filling up my time with all these other things. They do have a point; I tend to get cranky when I haven't had a day of pottering around the house. And I do think I'm getting better. Well, sort of.
Thirdly, being fast would sometimes penalise me. I'm thinking particularly of when I used to be a temp. A company would hire me for the day to do some particular task and I'd be done in four hours. Because they had no more work for me, they'd send me home which meant I didn't get paid for the entire day (and this mattered quite a lot as it was our first year of marriage and we were both studying). This meant there was little incentive to be fast. (On the flip side, the temp agency actually liked the fact I was fast and would send me onto better higher-paying jobs.) But it wasn't just when I was a temp; when I started full-time employment, there would be days when I was absolutely bored out of my mind because there was nothing to do—well, nothing except for vacuuming and rearranging the files in the filing cabinet—menial work I didn't really want to do—which no normal person (that is, someone who wasn't as fast as I was) would ever get around to doing—and I would sometimes make myself do it, even though I didn't want to, because I figured they weren't paying me to sit around twiddling my thumbs. And I thought that this was all part of Colossians 3:23-24: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” Being fast is not an excuse to slack off. Is it? (And what do you think? If there's nothing left to do except vacuuming and rearranging the files in the filing cabinet [which isn't essential stuff and the only reason I ever had to vacuum was because the cleaners refused to vacuum our offices], should you do that?)
But this leads me to the thorny question of rest at work. With some professions, resting in between tasks is a must. Counsellors, social workers, ministers and others in caring professions need some down time in between clients otherwise they'd probably go batty. Musicians, acrobats and actors don't rehearse constantly. Singers certainly need to go easy on their voices otherwise they would have spent all their energy before going on stage and delivering the actual performance. But what about editors and writers?
There's no question that working at MM is much harder than administration. Whereas administration only engaged, say, 10-20% of my brain, editing engages about 100%. It has a lot of the pluses of administration: it has concrete achievable goals (unless something goes wrong and you have to re-do something), it has a lot of variety, it appeals to my creative side as well as my pedanticalness, but it's certainly not the kind of job you can do when you're half-asleep. Sometimes the biggest challenge is changing gears—moving between the admin-ey aspects of my job (e.g. logging Briefing articles, answering emails, web maintenance, e-news) and the editing/writing aspects of my job. Sometimes I'll have to do this three or four times a day. (“Welcome to my world,” says Tony.) Sometimes the biggest challenege is changing gears between editing jobs—trying to get your head out of one mental space and into another—and sometimes I'll be sitting there, going, “What was I doing again? Oh yes ...”
And so: rest. If you complete a big job, is it okay to celebrate by going out for coffee or Easy Way or a walk? Does it make it any more okay when you've beaten your deadline by a day or two? Should you be moving straight onto the next thing? It's all due soon. It's all urgent.
I asked Tony about this last week and he said you need to take enough rest to keep the editing machine moving. That will differ from person to person, of course, and it will probably change depending on the type of work you're doing. Two hours of solid writing usually needs to be off-set by half an hour of staring into space in a coffeeshop. With myself, I can push myself pretty hard, but often when I have several things that need editing or when I'm moving between admin, editing and writing, I need to have some sort of breather—something to clear the head and refresh the spirits before moving on. Sometimes it's blog reading, sometimes it's knitting and sometimes it's watching The West Wing. Sometimes it's not worth just ploughing on because it won't do any good and you would have wasted time.
So how about you? Can you rest at work?
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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I don’t have anything particular to say, but that this was a worthwhile post and a thoughtful read.
dunno what to say either but I thought a *hugs* might do hehe
i’m also procrastinating.. doo doo doo
That’s a really good question! I reckon that even with menial work there should be some sort of rest. You see this with OH&S stuff about how if you’re sitting at a computer you need to stretch and rest your eyes every so often. You also see it in the way our laws regulate breaks (or used to!).
I guess with editing it’s especially important to rest your eyes and your brain.
I don’t have any particular answers though. But I’m glad you raised the question. I guess it comes down to motive a lot of the time.
You want me to answer that???
You want me to answer that???
You want me to answer that???
oopsy triple post. sorry KB!
This is actually something I struggle with, more so now that I have moved into a new role, where there is literally always about 20 things that need doing. I am still coming to terms with this, and how exactly I stay sane in this environment, and my thinking went relatively along the same lines yours did.
So no great insights other than to say I agree with what you have said, and if you have any further insights, I’d love to know them.
Matt
I don’t know whether I’m actually resting at work, being lazy, or procrastinating… but I take lots of little breaks—check email, read blogs, etc. I tend to think I’m being lazy and procrastinating, but after reading your post, now I’m wondering if it’s just my working style, and I need to rest. I don’t know.
(this turned into a huge ramble - sorry)
Reading your post was a bit like reading about my own professional life - although I don’t know that I’m as fast as you. I definitely have skills in admin but much more of a forte in creative things, and often wonder about the whole concept of rest in relation to creative work. As you’ll know from reading my blog posts about Varuna, I benefit greatly from rest periods! I need to go for a walk and have a coffee and think about nothing much, and then suddenly the writing will flow, whereas if I sit at the desk and demand the words to come they all suddenly disappear.
Professionally, working where I do, it’s difficult. Although I would consider it to be the meat of my job, the creative stuff is seen most of my colleagues as a side-issue to the day-to-day work of our organisation. 2/3 of the staff in our small office are completely focused on admin and finances. They don’t understand what I do. I get questioning looks when people glance at my monitor and see something that isn’t spreadsheets and database, and I often feel like I have to justify my time (I probably don’t, but it just feels that way). This year we have more staff than ever, which is brilliant because it means I hardly ever have to answer the phone anymore, but there is nothing worse than being in the middle of a stream of consciousness only to be interrupted by someone asking some question about direct debits.
As I don’t have an office (and therefore, don’t have a door I can close), the only way I can get into any kind of space for writing is to put on headphones and aurally completely block out the rest of the office, which causes its own problems because people will come up and start talking to me without seeing that I’m unable to hear them, and then get cross with me when they have to repeat themselves.
If I’m getting really stir crazy I will go for a walk around the block. But actual breaks seem to be out of the question. The rare occasions when I have said “I’m going to the cafe to write” it gets commented on for the rest of the week. Thankfully, this year I have another colleague who kind of overlaps with my work in some areas (most notably Salt) and he takes one day a week to write studies, sermons and articles at home. He feels the exact same way I do about the atmosphere in the office - so it was a relief to know that it wasn’t just me!
I think we need to campaign for creative time out. As well as Friday Thai Day, we could institute Rest and Mind Wellness Passes - ‘entitles the bearer to one hour at Easy Way’ or similar.
Either that, or I might build myself a little wall out of boxes to hide behind.
(sheesh does this girl ever shut up? I’m stopping now)
In my last job, (as a computer programmer), on my first day at work my boss told me to take regular rest breaks, he said because when you’re tired or bored with what you’re doing, you’re more likely to make mistakes. I thought it was good that he said that. I certainly need breaks here and there. Otherwise like you said it just wouldn’t do any good and the time would’ve been wasted anyway.