I keep an “accident log.” This is an informal record of daily events related to the injury. In recent months I have been documenting fewer events. My logic has been that a continued focus on my errors and mistakes would only serve to highlight my various problems. I thought it might be better to avoid this regular documentation and simply live my day as best I could without listing my errors. After all, we all make errors. A painstaking analysis of each one did not seem to deliver much in the way of benefit.

A recent review of the accident log turned up some interesting information. The following notes were made in the last week of February, roughly three weeks from the start of the project. I was already experiencing problems at that time.

Time Warps

When engaged in an activity I become lost in the flow. I perform some set of tasks, I am fully absorbed to the task activity, I proceed from one task element to the next in a structured way. I enjoy this activity as it delivers the illusion of control and accomplishment. Then I look up from the activity and realize night has fallen, I have eaten noting since breakfast, and the entire day has expired.

After exiting the flow state and engaging in other activity I then return to the flow state and discover that I have in fact accomplished very little, that what I perceived as structured engagement is closer to a random walk across a range of topics, that the work product is riddled with errors and is unusable and I have failed to accurately and completely document critical items of information.

Frustration

I experience massive frustration due to my inability to proceed in a normal way, or to accomplish tasks that I was able to perform prior to the accident. The frustration will be such that I want to throw things across the room, or run a FORMAT operation against the active drive. I recognize when I encounter this state and do not act out. I am then disgusted and disillusioned and will retreat from all activity.

There is a lesser frustration that occurs when I am following a task sequence and I encounter cognitive fatigue and the need for a nap. I become angered over the fact that I feel the need for the nap, angered that my body does not allow me to proceed in a normal way, angered because I have this task requirement or time limitation and I know I will not meet those constraints by taking naps.

At the same time there is the recognition that it is fruitless to feel any degree of anger and even more fruitless to fight against the need to nap. If I continue to work I will trigger a headache, my performance will decline and it is likely I will not accurately asses this performance decrement but will only observe it when I review the work product at a later date.

Time Scrunch Time Expansion

I appear to be happiest when I am deeply engaged in a task, when my entire focus is on some immediate activity. The quality of the performance is irrelevant. I am absorbed in the flow and make the assumption that flow absorption equates to adequate performance. This is rarely true. I refer to this as Time Scrunch. Time is non-existent when in this behaviour mode.

Time expansion is the opposite. In this mode I stand back from immediate events and survey a broad time expanse. The results are unsettling. In Time Scrunch mode I am making small incremental gains in some activity. In Time Expansion mode these gains are dwarfed by the surrounding volume of time and I realize that my improvement is fundamentally without meaning within this larger time context.