2018-11-03 Weekend Post!

Well, this is a rare thing! I actually have a bit of time in front of
my computer to write something on the weekend.

It's another grey and dismal November day. The kids are busy with
crafts and are entertaining themselves for the moment. I'm definitely
feeling a bit "meh" right now but that's not bad considering it's
been rainy and grey for what feels like weeks now.

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I think I want to expand a bit on the topic of productivity I briefly
touched on yesterday. Doing something interesting at work is so
motivating. Yesterday, I spent most of the day working out how our
application captures productivity stats since our documentation leaves
much to be desired. In the end, I was able to run a couple simple
queries and export everything into spreadsheets for the Operations
team to analyze. I also created a couple more "capture points" that
will note when work is done involving certain products. Operations is
interested in this data as it's a rough indicator of a task that
requires significantly more work than usual. It was rewarding to
finally work out something that provided a lot of value to people I
support via the application.

I am reasonably happy with the job I have. I work with great
people and my boss is a very reasonable person. Unfortunately, some of
the tasks I do at work are very repetitive. I've automated some of
them with python scripts so that helps but there are still some parts
of these repetitive jobs that require my input. I really dislike doing
boring repetitive things.

The amount of work on my list fluctuates over the weeks. Sometimes I'm
so busy I'm not sure how I'll get everything done. Other times, I have
to actively hunt down things to do. I find these times the hardest
though I am fortunate that they rarely last too long.  It's very
tiring trying to fill your day with things so you look
"busy". Personally, when I managed people I was less worried about the
hours they kept and more worried about what work they got done. It's
probably all in my head but I can't help feeling everyone is watching
when you arrive and when you leave. This is why I prefer to work from
home when I can. I still get the work done but I don't the pressure to
"look busy" or keep certain hours.

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I guess that's all the time I have to write for now. Hurray for
weekend posts! Happy Saturday everyone!