Project Fatigue

What Teague said.

For me, what's incredibly important is to give my brain the opportunity to disengage and get used to thinking in ways different from the current project. Honestly, rather than working 10 days with diminishing returns (you don't feel it at the time, but when you look back, you'll see how much less you got done than expected), you're better off doing 4 good days, a 2-day break where you do something non-project-related, and 4 more good days.
2 days less work, but overall better quality. I have been having the laziest weekends lately (before, i used to try and work) and I've gotten so much more weekday work done.

And really, in the office, I like to make it known that I'm available to help others, 'cause it gets me away from my desk and lets me solve different kinds of problems. Keeps me fresh and helps me avoid tunnel vision. If you have the means to do that, I recommend it highly.

Last edited by Herc (2015-02-24 23:02:52)

Disclaimer: if you dislike the tone of a post I make, re-read it in a North/East London accent until it sounds sufficiently playful

I keep reading the thread title and wondering what a weird name for a project Fatigue is.

I get tired of projects too. I tend to be quite obsessive and 'all in' about both projects and moods so burn out after a while. I've not discovered a way around this though so these thoughts are really helpful.

Local DJ's used to have a reporter from The Star as a guest. She made the observation that no matter how beautiful or intelligent someone was, there probably at that moment was a person who was tired of fucking them.

More than what's needed.

Exactly what's needed.

Sure, I'll be nicer next time I want to express distaste about an offhanded misogynistic, irrelevant comment that amounts to "women are just beautiful objects with which guys get their dick wet" in a thread about creative work.

Someone writes what amounts to "haha wimmin be fucktoys rite" and I get a post correcting my behavior?

Think about that for a second.

So if a bunch of Klansmen rolled in making offhanded comments about how much they hate black people, they would be fine as long as they're nice to everyone here? How would that be different?

To avoid making this topic potentially go in a further sourer direction, I've found a lot of comments here to be rather insightful! It's good to get a fresh perspective to a problem.

I do have some good news though, I did manage to finish that project for work on friday! Huzzah! Not sure what the next big (or several) work projects will be for me but I'll have a bunch of techniques to potentially try out if I ever start to feel fatigued by a project, whether for work or personal.

Paulou has a point though (pre-Klansmen comment), and also there are two complicated issues concerning this:

Misogyny and audience
Until Paulou brought it up, I just read avatar's post and brushed by it. Usually I speak up if something bothers me, so now I'm bothered by the fact that I didn't speak up. Sure, I get the whole thing of this is a small, close forum, so it meets most of the requirements for "know your audience" but on the other hand, some of our forum members are women, and Paulou's right about the comment being irrelevant and misogynistic. I wouldn't want anyone to feel that this is anything other than a safe environment. That kind of comment isn't something we want to encourage (and, in my book, based on everything that has been happening in America since August 9th, not speaking up about something is just as bad as endorsement. I'm not gonna argue this point, if you disagree, fine, but I'm not debating that).
I get the whole thing of "hey, relax, it was a joke", but gosh, that's really too easy to fall back on as an excuse. It's subtle, but that very quickly becomes "my sense of humour is more important than you feeling comfortable".

When and how to speak up
Teague has a point, too. Paulou's initial comment was terse and brusque. It has sharp edges to it, you know? And while I agree with why Paulou didn't like avatar's post, I don't think the tone of the response was that wise. I've spent the past 7 months trying to have discussions with people (close friends and strangers) about important issues and problems, and fuck, even with a kid-gloves approach, people get fucking defensive when you call them out in any way whatsoever. And it's even worse when it comes as an attack. There's a better way to confront people about stuff.

Though, of course, this is further complicated by the fact that the whole "hey, let's have a discussion" thing. If you're too far along the "everyone's entitled to their opinions" thing, it often just ends up with people "agreeing to disagree" and continuing with less-than-non-shitty behaviour.

Disclaimer: if you dislike the tone of a post I make, re-read it in a North/East London accent until it sounds sufficiently playful