Back In The Saddle

So now it really begins. That first couple of days is all back-slappy, how-was-your-holiday stuff. Nobody really expects anyone to get much done that first day or two. But once we clear that first weekend we hit the ground running, again.

I am covering two positions, now. We expect to hire someone in a few weeks but for now my plate is suddenly full of many little things that need attention from both my job and another recently-vacated position. I had plans for Monday and Tuesday and today, but already things are starting to slide a little. I fixed a page of mine. I fixed a page of his, and in the process broke something else. I fixed that, which means I now need to correct a few dozen little things in several other pages. And so it goes.

I love riding the wave. I love being in the zone. Do you know what I mean? There are times when you get into a project, get your head down and start typing… and before you know it, it's time for lunch. You come back from lunch, point-point, click-click, and the next thing you know it's time to go home. An entire day passes in a fog of speedy productivity.

I work in an airless, windowless cubicle farm. To keep some measure of privacy I plug my iPod into my head about 8:00am and keep it there. Sometimes I listen to music, but most often it's podcasts, like little radio shows about web design or technology. I can hear my own office telephone ring, but I don't have to listen to half a phone call about someone's wife or kids or whatever. One day I finished all of my podcasts and noticed it was awfully quiet in here and discovered I was all alone. Everyone had been gone for half an hour.

I loved that!

To me the worst days are the ones where you start a project and keep getting interrupted. You never get to a point where you can examine your work and say "There! Now that is something to be proud of!" You never quite get to a place where you can see the whole arc of a thought as it moves from that first spark of inspiration and then becomes an image on your page, or a new division or a new CSS rule, a sentence or a paragraph or whatever. Type-type telephone. Type-type meeting. Those days are awful, and I have had entire weeks like that.

But this year, I'm going to try to concentrate on doing fewer things, better. There really is no such thing as multitasking, I'm starting to believe. You can do one thing really well, or two things passably well, or three things if nobody really cares about the outcome. With that fourth thing you start to notice quality suffering, or that everything is taking longer than it really should. So I'm going to try to winnow down my list and do a better job on the things I do, and get them done faster.

But of course I'm still at the mercy of anyone who happens by with a question, who calls or e-mails. And I'm covering that other position, too. At least for a while. So maybe there is something to all of this plate-spinning. At least for the time being.

I'm going to try really hard to do the best that I can at the things I do, this year. If I can help you in any way, I'd be happy to. But maybe you should call before you stop by, for a while.