Wednesday, March 6, 2013

The "Fun" of Blurring Boundaries

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've been living in a different space for a little while, and for the foreseeable future, I'll be continuing in this guise. Which one? The one where I split my work day to be local in the afternoon, and then to be on a partial "graveyard shift", what I've been referring to as "Taiwan Time", since that's where some of our principal developers are located (I could also say India time, but hey, Taiwan outnumbers them).

Some have been looking at me and saying "oh, you poor thing!" or other such comments. First, it's OK, I volunteered for this. Second, the reason I volunteered to do this is I thought it would be fun. Here's the dirty secret... I was right!

Am I out of my mind?! Maybe, and that's kinda' the point. I'm working outside of my traditional boundaries. I'm not a late night person any more, haven't been for many years, since I somewhat retired as a musician, in fact. Necessity and long commutes helped convert me to an early morning person. For years, I said that I had a solid diurnal rhythm that I'd mastered (somewhat) and that became a habit and an excuse. I believed I couldn't do real heavy duty brain intensive work late at night. This arrangement is forcing me to re-examine that idea, and I'm discovering with the right preparation (plus some odd little things like bags of beef jerky and a few packs of sugarless gum, etc.) I can be very productive in the middle of the night.

It's an expensive proposition, and I sure don't want to make this a "permanent arrangement", but overall, I am genuinely having fun putting my brain in an "altered state" and making it adapt. In the process, I'm also getting to know developers that I rarely get the chance to interact with directly, plus we get to turn around stuff really quickly, and make great inroads much faster than we normally would. Overall, so far, not a bad arrangement. I'll let you know if my opinion changes ;).

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