The Art of Doing Nothing

Since I've taken a job as receptionist I've had to master the art of doing nothing. Everyone here knows it. In fact, many have compliment my ability to stay occupied. There's such a high turnover rate for this position, I'm convinced it is because others have tried, and failed, to master this art form.

I wish to share with you my knowledge.

1-Break time into units.

I learned this trick from the Hugh Grant film "About A Boy". When you're given nine hours to do one hour of work, it is easy to be intimidated. The key to sucess is to break that time down into units. Making it through 30 minutes is much easier than making it through an enitre day.

2-Break down your work.

When I first took this position, I repeatedly made the folly of doing all my work in the first hour of work, leaving the rest of the day to do nothing. I would also quickly exhausted my "things to do while doing nothing" options. This made the last few hours of work excruciating. Now I spread out the responsibilities and activities. In the morning I open up the branch, in the late morning I check the "ready for funding" que, in the afternoon I prepare files for the courier, in the mid-afternoon I audit all the logs and drawers, etc...

3-Keep a list of things to do when you're doing nothing.

Through the weeks, I've progressively developed a list of things to fill up my "nothing" time, keeping in mind that each activity should take no longer than one or two units (other wise I wear myself out). I also like to appear busy, that way I occasionally fool even myself into believing that I'm actually doing something worthwhile. Activities include: Take a nice stroll through the branch, chat-up a member, aimlessly surf KSL.com, write in my blog, find a pirated copy of a book online and read a few chapters, write an e-mail to someone outside the credit union, etc...

By and large, I think it's safe to say I'm now a master of the art of doing nothing. Is that a marketable skill?It's hard to say.

The Dog Poop Cookie

You know the Dog Poop Cookie Metaphor? Right? The one where you decide to make Chocolate Chip cookies so you spend time and energy gathering ingredients, mixing, creaming, stiring, measuring, baking, all in an effort to make the perfect cookie.

But by some cruel twist of fate you realize a small piece of dog poop somehow made it's way into the batter. Though the cookies look the same, smell the same, and probably taste the same, it's definitely not the same. In fact, the whole batch is ruin all because of one tiny piece of dog poop.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a banner for the dog poop cookie metaphor. After dedicating time, energy, concern, and who know what else to life I still somehow manage to let slip a tiny bit of dog poop into my life-batter. And whabam, we're back at square one, starting the recipe all over again.

Even though someone might look at my life and say, Oh, that looks like a delicious cookie! I want one!

Little do you know, it's chuck full of dog poop!

Then again, there's plenty about my life that is delicious. I just can't help but wonder when I'll stop allowing that little piece of dog poop access to my cookies.