There’s been an idea brewing in my mind for a few days now regarding my work performance and level of satisfaction.

I do computer programming for a living. I really do love programming computers–it’s something I’ll do for free! It’s especially enjoyable and satisfying when I get into The Zone and can produce consistently high quality work at a pace that consistently surprises other people who have not yet experienced this effect.

However, the other side of The Zone is The Crash. I’m not emotionally depressed during The Crash (at least, certainly not in the way that I’ve experienced depression in the past), but I am largely unmotivated and find it difficult to do even the more simple coding tasks. During The Crash, I will write perhaps 10-100 lines of code in a full 8-hour day whereas during The Zone, it is possible to watch the product unfold before your eyes at times.

At first, I was thinking that these peaks and valleys were a problem in and of themselves! That is, I get into The Zone and I’m amazingly productive, but what follows–what ALWAYS follows–is The Crash, which can last for a week or longer at times. This induces quite a lot of anxiety, because I feel a compulsion to do the work regardless of whether or not I feel productive, much less whether I’m invested in the larger picture. In fact, the last project I had had a deadline that was quickly approaching whilst I stared at my screen. I felt more and more anxiety, because there was work that “I needed to do” but I seemed incapable of doing any of it. Finally (and this is part of the key), I would much rather inform a mafioso about the disrepute of his mother than I would want go to my boss to tell him or her that I am not able to work today.

Perhaps this is a tad imbalanced?

I was thinking that I would approach my boss and ask about managing my work patterns so that I could increase my average productivity by smoothing out the peaks and the valleys. As with all unexamined theories, it sounded good until I brought it before somebody with greater experience and insight than I!

What I got out of that was that my productivity patterns aren’t something that need to be changed, necessarily. Just as an athlete finds The Zone physically, so does a programmer find The Zone mentally. But it is not something that is under one’s control. One can certainly prepare for it and, over time, can make increasingly better use of it, but it no more is accessible through a conscious switch anymore than whether you feel hungry or not.

The problem isn’t The Zone. The problem is my anxiety about completing projects. It’s this anxiety which drives me to burn through as much as I possibly can while I am in The Zone. This is why The Crash can last for up to a week or more at times.

What I don’t do at work is manage the expectations of others. I haven’t tried to communicate with my bosses about my natural productivity cycle. What ends up happening is that they see the burst of productivity while I am in The Zone and begin to set their schedules based on that level of production. (This has already begun to happen.) If they understand that the productivity while I am in The Zone comes at a natural cost, they haven’t bothered to work that into their time estimates.

This goes back to my awful experience as a child where negotiation was absolutely impossible. My father would demand a task and if the task wasn’t done when he asked, how he liked it, and as fast as he liked it, he would bellow and yell with his veins bulging and his eyes popping… truly a terrifying sight to behold as a young child, especially when you knew exactly what this man was capable of: physical assault.

(Not to leave my mother out of the equation, but my father was definitely the greater tyrant in this.)

There are two major things that come out of this. The first is to acknowledge when I am starting to feel tired when I am in The Zone and to recognize that I will feel anxiety while I am within it, related to a Completion Anxiety that runs back to my childhood experience.

The second is that I can do my part to manage the expectations of my supervisors. They cannot create project plans that take into account my natural productivity boosts and latencies if I do not communicate with them. Of course, I am completely unable to control whether they desire to negotiate on this score, but if that happens, I will have closure.

Massive thanks to Stef and the FDR pre-BBQers.

Over the past week, I had a couple of good interviews for a temp-to-perm opportunity in the coastal area of New Hampshah… so I am starting tomorrow! At 8:30am! OMG!

I really liked the people there, and I thought it was a good fit technically, and I like the area (seacoast!), and, finally, I think that what they do is pretty darn interesting!

I had an idea… what was it? Oh, yeah! I’ll have to email that one to myself for later!

I’m hoping to relocate down there before the end of the contract. That will be dictated primarily by my financial health, so we’ll see how quickly I can put down this ungodly beast! It shouldn’t take much longer than six weeks for me to do so.

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