Everyone has lazy days, even Joel Spolsky, CEO of Stack Exchange, has talked about his slack days/hours. You’re probably lying to yourself if you don’t have them.
We usually slack off when we have hit an unexpected problem that is not trivial to solve, so we look elsewhere for momentary pleasure before getting back to solving the problem. In my case, I used to go through a cycle of hitting a block; then switching to my browser; clicking a bookmarked link; scrolling until I’ve reached a point I’d visited before; closing the tab and switching to back to work window; hitting the block; repeat. Or, I used to procrastinate working on the main task and switch to tasks that are to be done after, convincing myself that those had to be done anyway fully aware that there was a reason why the first task was priority in the first place. Or I used to get busy doing meta-work like refactoring my To-Do list or, I read hackernews because staying updated with news in the tech world was important, duh.
None of us want to slack off at work. At the end of the day, everyone wishes to look back and be proud of a productive day and use that as a motivation for the next day. So then, why do we slack off?
It’s because sometimes we hit an unexpected problem which messes up our estimate for the task at hand; or that we lost trail of our research and ended up 4 tabs to the right of the original Google search. Or sometimes we are just not in the right mental space at work because of other thoughts like a fight with spouse or an ill parent/child.
Being unproductive is a state of inertia. It’s very easy to get sucked back into the zone of unproductivity if there is no greater force like a deadline, a meeting, timecheck or an update request by your boss. For some it’s the initial barrier of starting to work that is the hardest to cross and once in motion, things start flowing.
It’s completely normal to get into a lazy zone; we’re not machines performing mundane tasks. Snapping out of it is key, and I’ve found the following helpful
- Getting up to get coffee. Physical activity helps, caffeine even better.
- If you’re someone who listens to music while at work, turn it off. Music usually helps drive the mind into mild meditative states. Music helps to get you into zones that can be productive and otherwise.
- Set a personal target for each day and hit that consistently. Or use an external storyboard that dictates the estimates for each user story.
- You could also use this silly Chrome extension I’ve built, that prompts you to get out of your lazy zone. :D
I tell myself to raise the stakes, to volunteer for more work, to challenge myself on a daily basis because slacking is just a side-effect when there is no clear plan.