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GeekNights 070809 - How to Not Suck at Slacking Off
Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss the finer points of slacking off. In the news, vote-swapping is legal, and the US tax system is a little annoying.
Scott's Thing - FCC Prank
Rym's Thing - Good Table Manners
Scott's Thing - FCC Prank
Rym's Thing - Good Table Manners
Comments
That's how I often feel, and how friends of mine who gamed the system often felt. It became a form of role reversal, a way of saying "No, the joke's not on me for buying the line of crap you guys fed me, for earnestly believing that by diligently following the system I would learn real things and become truly educated. The joke is on you; I understand the system now, I can own it. I get the last laugh."
At least in my case, though, I'd gladly have given up the last laugh if only there'd been no joke in the first place.
Here's the deal . . . if you have any idea about technology, you don't have to work in IT or CS to make money. There are plenty of jobs that will pay you all kinds of money where your skills will make you a super hero.
For example: when I joined my current group they had this silly, bloated process for analyzing financial data and reporting to sponsors on our status that required a solid twenty hours a month per project. This meant that there was always a scramble twice a month (as the financial cycle went through) to build reports. I'm sitting here thinking to myself hey! I'll just write some code to automatically pull one report that has all the data in the system, and write a macro in excel that will ask me what kind of report I need and build it automatically. I spend 20 hrs coding once and bam! Now I do 20 hrs of work in a push of a button . . . twice a month.
Laziness is the father of innovation.
I also liked how you mentioned that you needed to be able to not worry about walking the razor. It's an ability that helps you either way in life. I think the key to slacking is really your willingness and ability to step up when the situation requires it (when you slip from the razor) and to have faith in your ability to solve any problem. Of course, good contingency planning helps with this too.
It's the way to go for all other situations.
Back when I was in the service all you had to do was grab a PMCS (Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services) clipboard for a vehicle and head for the motor pool and no one would bug you all day. You then go in the back of your tool van and whip out your portable gaming system (mine was the Sega back then) and slack away!
I took a physics 101 course my first semester, I went for the first month, and the skipped the rest of the classes (minus the exam prep ones) and I was the first one to finish the final out of the probably 200 students. Got an A in the class too.
When I came to uni we were told to work hard and play hard. Listening to the show it seems that slacking doesn't differ much, only rather than working your bum off when working hard, you choose the level and amount of work to put in depending on whatever more or less grandiose goals you have.
I've never been a successful slacker. It was instilled in me early on to always do my best and I didn't even start questioning that until late junior high, by when it was too late for me to change my ways. I guess I just couldn't settle for a B if I could get an A with a few extra hours of studying. I've always admired good slackers though and I like the slacker attitude. Sometimes I wish I was better at it, it'd save me a lot of trouble.
I'm often of the mind that if you have the potential, why not use it? See how far you can go. In high school I noticed a lot of people around me seemed content being and staying where they were but I've always liked to challenge myself. Admittedly I'm getting to a stage where I'm wondering where I'm headed now, keep going up won't do you much good if you don't know your final destination.
For example, let's say you are working a summer job at a fast food restaurant. For the sake of argument you make minimum wage. You know you are going to stop working at the end of the summer when school starts again. There is no chance for promotion. There is only the risk of being fired and having to find a new job. Therefore, there is no reason to try hard at this job. You should do the minimum amount of work necessary to keep the job without being fired. Flipping those burgers any faster or making those sandwiches any neater has absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
The first key to being a successful slacker is to only care about things that actually matter.
I don't think there are many people in this world who show a lot of dedication to flipping burgers, nor should they, but education is a different story. This is usually where people see their chances to excel. Basic education is something that's more or less forced upon us, which is why I think people tend to show resentment toward parts of it. Yes, there are subjects which are less interesting than others and one might argue that it's not worth spending time on them but you have no way of knowing whether they will become useful to you until you know what you want to do for a living. Also, often learning certain things have benefits which aren't obvious at face value.
Say that you were allowed to choose exactly what to learn from the age of 10 or something. People might show more dedication to their studies if that was the case but that means you'll have to know exactly what you want to learn at the age of 10. Most people don't even know that when they start uni.
Whenever we talk about slacking it's usually in the context of school and work, i.e. places where you are expected to do certain things to a certain standard by external authority. I.e. it's you going around the establishment. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, often the establishment can be quite crap. There is usually no mention about slacking when it comes to creative work though. An artist would hardly talk about slacking since they would just be pulling themselves down.
It might be obvious that these words are coming from someone who's never failed to hand in an assignment but I must say that if I hadn't worked as hard as I did throughout school I probably wouldn't be where I am now. I never knew exactly what I wanted, keeping my grades up ensured that as many routes were open to me as possible. It's a tiring way to do it but I guess for someone like me it gives me the best chance of finding something I'll be happy doing for a living.
I have always been able to drift through every other class in school and get A's and B's, but junior year of High School was harder than ever to drift. I need to rethink my strategy for next year to bring myself to maximum slacking potential, lest I repeat junior year.
I like the idea of being in control of my life and where I want to go. The only way to do that is to keep as many door open as possible, hence my work ethic. However, I'm coming to the end of the road now and I'm starting to wonder where to go next. Decisiveness has always been a big lack in me.
I'm as surprised as Mamath about the level of laxity in the US education system. Slacking gets to the point of being more work than just working (in a private high school, in Australia). I agree that I had reached that stage where the teacher would believe anything I said because I worked my ass off and displaying an unmatched work ethic, but to get to this point I had already mastered 80% of the curriculum half way through senior year. Plus here in Australia you can and will be failed, rejected from Universites and your final exams are marked by a centralised party, the majority of our exams are short answer, essay and a few multiple choice and your Tertiary entrance score is determined by the average of a minimum of 4 subjects, a maximum of 5 which have to include atleast one humanities and atleast one science or maths. Your final determination is done via ranking rather than raw scores. There was a 50 seat limit to get into the Veterinary course and you had to be in the top 1.4% of the state to quaify plus you had to have done the most difficult subjects - Calculus, Applied Maths, Chemistry, Physics or Biology.
I basically finished all my Maths curriculum half way through 2nd semester so my teachers would just let me have free study time which I used to go and play Quake 2 deathmatch against anyone in the computer labs or read Sandman graphic novels in the library. The same happened with my LIterature teacher but because I knew I didn't need that subject to get into the course I wanted, I didn't even bother studying for it in my final exams, just passed and aced all my other subjects. So I guess I did the bare minimum that I could. Plus I joined the Economics state competition in a team and let them do all the work, managing a stock portfolio, apparently we won and I recieved a $500 cheque.
SHUN.