Execution

[ygolo]

Let's say you have several months worth of very tedious work to do. Let's say you are several months behind schedule already, and no reprive is in sight regarding schedule.

The work involves the following:
1) Identifying who knows which buttons to press in particular CAD tools to get particular tasks done.
2) Taking detailed notes on doing the tasks.
3) Doing those tasks several 100s or 1000s of times.
4) Identifying who knows what your next set of tasks are
5) getting requirements made clear about those tasks
6) going back to step 1) and repeating till there are no more tasks.

For those who don't know, CAD stands for Computer Aided Design. You may have a few minutes of design work intemitently, but the CAD "button pushing" part of the job will be the bulk of the work.

This is called by my company as "execution mode."

How does one prepare oneself psychologically to do this?
How does one keep from zoning out, or procrastinating?
How does one keep pace with peers? perhaps even exceed pace?
How does one keep the creative part of one's soul fed?

[INTJMom]

Originally Posted by ygolo

Let's say you have several months worth of very tedious work to do. Let's say you are several months behind schedule already, and no reprive is in sight regarding schedule.

The work involves the following:
1) Identifying who knows which buttons to press in particular CAD tools to get particular tasks done.
2) Taking detailed notes on doing the tasks.
3) Doing those tasks several 100s or 1000s of times.
4) Identifying who knows what your next task CAD tool task is.
5) getting requirements made clear about those tasks
6) going back to step 1) and repating till there are no more tasks.

For those who don't know, CAD stands for Computer Aided Design. You may a few minutes of design work intemitently, but CAD "button pushing" part of the job will be the bulk of the work.

This is called by my company as "execution mode."

How does one prepare oneself psychologically to do this?
How does one keep from zoning out, or procrastinating?
How does one keep pace with peers? perhaps even exceed pace?
How does one keep the creative part of one's soul fed?

Make sure you breathe. (Not a joke.)
Set small goals to amuse yourself or challenge yourself.
Listen to music or other interesting intellectual stimulation in ear buds.

I don't know how you keep pace with your peers.
Will you be able to see them working?
Ask them how many buttons they're pushing and then do more than them?

[ygolo]

Originally Posted by INTJMom

Make sure you breathe. (Not a joke.)
Set small goals to amuse yourself or challenge yourself.
Listen to music or other interesting intellectual stimulation in ear buds.

I don't know how you keep pace with your peers.
Will you be able to see them working?
Ask them how many buttons they're pushing and then do more than them?

They won't know how many buttons they push.

It is about the completion of tasks. Even here, it is not about the number of tasks.

There will be a perception of how hard what you are working will compare to others jobs.

Generally, the more tedious and button-pushing-based the job is, the less difficult the tasks are deemed (which is true since we are circuit designers). But for me, it also tends to be more time consuming due to the tedium.

[entropie]

I'ld quit the job, not helping, I know

[ygolo]

Originally Posted by entropie

I'ld quit the job, not helping, I know

I know people who have, and am certainly considering it myself. But I prefer to have somewhere to go to, before I do that.

[ptgatsby]

Originally Posted by ygolo

How does one prepare oneself psychologically to do this?

Resign yourself to the task, dismiss it from your mind and exist in limbo for the duration.

The secret is to rewire your coping mechanism - instead of anxiety, replace it with deadness. To some degree, this is repression, so take it with a grain of salt.

(Heh, can you see why I'm not really a people person? )

How does one keep from zoning out, or procrastinating?

I use loud music, personally. I drift in a state that is half-attention. I actually do this with a lot of things, but the louder the music, the more it drowns out your mind. It won't help if you need to solve complex issues, but it works on staying focused.

Drugs will also help, of course. Anything that deadens you will.

If you have read the Wheel of Time Series, or if you already do meditation, it's essentially about reaching the state where you divert part of your mind into nothingness (consuming all thought/into the flame/oneness), directing your attention to the external (music/muscles/non-reactivity) and allowing your body to simply do.

How does one keep pace with peers? perhaps even exceed pace?

It really depends on the complexity of the task. The above two techniques are highly effectively at deadening the buildup and not disabling your ability, so long as you can get into the state of mind of doing tasks.

However, it is dependent on getting into that state and not allowing yourself to break out of it. That means that you can't really stop doing it, at any point. When faced with it, I tend to not eat or drink, for example.

It does not deaden your ability, FWIW. I originally did this when I was younger and playing online games (WC, SC) competitively. If anything, you become faster and more reactive. Originally I had to do it in hour 20-30 of playing straight, and realised that I won more at that point than in the 10-20 hours, where tiredness set in.

Again, it falls apart the moment the mental state is distracted and is not effective if it requires deep concentration or has a high error rate. And example is that I cannot do it when I'm tagging unique numbers from memory onto correspondence. So, even though I'm doing a menial task and the simplest part would be adding a sequential UID, I can't do it!

How does one keep the creative part of one's soul fed?

It won't, sorry.

You simply have to ask yourself why you are working, period. I ask myself that every day... I've never been able to answer it permanently, and I'll keep asking myself that till the end.

A reason won't be enough, btw. The mind will simply adjust your preference, trigger your escape clause and force you out. If anything, having a reason to stay is the wrong thing to look for.