For the past five days I have been running an experiment. The experimental objective was to determine if I am capable of a return to work. In place of an actual employer, I made use of my volunteer job as a simulacra.
The work week commenced on Saturday September 26th and continued uninterrupted until Wednesday evening September 30th. My “shifts” were each of at least four hours duration. My concern was less with the total number of hours and more with maintaining the continuity of the experiment. The Monday, September 28th shift was only of one hour’s duration but the “work day” included two hours of preparation, three hours of formal introduction and wait time, and four hours of travel time.
Experiment Task Set 1
Task Set 1 was performed on four of the five days. The work consisted of using a manual hand scanner to enter data contained in printed bar codes with a maximum of ten codes exhibited in a vertical column on the left side of an 8.5 x 11 sheet. The work was sedentary in nature. The major muscle groups involved were those of the right arm which positioned the scanner head about 5 inches above the printed page and then moved the arm/scanner head assembly to scan down the column of bar codes. Once a sheet was scanned, it was flipped using the left hand and the scanning process repeated. Once both sides were scanned the sheet was moved to a pile of finished work and a new sheet was positioned on the scan area.
Cognitive activity was limited to the identification of bar codes to be scanned. These were identified by a line drawn through the adjacent line of text, or via a text notation in a far right column. This identification, the visual processing required to align and position the scanner head, a decision to button press to activate the scanning function, and the work required to shift pages around on the work surface, were the primary cognitive demands.
Experiment Task Set 2
This task grouping involved travel to a portion of the city unknown to me, navigating my way to an office within an unfamiliar building, performing actions comparable to those required in a job interview, navigating to a different building within the same complex, participation in an hour long team meeting roughly comparable to a team performance assessment review meeting, followed by a return home.
Method
Bulldozer. I realized during one of my volunteer work sessions that I was provided an opportunity to duplicate a standard work routine and that this “real world” experiment would deliver valuable information on my readiness for employment and/or indicate areas requiring attention / improvement. My “bulldozer” method simply involves the application of sheer force of will to undertake an action regardless of how difficult, or frustrating, or impossible, that action may be.
General Observations
My assessment is negative. During the event I captured detail observations on sticky notes and these details will be made into a subsequent post.
During the course of the experiment I quickly realized that I faced a great number of difficulties. My only mode of compensation for these was to record the obstacle or problem and then force myself to continue. Despite being engaged in a task with low cognitive demand, I appear to have experienced cognitive problems. I had difficulty completing the experiment. This review of the experiment, the attempt to derive an overall assessment, is proving to be extremely negative for me. I am entering another crisis mode.
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This is Section 1 of a four part series of posts. The other posts may be found here: