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| I accomplish more in an hour than Congress accomplishes in a whole year. |
It's funny because, in the dozen or so interviews I've ever been questioned in, I'm frequently asked
how I work under pressure. As someone whose first job was at McDonald's (with a double drive-through which I frequently manned independently, even during rush hours when we'd serve up to a hundred or so cars within an hour), working under pressure is one of my fortes.
Additionally, I've always just been someone who works quickly. I was often the first person in class from elementary school on to finish an assignment. Teachers chided me and reminded me that it wasn't a race. But I wasn't working fast to finish first or even just to "get it over with." I am just naturally a fast worker. I type fast (typically I type around ninety words a minute, but I can do more without much strain or effort), I eat relatively fast (maybe because lunches were twenty-three minutes in high school), I get ready to go out quickly (no, you don't understand -- in high school, I woke up at 6:25 and be outside for the bus by 6:32), and I talk fast (maybe this is a New England thing, because it's certainly not this way in the South).
My current supervisors say to me, "Slow down. It's fine."
But why would I slow down if I can comfortably (perhaps more comfortably than if I slowed down) complete a task that takes someone else an hour in half-an-hour? Productivity, in my mind, is a good thing. And I don't believe my work suffers for my speed. I make just as many (or as few) mistakes as anyone else, sometimes even less. Believe me, if my speed was hurting the quality of my work, I would force myself to slow down. I have a thing for doing the best I can at everything -- it's how I enjoy work; even if I don't enjoy the work itself, I like to do things well. But that's another topic for another day.
So I can slow down by taking five minutes here and there to check Facebook or pick a new Pandora station or take a walk around the office to stretch my legs. And I do, but I still work too quickly. Maybe if I'm accomplishing twice as much work as anyone else is, then I should get paid twice as much. (Hint, hint, future employers -- just kidding, of course. Kind of.)
I spoke with my mother about this and put it this way: I work as quickly as my brain allows me to. But my brain thinks as fast as it thinks -- I can't go all meta on it and make it slow down. If there's a way to do this, then I am not aware of it. I don't think meditation qualifies. In fact, meditation, like defragging a computer, probably frees up those jammed neuron paths to make your thought processes outside of meditation even faster. I'm typically not hopped up on caffeine (although I had more coffee yesterday than I've ever had in one day before -- I was desperate and even put a note up facing out on my cubicle that said I was now accepting coffee donations).
I don't have a solution for this problem with the speed at which I work. I don't know that I want to "fix" it. I'm not sure it's really a problem. It's only a problem for me in that I don't always have something to do because I eat up all of the assignments before anyone can make any more for me. I'm not even entirely sure of the source of my fast-moving work style. Maybe it's my fear of death and mortality. Maybe I want to accomplish as much as I can before I die (which I recognize at a conscious level, but perhaps it effects my working style at a more subconscious level). It's not that I can't concentrate on one thing for extended periods of time. I definitely can, but if I don't have to, why would I?
Even this blog post, now at 760 words according to 750words.com, took me approximately ten minutes to write. I began with no plan except for the general topic of how quickly I work. No outline, no phrases in mind, just a topic. And here it is.
Did the quality suffer for the speed? You tell me.
Congress image courtesy of thinkprogress.org.
Speedometer image courtesy of wallgc.com
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