Wednesday, July 20, 2005
burnout
I don't multitask well.
I have got to accept that now. I do have to change that, but as the AA people like to say acceptance is the first step to recovery.
I had three jobs this week; certainly not much if you just think about the number. But all three of them required me to dedicate at least twelve working hours each on average. It didn't seem much but I never really thought about the human capacity to work continuously. I didn't actually realize I had to put in so much time to the three works until I actually ran with them, but I could've predicted it if I had really dedicated time to planning the jobs. So for the past two days I've been hit by this really bad case of cold that kept me mostly in bed (not as bad as Wil's Trifecta but just as damaging to my workflow). I gotta find some literature to proove this but based on recent discoveries my personal theory is that no person can healthily do dedicated work for more than twelve hours a day for five days straight.
Elbert Hubbard says, "Get happines out of your work or you may never know what happines is" (Okay, I cheated; I got that off a calendar :p). I totally agree with that one but there's two sides to that coin. It has not been a very healthy week for me. Not just in the physical sense (though physical is what it comes down to). Do you remember the case about the CS player which died after playing for two and a half days straight? The one covered in CNN happened in Korea, but I think I've heard it happened in Hongkong, Singapore, and other places. Here in Indonesia, too. And not just CS, either.
So I owe a few people a lot of apologies for broken promises and I gotta cut back on my work. At least cut back to levels which are acceptable to my body, being the big fat overgrown baby that I am. Being a freelancer means that you have got to be your own time manager. Don't know about a regular nine-to-five because the traffic, being what it is in Jakarta, would add an extra four hours. But I gotta start excercising regularly again. I used to run around my campus at least three times a week and followed it up pulling a pair of five kilo barbells a couple of times. At my tenth and eleventh semester I think. At least that's the last time I can remember doing it. I feel a lot healthier back then.
But freelancing or not, I gotta realize my limits. I don't multitask well. I am limited by the number of hours I can work in a day. And Jakarta being the city of bloodthirsty wolves that it is, I must also work on fixing these deficiencies.
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I wrote that last Saturday. My nose is still running and my throat is raspy. The RegCleaner NAV subscription trick doesn't work. Jobs take on new twists, and tasks I thought were completed come back to haunt me still. Not to mention the ones I'm not done with.
I haven't checked my e-mail in a while. Hope I didn't miss any job interviews...
Its 4.49 in the morning. I'm listening to 'And I Love Her'. At least I'm not feverish.
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
