Matthew's Journal

Me too! When doing my DPhil I would have entire weeks of never getting past 8 and feeling perpetually guilty.

It sounds entirely plausible that in order to do serious coding/research you have to be "in the zone", and that that's something which is difficult or even impossible to kick-start deliberately. (Fortunately as a lowly admin monkey I don't need to wait for my muse in order to get things done, I just have to push buttons!) But IME there are usually other work-related things you can do (even just tidying/admin stuff, or reading vaguely-work-related articles) rather than just sitting there hitting reload on LJ/email/etc.

(She said, hitting reload on LJ. ;-)

But getting started is always the hardest bit. Do you read 43folders? There's lots of useful tips on there about Getting Things Done. At the end of the day though a lot of it comes down to taking the first step from "thinking about doing stuff" to "doing stuff", and that's something that you just have to do.

NB I'm not arguing that people should be Doing Work from 9-5 if they don't have to -- and you're probably giving your employers better value for your salary if you're doing good work for 5 hours a day or even 2 hours a day than if you're sitting at your desk doing nothing & feeling miserable and resentful for 8 hours a day. But if you have to be in work from 9-5 anyway then there are usually some minor productive things to be done with the time even if you're not feeling inspired to do Great Things.

That's me too for non-programming/sysadmin. For programming/sysadmin I'm easily in the zone. Unfortunately most of what work needs from me for the meantime, and has for quite some time, is non-programming/sysadmin. Which is why I'm here posting this now.

That was a damn good article. I think I'll point a few people (including the boss) at it at work.

It describes me quite well, though I think I have longer periods of either in or out of the zone. I'm a bit out of the zone at the moment having drawn lots of blanks trying to sort out various problems with insufficient information and insufficient resources. :-(

I work quite a bit like that, too. I've felt a lot better about it since one of my friends, who is working on her PhD, suggested thinking of the unproductive time as "Part of the Work", since evidently our brains need it to get to the point of being productive. I have the feeling that a lot of subconscious stuff gets sorted out during those fallow times.

Yes, I work this way too, and so does my family - we just have to accept it and do the best we can!