Thoughts on Paperless Workflows

So, a friend of mine read a previous post where I talked about what was in my bag on any given day, and he commented on my stack of index cards. He pointed out that I have a smart phone, and that presumably any sort of note I would need to take could be taken on my phone, which is true, and that just about everyone I know could be left a message using my phone, either through facebook or SMS or email, which is also (generally) true.

Thing is though, as fantastic as my phone is, it can't do everything I need it to do. Data entry is slow, and inaccurate. Sometimes, like when I need to sketch something out (like a flow chart), it's downright clumsy. And a lot of the index cards therefore wind up being for me. As a matter of fact, my pockets, including the pockets of my backpack, my blazer, or any other garment I'm carrying wind up full of index cards by the end of the day. And postits. Numbers scrawled onto thermal printer slips. You're starting to get the idea.

There's a really good reason for that. Like I said, some data doesn't lend itself to rapid-fire digital entry when you have a brain that works best with a keyboard and stylus, when all you've got are your thumbs. What's more, some social situations simply don't allow you to pull out your cellphone and jot down a quick note. Me updating statistics in a performance tracker at work looks an awful lot like texting to my clients, and my co-workers do more than enough of that for the whole store.

Even above that, I don't trust digital. Granted, 90% of the time, something I choose to write down on index cards is a triviality - a name I needed to remember for a few hours or a handful of stats that are going to be digitized later. The other 10%, though, winds up being at least tangentially important, and often what is tangentally important doesn't get digitized at all... enter the stack of books, top left.

I have a weakness for stationary, and my love of fine pens has already been discussed. Accordingly I tend to collect quite a few notebooks, and while some are very good and others are mediocre, I've come to learn just what I want and where to find them. There are a few constants, partly due to the forcings of what people give for gifts and partly due to habitual purchase. MOST of the books in that stack are either moleskines, or hardcover PaperBlanks that have the right level of tooth.

They have their uses. As a general rule I try to keep the numbers down, if only because I never seem to totally fill a book before I destroy it (yes, even the skines).

Paperless is good. A reduction in waste is good, which is why I'd like to find an alternative to index cards (there's an electronic scratch-pad for $30 at Coles which shows some promise), but notebooks don't go to waste. I reference older stuff all the time, even just for lulz.

Having the Grind Nature, f(Confidence), and Balanced Living

The thing about the daily grind is, it's inevitable. No matter how good your job is, no matter how much fun you have doing it, you're going to have days where working is, well, work. Whether this sudden aversion is the result of performance falloff, low traffic, or an allergy to routine, you're going to have a few days where working isn't such a good time. This is when all you MMORPG players (especially those of you who play EVE Online) are going to start to feel right at home... you already have the grind nature.

Having the X Nature is a common construction in certain internet-connected subcultures. I could explain the etymology, but it's effectively just a roundabout way of saying that someone or something possesses the given trait. In this case, having the grind nature means that you are attuned to the nature of slogging through things that might not necessarily be fun, like the 40th iteration of a "kill X bugbears" quest or the fifth or sixth haul on your asteroid mining run. While the grind is most often associated with gaming, anyone over the age of about 20 knows it applies to work as well. There are any of a number of ways to prepare potatoes but every cook knows just how boring it is to make roasted garlic mashed. I sell tea and tea products for a living, and if you were only going to get three teas and one cast iron pot, there are 18, 821, 880 permutations of that transaction... and yes, calculating those probabilities is one way I keep myself entertained when we're bored... but anyone who has ever worked retail knows there's really only four or five rockstar products you earn in the run of the day.

So how do you get the Grind Nature? There's a certain extent to which that question has no real answer, in the sense that there is no one trick that will imbue everyone with that mythic level of patience. Again, you see this in how different people play different games. I like to chat when I'm grinding on MMORPGs, especially ones that require minimal player intervention, like EVE. At work, I get around Grind Nature by making it a game. Work's boring? Find a way to score it, and then beat high score. Sometimes this solution leads to interesting consequences like the construction of eight-sheet Excel Workbooks for tracking job performance. Shooting for high score continually moves the goalposts and a competitive nature can allow one to push themselves into higher and higher brackets.

Of course, I mentioned performance falloff for a reason. As near as I can glean from talking to people, job performance falloff is the main reason they feel like they're stuck in a grinder, and this attitude is a negative feedback loop. Succumbing to the bite of performance falloff usually results in laziness and this just breeds more falloff, especially if the initial cause of the falloff was external, like decreased customer traffic or increased competition for individual metrics. When I worked in tech support, we called this the Stupid Sunday phenomenon - the call time of each individual agent maps inversely to the number of agents on the floor.

It is important to remember that in virtually every field, performance is a function of confidence. We simply do better at our jobs if we are comfortable doing them, and all the fancy tools and specialized knowledge in the world won't help a person who doesn't trust their own work. In retail, this is because confidence and charisma often map to each other. In the trades, this is because one needs to be able to function well without outside intervention.

Of course, the main way to develop the Grind Nature is to have an outside release from the grind. MMO players often find this through PvP interaction - in the real world, we like to go to bars instead. Still, one must be careful about what their chosen release from work is. While no one behaviour is inherently bad, over-relying on it it can be. Bar evenings are fun, but so can be an afternoon trip to the gym or the pool.

What do you think, readers? What's your best way to find work-life balance? Do you have the Grind Nature?

Preparedness and Organization: A Tea Wonk's Satchel

There was a trend a while back on Gakwer Media's Lifehacker Blog where they got the writer's talking about their "go bag", which really meant their every day carry bag. The concept of a carry bag is nothing new to people who like to get out of their house on occasion or who have work that requirest a certain amount of mobility, and after re-reading them to figure out what to do with spare flash drives (I have a dirth of them lately), I've decided to do one of my own.

Now, my bag is nothing special - a messenger bag from Zeller's that I've already forgotten the make on. It's actually not ideal for my purposes by any stretch of the imagination, but it's the trusty-rusty alternate and until it shows signs of breaking down I'm probably going to keep using it. The contents, as always, are more fun than the bag, so let's talk about those.