A friend of mine just started a blog, and the first entry there reminded me of something I’d been thinking about that was also brought up on another friend’s LJ.
Why is it that productivity is measured in how constantly you’re submerged in the act of “doing stuff”? In some respect, if all the people you have working for you are doing stuff, then the only *way* that people think is the way that they think when they’re constantly bombarded with stuff to do.
While I have a lot of great ideas, and do a lot of productive work in that environment, the *best* ideas I have are the ones that I have while I’m walking my dog, or lying in the bathtub, staring at the ceiling, not intentionally thinking about anything in particular. These are the moments where I’m thinking like a person who’s not doing stuff, and it’s a period where I think my brain simply operates differently.
It’s like, while I’m thinking consciously, I’m mentally playing Tetris. There’s more organization in my thought process – it’s about efficiency, and attacking a problem methodically. When I’m “idling” it’s like playing pick-up sticks. I think about whatever stick is easiest to pick up at the time. Maybe it’s a thought about something I want to write about. Maybe it’s something at work – but it’s always something that’s risen to the top of the mental pile on its own.
Why is it that in a person’s professional life, there’s so little focus on this type of thinking? I’ll often try to replicate this, resting my feet on the desk, sitting back in the chair with the keyboard on my lap. I’ll close my eyes, and just try to write whatever comes to mind. This is often where I’ll get the idea that pulls everything together, or find a different tack to take on a problem I’ve been working on. But it *looks* completely lazy – it looks like I’m half asleep, and sometimes, yeah, I’ll drift off into a quick snooze, simply because what I’m *trying* to do is *relax* – and relaxation’s basically only one step away from sleep.
Still, I don’t know how to reconcile this with the fact that I’m really hard on coworkers I perceive as “lazy”. But I think that has more to do with output, and their value to me than the perception of laziness or a casual attitude towards work. I don’t mind a casual attitude, as long as it results in astonishing ideas and incredible work. I guess, actually, that maybe that’s the distinction between the coworkers I tolerate, and those I get along well with as friends.
Maybe not just co-workers, but people in general.
http://angrychad.blogspot.com/2006/03/i-am-smartest-man-in-world-be-smarter.html
Some people work simply for income. Some people have no passion for what they do. Some people work to sustain a accustomed lifestyle. Please continue to tolerate coworkers working for less noble reasons.
In your NanoWrimo, the company hired selectively. If you want the same passion and drive in a team, you start at the source.
This post reminds me of when I went to bed after having written an email to a coworker about a code issue, and by the time I woke up, I knew what the problem was.
Debugging while dreaming. Woo hoo!
I did almost the same thing! I’d been stressing out over an issue for a couple days; one of those things you keep putting off until later because you just don’t want to deal with it. While I didn’t see any actual code in my dream, I got an overall impression of what I needed to do. I went into work that morning, tried it, and it worked.
That was a few years ago, and it’s the only time it ever happened. I wish there were a way to invoke software development dreams for tough problems.