Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Use It or Lose It

I started off the week with a strong motivation to accomplish much. Including at work. This is a hard motivation to muster since there are not a lot of things that immediately need to be accomplished but much that can be done nonetheless. It's amazing how much time one can waste in a day. There are so many more productive things I could be doing than wasting hours surfing the internet. Am I going to stop blogging? Of course not! But there are so many hours of unproductivity that I would like to transform into productivity. (Blogging is at least somewhat productive.) I want to take advantage of the time that I have rather than let it slip away into a past memory of wasted time that I can never get back. And that's one thing that you can never get back... is time. You either use it or lose it, and I want to use it!

So I bought a couple of books recently on Equipment Leasing and plan to start using my down time to further increase my knowledge and make myself more useful for when things do start getting busy. It is such a specialized industry that I am in, so many accounting laws, tax consequences, etc. to keep track of. Since I worked with the loan side of things before more than the leasing, I'm realizing that there are all sorts of things I can learn about this complex business I am in - a very specialized knowledge that will make me quite the commodity - even more so than I am now. Much of it I am already picking up on just in conversations I have with my boss and in reviewing the different leasing software options out there. But there is much more to learn of course. So today I cracked out the books at a couple of points in the day when things slowed down and I found that I didn't have anything else to do, or at least nothing that I was interested in doing at the moment. Great idea, except I found my mind wandering and having to read the same paragraph over and over and over again. I guess it doesn't work using it as a backup plan for boredom, as boredom has already set in and my mind is not in working and processing mode. So I need to start setting goals for myself to get to a certain point so I can read - make the reading my reward to work towards and then a goal for myself to read to a certain point. That way I can keep a certain momentum going and hopefully overcome this blackhole of time and space that is sucking my professional life away.

I know, you are all saying 'woe is me,' what a horrible problem to have - a job that is too easy, with lots of time to relax in a day, and a boss that doesn't care how I spend my time as long as I get my work done (which takes about one hour out of my eight hour day). I know the tables will turn some day, that I will be working late every night trying to get deals done when we have a couple million in the pipeline and aren't quite ready to hire additional staff. It's precisely then that I want to be able to look back and see that I'd done everything I could to take advantage of the time while I had it. Well, it's 4:00 and my boss just said let's close up and go home. I can't argue with that now can I? Good night all.

2 comments:

Laura Gifford said...

I sympathize with your under-busy (if that can be used as a word?) situation -- I worked a job at PLU the year after I graduated, while my husband was finishing his last year, that sounds similar in some respects. One hour's work, seven hours' thumb twiddling. Your attitude is a great one; hang in there! From what you describe, things will get busier soon, and at the very least you'll have all that knowledge to draw on. (I just spent my time applying to graduate school... also helpful in the end. :) ) But be comforted that there are others out there who understand how what sounds like a good thing can actually be a bit of a struggle!

Terri said...

You might look into local seminars, classes, etc. It sounds like your boss is eager to use all you have to offer, and willing to train as much as possible. Any training he sends you to is a tax write off for him, and your less likely to get distracted in a class setting than at your desk (unless of course you sit in the back row and day dream . . . ) ;)Plus, the more you know, the more he can delegate to you . . . It's becomes a win-win for him.