[Totally OT] Real Life Puzzle

"ScratchMonkey" wrote in
message ...
wrote in news:4aa421b6$0$1642
:

I do get my work done, though, and I meet my deadlines, so I
don't feel
guilty about it. I've been in the workforce for decades and my
style of
working has always been like this. When I'm on a roll, I work
fast,
and that makes up for the slow start.

Mind work is fundamentally different from assembly work. With
assembly
work, there's correlation between productivity and time spent, so
it makes
sense to charge/pay based on time. But with mind work, there's
little
correlation, so basing pay on time is often counter-productive.

I recognize in myself the arrival of "Flow", a Zen-like mental
state that
requires some time to achieve but when it's there, I can achieve
phenomenal
rates of concentration and, hence, productivity. Interruption of
Flow means
I might need another 10-20 minutes to reachieve it, so it's
important that
I work somewhere quiet where I'm not interrupted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29

Flow is often more enticing than sex, and it's a common feeling
when
playing video games. This is why women can find it so hard to drag
their
men away from a game.

For the record, it isn't always the women who can't get the men away
from the video games.

Jo

"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote in
message ...
Mind work is fundamentally different from assembly work. [...]
I recognize in myself the arrival of "Flow", a Zen-like mental
state that requires some time to achieve but when it's there,
I can achieve phenomenal rates of concentration and, hence,
productivity.

You are using the same amounts of brain doing
physical-coordination
tasks as conceptual ones. There isn't that big a difference.


I have to respectfully disagree. It is really hard to take
physical-coordination tasks home with you. Conceptual ones you
often even end up taking to sleep with you.

Jo

Jofirey wrote:

"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote in message
...
Mind work is fundamentally different from assembly work. [...]
I recognize in myself the arrival of "Flow", a Zen-like mental
state that requires some time to achieve but when it's there,
I can achieve phenomenal rates of concentration and, hence,
productivity.

You are using the same amounts of brain doing physical-coordination
tasks as conceptual ones. There isn't that big a difference.


I have to respectfully disagree. It is really hard to take
physical-coordination tasks home with you. Conceptual ones you often
even end up taking to sleep with you.

Jo

Sometimes, yes.

Sometimes you find yourself repeating the physical task in your dreams.

--
Cheryl

It is really hard to take physical-coordination tasks home with
you. Conceptual ones you often even end up taking to sleep with you.
Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes you find yourself repeating the physical task in your dreams.

The first job I ever had was stacking timber as it came off a conveyor
through a boric acid rot-treatment spray (hot pink fluid). I needed
to guide each plank into the stack, where it would land with a splat
and spray me with warm pink boric acid. I used to go home and dream of
piles of wobbling dripping soggy timber hundreds of feet high looming
over me.

==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k === http://www.campin.me.uk ====
Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739 557
CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic fonts
****** I killfile Google posts - email me if you want to be whitelisted ******

"Cheryl" wrote in message
...
Jofirey wrote:

"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote in
message ...
Mind work is fundamentally different from assembly work. [...]
I recognize in myself the arrival of "Flow", a Zen-like mental
state that requires some time to achieve but when it's there,
I can achieve phenomenal rates of concentration and, hence,
productivity.

You are using the same amounts of brain doing
physical-coordination
tasks as conceptual ones. There isn't that big a difference.


I have to respectfully disagree. It is really hard to take
physical-coordination tasks home with you. Conceptual ones you
often even end up taking to sleep with you.

Jo

Sometimes, yes.

Sometimes you find yourself repeating the physical task in your
dreams.

--
You are right. But in those cases you never wake up to find you
have accomplished something.

Jo

"Jofirey" wrote in news:7gkj0gF2pqh1hU1
@mid.individual.net:

For the record, it isn't always the women who can't get the men away
from the video games.

True. I was just pointing out that guys aren't always just
walking/talking/sleeping sex drives. On rare occasions, we find something
else more interesting.

"Jofirey" wrote in news:7gkj9eF2p16dfU1
@mid.individual.net:

I have to respectfully disagree. It is really hard to take
physical-coordination tasks home with you. Conceptual ones you
often even end up taking to sleep with you.

Exactly. And your boss can correlate your physical work with the time
spent, and pay you based on the clock. Such bean counter types get really
cranky if you try to bill them for your sleep time.

I recall in college that I'd often spend the night dreaming about calculus
and linear algebra.

OTOH, these days, I get a lot of "cerebral prep" work done in the shower.
It's a boring place to be, and I have soap crayons my sister bought me to
write notes on the tile when I get ideas I know I'll forget by the time I
get to my desk.

http://www.crayolastore.com/product_...?T1=CRA+023002

Jack Campin - bogus address wrote in news:bogus-
:

You are using the same amounts of brain doing physical-coordination
tasks as conceptual ones. There isn't that big a difference.

You may be right, but it's harder to bill for sitting and thinking, esp.
when it overlaps with other tasks.

I work in automation, and I know how tricky "simple" tasks can be to
automate. Simply identifying a work piece on a conveyor and orienting it is
a major task.

I love looking at how automation tasks must be restructured to compensate
for the shortcomings of machines. Check out the difference between how hand
sewing and machine sewing works. I didn't understand machine sewing until I
saw a fascinating episode of Secret Life of Machines that replicated it in
a giant human-sized model.

http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/..._machine.shtml

You can watch the episode (season 1, episode 4) he

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/

A similar task is winding torroidal transformers. The winding machines that
do this are awesome works of Rube Goldberg ingenuity.

Jofirey wrote:

"Cheryl" wrote in message
...
Jofirey wrote:

"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote in
message ...
Mind work is fundamentally different from assembly work. [...]
I recognize in myself the arrival of "Flow", a Zen-like mental
state that requires some time to achieve but when it's there,
I can achieve phenomenal rates of concentration and, hence,
productivity.

You are using the same amounts of brain doing physical-coordination
tasks as conceptual ones. There isn't that big a difference.


I have to respectfully disagree. It is really hard to take
physical-coordination tasks home with you. Conceptual ones you often
even end up taking to sleep with you.

Jo

Sometimes, yes.

Sometimes you find yourself repeating the physical task in your dreams.

--
You are right. But in those cases you never wake up to find you have
accomplished something.

Not unless you've figured out a new way to organize the work.

--
Cheryl

Cheryl wrote:

Jofirey wrote:

"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote in message

You are using the same amounts of brain doing physical-coordination
tasks as conceptual ones. There isn't that big a difference.

I have to respectfully disagree. It is really hard to take
physical-coordination tasks home with you. Conceptual ones you often
even end up taking to sleep with you.

Sometimes you find yourself repeating the physical task in your dreams.

I've done lots of both kinds of work, and I agree with Jack and Cheryl.
In fact I'm far more likely to dream about repetitive physical tasks
than about conceptual work problems.

And just because your conscious mind doesn't need to be as focused for
assembly-line type tasks as it does for intellectual problem-solving,
doesn't mean your brain's not working!

Joyce

--
I want freedom, the right to self expression, everyone's right to
beautiful radiant things. -- Emma Goldman