Daily Prompt – Nightmare Job

In honor of Labor Day in North America, tell us what’s the one job you could never imagine yourself doing.

Well, one should never say never, because you’ll probably just jinx yourself. I never imagined that I’d be working in the sort of role I’m currently in… And I’ve been there for 10years so far.

25 July – 10 Images

Tell the story of your day with 10 images.

You would think that it would be relatively simple to do this task, right? Well so did I. And I was wrong. So here it is… over a month late.

Daily Prompt – Have You Never Been Mellow?

After a long day at work or school, what are your favorite ways to wind down and decompress?

If I truly had my way with this, there are a couple of different approaches I would absolutely love to take (and used to take when I was single). Now, for the sake of the post, let’s just go ahead and assume that it’s been an incredibly long and exhausting day…

Option 1
I would come home, have a very small and quick / easy dinner by about 6:30pm, have a long hot shower, jump straight into my pj’s, crawl into bed and then watch like four or five episodes back-to-back of one of my favourite tv shows.

Option 2
I would come home, collapse on the bed and fall asleep. I would then probably wake up around midnight, 1am with my bag still on my back, roll off the bed and stumble around in the dark, only to get naked and crawl into bed. I’d find the warm spot where I’d previously been laying, and position myself for maximum warmth exposure, and then go back to sleep.

Option 3
If I’d had a particularly shitty day at work, and was so unbearably bubbling with pure rage, I’d take myself down to the gym for a BODYPUMP™ class and channel all my rage into a weights class. I’d be the one towards the back of the class with rather light weights (well, compared to all the hardcore women in the class), and sweat my hole out for an hour. Breathing heavily through clenched teeth, totally regretting the decision to even come to the gym. Afterwards, I’d drag my sweaty self home for a nice hot shower, and then completely stuff my face with cheese and spinach sausage rolls, followed by either ice-cream or chocolate.

Nowadays, I live a life full of late nights, late dinner and early mornings. I’m a bit over it. I’m finding that Option 2 is regularly becoming something I wish I could do several times per week. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t support such an idea.

Just thinking about it is starting to make me feel a bit sleepy….

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Daily Prompt: Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

Tell us your tried and true techniques for focusing when that deadline looms and you need to get work done. In other words, how do you avoid wasted days and wasted nights?

Well, in a work environment, I find that I thrive a) when the pressure is on – I find that I really get into a specific head-space and just get. shit. done.; and b) when I’m in the office out of hours.

Being in the office at 7am or after 5pm can be when I am literally the most productive. There’s no phones to answer, there’s no banal conversations to be had, there’s no distractions from anybody, I can just do my work completely hassle free. I must say, that’s one of the best ways in which I operate.

Just recently I was in the office at 5:15am. On a friday. And the only reason was because I had a stack of work to get through – work that needed to be finished by certain times, and reports that were required the day prior. Granted I didn’t manage to do those reports because I had to sit down and write them from scratch which was quite time consuming… hence why being in the office so early. Even then, I spent almost three hours configuring a few different reports, and managing the data within the reports to give to one of the bosses.

The other reason I was in so early was to ensure that all my work was up to date as I was going to be on leave the following week and wanted to make sure that I had nothing outstanding for when I returned… (Ironically, I have a tendency to also leave those kind of tasks until literally the last minute. The last work day for the year is when I’ll find myself tidying my desk and doing six-months worth of filing, sorting out papers, recycling all my excess scrap paper… you know, the tasks that I should have at least been doing the week prior!!)

One of the tasks that I really loathe with my role is collating giant training folders. It’s a massive task to undertake. It’s a lot of printing of papers, and collating those papers into sections, then putting multiple sections into folders with numerous divider tabs etc. It’s time consuming and incredibly fiddly. So, I always try to make sure that I use that time as effectively as possible. Whilst a big print job is on, I’ll sit down and stick on divider labels. When I’m out the back on my own collating the papers into the folders, I take my iPad, and I’ll watch several episodes of a TV show to help pass the time.

When I’m stuck at my desk, I put on some music to make the situation just slightly more bearable, and that helps pass the time as well.

…and sometimes if I’m alone in the office, a little dancing doesn’t hurt either 😉

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/prompt-wasted-days/