Monday, August 13, 2018
What does it mean to be comfortable? It can mean a lot different things in different situations. For this post I'm going to talk about being comfortable in how you work. This doesn't just apply to working at a job, it also applies to working at home. When I say working at home, I mean doing chores around the house. I've realized the way I work at home, is similar to the way I work at the office.
I was reading a book about personalities, which was fascinating (I still need to finish it) and the book talks about how we can group people into four different categories. I'm not going to propose categories for how people work, but I will talk about styles of work I have personally taken on. By taken on, I mean ways I have worked in a job.
This is when you're given a list of tasks to complete and you are literally keeping track of how much time you spend on each task. Once you finish that list of tasks, you'll get a new list of tasks. You're goal is to get as many tasks done in as little time as possible. This keeps going on and on. Some people might like this, as it keeps them busy and they can be exposed to a lot of tasks in different areas. For me, this is draining. I can do it, but it gets boring fast.
I say problem based, because a problem can turn into a project in this scenario. The problem can also be related to a project, whereas many tasks can be part of a problem. In the problem based approach, your main goal isn't necessarily trying to complete as many problems as possible, but rather solving the problem in the best way possible. This problem based approach will also have a time component, but not always strict. The goal of this approach is to prevent or reduce future problems. I like this approach, because it allows me to explore options and question things as well. I like questioning things, it helps me learn more about why things are the way they are, which can potentially yield a better solution.
Like I previously stated, this is my prefered way to work and some problems lend themselves to this approach more than others. If there is a hard deadline, then I may not have the time to explore many options. I also do get the urge to complete a few tasks quickly in succession if I can. It feels good to do that as well, but my preference is to provide a good long-term solution when I can.
I would say it depends. In general, I don't always want to keep putting myself in uncomfortable positions, because I will eventually need to recover from those. So, I'll need to return to a comfortable position and then push again. The point of this post is to highlight the fact that we all have different levels of comfort in the way we work. Like I said before, my preference is to use my time finding the best solution than finding the quickest solution. In reality, I'll probably go back and forth between those, but once again, I understand that there is a time and place for both approaches.
That book talks about the four personality categories people can fall into. The idea is that a person usually falls into one of the four categories, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's how they will always act. It's more about that person being in a specific category the majority of the time. What's even more interesting is that the person can fall into other categories depending on the situation. That's the point that I was trying to make about myself. I fall into the problem based style of working for the majority of the time, but depending on the situation I'll switch to the task based approach.
If you made it this far, I wanted to mention that I took the personality test in the personality book and I almost equally fall into every category. It's interesting, because I feel like I can never say that I'm 'this' type of person. So, either this mystery personality book is excellent or it's terrible. I'm going to go on the safe side and say that it's as excellent as it is terrible.