Last night turned into one of the nights where, once one's job is finished, one then proceeds to start another job. If you work at a particular task for any length of time, you have a pretty good feel for how long the task will take to complete. After training, QCing and programming throughout my work evening, midnight rolled around and I was done. Well, I was done with what I had been assigned to do that day. There was work that remained- work that I had managed to avoid on the previous evening (and on the previous evening, somehow I knew I'd be seeing it again).
Monday night, I was asked at 0100 to work on this job. As there were two programs involved, I knew it would take a minimum of three hours to complete. Tuesday night, however, the day's tasks were done by by midnight, and Chazbaby asked if I could take care of it. I agreed.
Four hours later, I was getting into my truck, shaking my head and wondering why, why, why? I suppose the real answer is simply because the job needed to be done, and done properly. So, I sucked it up and did it.
This, in turn, got me to thinking about time management on a grander scale- and in this case, grander means "in my life" . Whenever I decide to "take one for the team", I pay for it the next day in terms of lost time. I generally get enough sleep- although its generally not as much as I'd like. The payment comes in the realm of lost personal time, and here is where my digital dilemna lies.
Like many folks that I know, much of my waking day is spent on the computer. Education, entertainment, information- all occur for me at the PC. My problem is not with too much time on the PC; rather, my problem is not properly apportioning my time on the PC... and twelve (or even more) hour workdays complicate this even further. I consider myself to be a night owl, generally doing my best work when most civilized folks are fast asleep. Consequently, I work an evening shift. Problems arise when I work late, though, as in order to get enough sleep, I have to sleep later into the day. Many (if not most) sleep experts recommend arising and going to bed at approximately the same time every day. In my line of work and on the shift I work, this is almost never possible, so I attempt to compensate by at least getting a decent amount of sleep before rejoining the fray.
Postscript to sleep... I started writing this on Tuesday of this week. As of Thursday (actually, Friday morning), I had worked over forty hours, and I will also be back on Saturday.
No data news to report tonight, so until next time, I remain hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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