Walking Alone

My daily plan has been interrupted by a talky sort, and I'm not quite sure how to deal with it.

I walk to work and I walk home again. It takes me about 40 minutes and I enjoy it. I use the time to listen to podcasts, read my Kindle, or just think. It's my time and I use it to prepare myself for the work ahead of me or to recover from it afterwards.

Now though someone else from my office has started walking the same way.

This is not the first colleague to pass me on the way to work. People have been walking my way for some time but we have a mutual agreement to ignore each other. We realise that the walk to work is sacrosanct, not to be cheapened with office gossip or talk of weekend plans. At best we give each other a short curt nod as one of us powerwalks past the other. It is an arrangement with which we are happy.

But this new person is different. This new person is an Extrovert!

"Simon!" she shouts at me as I walk past her, "Simon!" For a moment, I consider pretending I don't hear her. I reach for my ipod to turn up the volume, but it's hopeless. She'll keep shouting at me.

I turn to look at her, mouthing curses, then take off my headphones and twist my mouth into a smile.

"Hi, How you going?" I say, switching into extrovert mode, and we begin our small talk peppered 20 minute trek to the office.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I dislike this person, but I don't do well with small talk at the best times. Small takes effort and thought, working out what to say next. I especially don't do well with small talk when I'm not expecting it. My walk to work is a hallowed moment of non-communication, a few minutes in the day when I know that I won't have to deal with someone else's life, preperation for 7 hours of customer calls. The last thing I want is someone else to talk to.

She carries on oblivious. She is friendly and polite, and shows an interest in me, and talks, and tells me stories, and throws my whole day out of sync.

Finally we arrive. I thank her for walking with me and retreat to the relative quiet of my desk, where I can sit down and read for few blessed minutes before the calls start coming in. Then I log in and the day begins.

Finally as 5 roll around I pack up, tired, slightly stressed, but glad the day is done, ready for my walk home, 40 minutes to unwind, nothing but me, my thoughts, and the sounds of a city that is heading back home.

And then I look up and see my new walking buddy smiling at me.

"Are you walking home tonight?" she asks...

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Enlightenment in the office. A failed experiment

I really did try to make this work. I refuse to take full responsibility for it's failure. But, to be honest, it would probably have been a bit easier if I'd known exactly what I was trying to find out before I started it. Just trying to find out how stressed I was is a particularly unreliable measurement as my mood changes several times throughout the day. In the morning for example, it tends to be quite low, as I have to leave the house. Around 12 o'clock it goes up as lunchtime starts, and then, at around 1, when I pull myself back to the office it sinks rapidly as my body diverts all it's attention to digesting the huge amounts of sugary goodness I consume at lunchtime and so doesn't have time be happy.

 

Throughout the week my moods swung from 1 to 5 with wild abandonment, and even quicker back in the opposite direction. And is is for someone who, as a rule, doesn't consider himself to be overly emotional. I try as much as possible to keep myself solidly british in my emotions, which is to keep generally optimistic and avoid complaining.

 

The experiment would have been easier however if the Little Book of Calm at Work had actually contained some sensible suggestions that the average office pleb can use.

 

"If you want to stay calm, never go into a meeting unless it has a clearly defined agenda," only works if you happen to be in an office that actually allows its staff to have freewill. Likewise, "You'll feel calm if you walk away from the things you can't do anything about, and concentrate on those you can influence, only really matters if the things you can't do anything about didn't make customers yell at you.

 

However the week did have one merit.

 

By managing to admit that I was struggling to a team leader we have now worked out a new plan, divided my day up differently, and eventually, although this is still very much in the 'planning' stages, created a new role for me to move into based on the things I actually want to do with my job.

 

I can not however thank the Little Book of Calm at Work for this, so much as I can thank the level 5 stress experiences. The one thing the Little Book of Calm at Work forget to mention is that Stress can be a great motivator. In this case it motivated me to ask to discuss things with my boss and work out how to fix it.

 

Maybe there's a market for the Little Book of STRESS at Work? It would at least be more practical.

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Enlightenment in the Office - The Notebook

So, I really should research these experiments before I just jump into them. It turns out that the "Little Book of Calm at Work" is full of the most bizarre suggestions: 

"Whenever you are given a deadline immediately think of it as an amount of time you an do whatever you want with. That way you stay in control." Another words when given a deadline ignore it, and get in trouble with your boss. This and many other suggestions that I found as I was reviewing the book were immediately rejected either because

• They wouldn't be possible to apply in my office. ("Whenever you feel Angry take a 10 minute walk" That way by the time you return to your job they'll be able to fire you for being AWOL) 
• I didn't understand what they were suggesting (See the deadline one above)
• It would make people in the office look at me weirdly. ("Go with the flow - Do a Tai Chi routine to help ease stress.")  
• It was just plain stupid. ("Lean on a tree...") 

Withall that in mind the first challenge was finding a technique I could actually try, whilst working in a insurance call centre.

In the end I settled on "Take a notebook to work. Write down your worries to make them go away. Write down your tasks to organise your day." I happen to a have a very nice Moleskine Notepad so I took this to work with me, and, when in the morning my stress levels were approaching explosion levels, I wrote down what was annoying me.

Honestly, speaking I can't say it calmed me down. Instead it wound me up as I realised that so many of thees problems were things that I just couldn't fix, things that I would have to keep putting up with until I either quit, get made redundant, or finally get recognised for the hard-worker I am and promoted.

The more I wrote, the more stressed out I became as I realised just how completely hopeless everything had become, and how stressed out I was constantly feeling. I could feel the tension in my forehead, and started worrying that all this stress was giving me (more) wrinkles. 

Eventually, overwhelmed by everything I gave up, and emailed my team leader asking for a meeting so I can talk things through and try to work out a plan as to how to make things better.

And as soon as I did that I started to feel a heck of a lot better all at once.

So, it turns out that writing things down did help a little. It meant that I could pass off the problems that were ouside my control to someone else to deal with and take a little bit of the weight off of my shoulders. Back in my normal role, where I was just a nobody taking phonecalls and no-one expected anything more of me, it was very easy to just get on with my job, and try not to let get to me.

Which I suppose makes my first lesson of the week "Happiness is delegating your problems to others." 
 It seems like rather a stuck-up realisation...

Enlightenment might be harder to find than it first seemed...

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Enlightenment in the Office - Control Day

I had been worried that Friday wasn't going to be the best day to use as a control day, and I was somewhat right in my suspicions. I say that not because it was the worst day ever but, as far as work goes it really wasn't all that bad. This as probably partly helped by fact that my boss was only in for half the day, which meant I could actually get my work done, and our team is trying out a new "Stop whining in front of your workmates" idea which is just as ridiculous, and just as painful, as it sounds, but did mean that everyone was trying very hard not to wind me up. 

I have decided to keep scoring simple and rate my stress levels on a simple 1 to 5 scale. A hasty google search for Stress Scales on Friday morning caused only confusion. I had originally intended to score this every hour but when working in a call centre your time is not your own and this proved impossible. Instead I decided in the end to just recall it whenever I remember. 

You can see, I hope, the very high scientific standards I am applying to this experiment. 

These scores are being recorded throughout the day, and when the week is over I will plot them up to obtain a daily average. I'll then be able to see if it has been possible to make my office life that little bit more bearable by following the tips in "The Little Book Of Calm At Work".  

And if everything goes well, I may even have discovered enlightenment. 

 

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Enlightenment in the Office

Right now, I kinda hate my job.  I am quite sure that I am not alone in this, and i'm not just talking about the other people in my office. Every day millions of people go to a job they don't particulary enjoy. And that's just in my family alone.

It's true then, based on my very impartial survey of me and my friends, that many of us spend lots of our time doing work that doesn't inspire us, that bores us, or that plain makes us want to run around screaming at the top of voices and pouring tins of red paint over our CEO's. Well, maybe that last one is just me.

Either way, It seems like something of a waste, that's 35+ hours a week doing things that don't enhance your life in any way except for making it that little bit more stressful.

I may not be a guru... in fact I'm pretty sure I'm not, I don't even have a proper beard... but it seems to me that it's time for an experiment! 

Can we find a way to make even the dullest job enlightening? Is there a way to truely make the 9-5 a 7-11 highway to heaven kind of experience?

Or, to put it another way, would the Dali Lami be as blissed out if he worked in a call centre? 

Now I have a habit of making my experiments far too complicated and quickly getting bored of them, so I'll make this simple

1. Control day - I will use Friday as a control day. This is generally the most relaxing day of the week and will be a good benchmark against which to test other methods
   
2. Ratings - I will rank each day on a scale of 1 to 10 for various stress rating scales which I have yet to find out.
3. I will remember to find out some stress rating scales! 
4. For the whole of next week I will chose, at random, a page from "The Little book of Calm at Work"  and attempt to follow those instructions throughout the day. 
5. I will blog and rate myself throughout the week and we'll see if it has any effect on my overall stress levels.
6. I will remember that this is in no way scientific! 

If nothing else it will make me week more interesting, and it will give something to write about. I think that's a win-win personally. I''m not sure you would agree. 

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