I’ve written a lot about being bored or not being productive in my life. I have had a lot of issues with being productive while working since I don’t have to focus on my work all the time. I have done some things to cure my boredom that I know are very unproductive like watching a lot of random things on YouTube. It’s not easy for me to find things to do between customers at work because they need to be things that are easy to stop doing and pick back up where I left off.
That’s why the other job I’ve been doing has been good for me. It’s a lot of data entry or online searching so it’s easy to put the browser window that I’m working on behind my customer service browser when I have a customer. And I’ve been able to do that work most days in the past week or so because there was a new task to start on. This contract hasn’t been as steady as my past ones were because the work is a bit in flux. But I did just sign a new contract to extend this one for another few months (there were several delays in my work and there was no way to finish the hours by the end of the year).
Obviously, having my other job to do it most than just a good way to spend my time between my customers because I do need that income, but I love that it helps me stay focused on doing good things when I’m stuck at my computer for so many hours a day. And for both the income and the work, I hope that there will be another contract for me to sign when the extension for this current contract is up.
But I also have discovered that being productive is something I crave other times of the day. When I’m dealing with a lot of pain and nausea (like I am right now), I don’t really leave my house much. If there’s something I have to go to, I’ll do it. But if I can push something to another day I usually will. All I want to do is stay home and be in comfortable clothes and get through the discomfort the best I can. And when there is a lot of tv to catch up on, I admit that I spend a lot of that time at home watching things on my DVR. But when there aren’t new episodes to watch, I don’t want to be mindlessly going through different streaming services to find something to entertain me.
It’s not easy to find something to keep me busy when I feel as badly as I do right now, but whenever I find something it really does improve my mood. If someone asks me to help them with research online or another task I can do, I feel so accomplished when it’s completed. I don’t forget about how I feel, but it can be a good distraction. And when it’s something that I can pause when the pain and nausea get too bad to focus, even better.
Lately, I’ve been doing lots of random tasks around my house during that downtime. I have gotten a lot of organizing done (I still have a lot to do, but it’s a work in progress). And the holiday cards that I ordered a while ago finally arrived at my house (they were lost in shipping and had to be resent to me which delayed them a lot). So I have about 50 cards to write and address. I can’t put off getting stamps for them as long as I’d like since I need them to be in the mail soon, but I have to finish doing the cards before I go to the post office. So writing those will likely be my afternoon and evening work for today and tomorrow.
I won’t have much busywork to do next week and I have even more downtime because of the holiday schedule. But I think when it’s the holidays I can be lazy and not feel as bad about it. I do want to have a few tasks on my to-do list that I can work on just in case I feel the need to get something done. And if I don’t get everything done, then I can just work on them between customers when I don’t have the other job to do or after work if I don’t have anything planned.
I’m not going to wish that I was busier because I know that can backfire. But it is nice to know that I’m being helpful or productive when I know that it’s easy to be lazy. And that feeling of accomplishment when I’m not feeling overwhelmed is really great and I want to find more ways to get to that point.
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