What gets you through your day?

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For me, it's music, I Love Lucy, and junk food. What gets you through your boring tasks?

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Answers

I have a 2.5 liter jug of water at my desk. When I'm really bored, I like to see how many times I can refill it and finish it off in a day. My current record is 3 times, but I was REALLY bored.

Normally, it's surfing weird web pages and eating GORP. I like to send surreal email to my coworkers, too. Keeps 'em on their toes.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001


Having email available so I can break for a sec and not feel totally alone with my boring task.

Websurfing if the boredom is from lack of work. If it's a must-do job that is boring the heck out of me, playing stupid games of breaking it down and clocking myself (ok...2 minutes to file all the "A" docs....go!)

Music, except my office roomie and I have different opinions about what is productive background noise for keeping us going...she likes very soothing stuff that just says 'naptime' to me, and I like stuff with lots of rythmn and beat so I can keep a pace.

Lately, walking... every hour, if the weather isn't hideous, I get up and take a walk around the building. If I worked somewhere where they expected me to ask to leave my desk, I'd have to stab my eyeballs out.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001


MP3s, chocolate espresso and mint cocoa from the machine in the cafeteria, posting silly things on the Web, and the occasional chat with my officemate. When I have to do something tedious that doesn't require the computer, I take it to a cafe and drink real coffee.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Diet Cherry Coke and Talking Heads blasting loud enough so I'm obligated to headbang.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Orangina and croissants in the morning from Au Bon Pain, varied throughout the week with a medium cream and sugar with coffee roll from Dunkin Donuts. Sanity preservation maintained by Launchcast and and my MP3 collection, as well as many many many variations on anal sex humor as possible, including but not limited to: prison bitch jokes (all punctuated with a bellowing 'Bend over!'), 1001 uses for Vaseline and making Flash porno films featuring a stuffed panda and a robot with boom-chicka-boom-boom music. Today features my favorite lunch hour treat: a group trip to India Garden.

All of this makes me extraordinarily productive.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001



Reading xeney.com. :)

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Goofing off on the Web. Solitaire.

When I'm doing something I don't enjoy doing, music makes the time pass more slowly. I'm aware of each three minute unit.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001


Chocolate. Stopping to take a walk in the sun. My cats.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2001

napping. planning a nap. rising from a nap freshly napped. thinking about the next time I get to nap.

(okay, I'm joking) (sorta)

Music if I'm doing accounting / office stuff for our biz. Sometimes I'll stick in videos of movies I love and don't have to look at all the time but can glance at and follow along. Surfing, but that slows down the inevitable horror of accounting, so I try not to when I'm in the middle of the task.

Knowing if I finish the office / accounting stuff, I'll have time to write (where silence is wonderful, but I've trained myself to write even with two kids, a husband and all their friens trying to mimic Armageddon around me)... and reading. Knowing if I finish, I'll get time to read is a real treat. (Or breaking down a task - if I do X, I get to read three chapters now, then I'll do Y and read three more... helps if it's a truly hideous task, like taxes.)

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2001


I once worked in an unhappy office where everyone was a closet Solitaire addict. We would pass tips to each other at parties. "If you can't move at least three cards on the initial layout, give up and redeal," an executive once told me.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2001


Survivor, my morning cappuccino, web surfing, checking my e-mail, my husband who can always make me laugh, my 2 cats who love me every single minute, and days when there is NO rain in the weather.com forecast!

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001

Funny how most of the things that carry us through our days are inherently tied to consuming. Consumption seems like a veritable escape from facing whatever is that we're not talking about, to ourselves or with others. There used to be the idea that every minute of your life could be significant, never a wasted day. Even the things we do to break our routines now seem themselves to be routines. I can't decide whether or not the collective consciousness that nothing matters is great or terrible. We only have small, simple things to enjoy, and there is a finite amount of pleasure in the world. Really goddamn depressing.

And that is my answer to getting me through my days, and will probably eventually be my demise. Be moody, be passionate. Screw stuff up, fix it and screw it up again. As my favorite guitarist once said, if you hit a sour note, hit it twice so they'll know you meant it. Don't be afraid to let things go. No one has to do one thing their whole life. We will not be the best at anything after doing it for 20 years, it will not amount to anything, there is no hall of fame for the great and tireless workers who efficiently do their jobs. 20 jobs in 20 years accomplishes just as much as 1.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001


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