How to master your job and go into Auto-Mode
If you hate your job, you’ve probably been busy trying to figure out how to go on auto-mode and get things done there while letting your mind roam. Except for a lucky few who have won the “life lottery” (trust fund babies), most young people seem to be forced into jobs they’re over-qualified for (office assistant), don’t engage their skillsets (receptionist), or that just plain suck (retail/data-entry). You’ve probably been in one of these types of jobs, and learned a few tricks to make it go easier (and didn’t resort to hard drugs). Given that you’re like most people and dislike your job as someone’s employee, here’s a little info from an expert and some pointers on how to master auto-mode and never put another ounce of effort into your side-tracked “career.”
What’s auto-mode like? No, it’s not when Optimus Prime is the semi truck. An example of auto-mode most people will know is when they’ve been driving for some time and they realize there are moments in getting where they are that they don’t recall, but of course, they must have driven that stretch of distance. Since you haven’t crashed or anything, you must have been conscious and relatively paying “attention.” Driving has become so ingrained into you, that you don’t need to have all your attention and focus on every moment of the task, you just automatically do what you need to do, including watching for dangers and driving at appropriate speeds. I’m sure most drivers have experienced being in auto-mode then suddenly encountering a road hazard; your reflexes will kick in automatically and your full attention will be brought back to driving within milliseconds.
Needless to say, this level of consciousness, “auto-mode,” can be useful at work. Most people already go into some sort of auto-mode for the more menial monotonous tasks at a job. Unfortunately, similar to the slippery slope of World of Warcraft addiction, many people go into auto-mode for most of their lives, sometimes snapping out of it for family events and the occasional exam or meeting, at which point they freak out.
This is not the auto-mode we’re talking about. There’s a big difference between temporarily giving up mental engagement and being out of control of your life. The point of this article is to efficiently and awesomely be in auto-mode at the right times and places so that you continue to be promoted and get recognition for your “hard” work with phat raises and ultimately wear white fur coats and gold grills while throwing back Hennessy with honeys, as is the pinnacle of every career.
I would like to caution that if you are a doctor or firefighter or have some other job that needs concentration to make sure people don’t suffer or die, please don’t go into auto-mode when you’re saving me or my computer. Feel privileged that you have a job that actually adds something to society, and that people depend on you doing a good job at your profession everyday. If you have a profession like this and you’re still not happy with your job, get out of that role which may mean the difference between whether I and my DVD collection live or die, and try something different like the exciting world of corporate accounting or the exactly equally-less-meaningful job as an Apple Store salesperson. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I can continue showing 98% of the world how to slack off.
1. Learn everything about your job. When you first get your job or decide that you want to go into auto-mode, you’ll need to do some actual work for at least a month, but possibly less depending on how many bosses you have who will demand unnecessary tasks from you. If you’re new to the job world, it’ll take at least a full month for you to really understand what is expected from you at your job, and it will take about three months for you to gain all the skills and knowledge to go full auto-mode. If you’re really fast at learning jobs or you’ve done it a lot, by the time a month passes you’ll be ready.
What does it mean to learn everything about your job? It’s not knowing everything that will occur, or knowing every single detail about everything you have to do. It’s about knowing what to do in every possible situation that may come up in your job. The best way to learn how to do this, is to actually do your job. You’ll be encountering new situations every day, and you’ll need to think on your feet and determine what is the best course of action for you to take for each new situation. You’ll start seeing some similarities in the situations that come up and you’ll be able to react to them faster as you gain more experience.
Because each job is different, I can’t get more specific with describing how to do this step. But basically, just do the best you can at the job you’re at for 1-3 months, and make sure to pay attention to the different ways you approach each situation that comes up.
The most common mistake with auto-mode is to go into it without this very necessary prep time. Occasionally you’ll encounter somebody who’s in auto-mode their first day of work. These people are losers, but the fact that they usually don’t get fired right away is a testament to how effective a properly-executed auto-mode can be at many shitty jobs.
2. Note and study the approaches you’ve been using. After your 1-3 months of being an excellent employee, your boss(es) have probably been praising you for your great work (or they’ve even given you a promotion or raise!), or they’ve simply nit-picked something you did wrong on your first day, and since you haven’t been fucking up recently, have noted “stellar improvement.” You may be thinking “Hey maybe I can do well at this job even though I hate it, I wonder if I should try even harder.” The answer to that question is a hearty and life-affirming “No!” Instead, this is when you can start putting things into motion to go into auto-mode. Your first action should be to jot down everything you do at your job and the different approaches you’ve had to take in order to fix every problem or issue that has come up in the last 1-3 months. You’ll probably see some patterns come up and find that certain issues equals certain solutions and approaches. Study your list and start coming up with ways to help yourself recognize a situation and to execute an approach easily. Make notes of what you come up with.
You may be thinkin’, “Geese, this list-making is way too much work in addition to my work, what the fuck?” Don’t worry, and if this list were for you to reference later in your job, you’d be right. This list is just for you to organize a work pattern subconsciously in your head, after you’ve made it you could throw it out, but that’s not efficient. Instead, leave the list posted extremely visibly in your work area so that your boss can “mistakenly” glance at it when they come by. They can see how much work you’re doing, how you’re on top of it, and how they can’t fire you because you’re holding the company together.
3. Optimize your work structure for peak auto-mode. Now that you have a list of the approaches you need to excel at your job, make changes in the way you do your job so that the different situations can easily be filtered through the approaches. This may mean organizing the way you report to your boss or superiors, scheduling your day so that you have a routine that allows you to properly get to each new situation with the least amount of work but still maintaining an adequate solution, or even creating a database of solutions for your own use (or co-workers, too, if you often have to deal with fixing their problems). The optimization will be different for every job and it will depend on what your list from Step 2 says, but if you put enough good effort into this step, the auto-mode will run more smoothly.
4. Turn on Auto-Mode. Now that you have everything set up, go into auto-mode. What does this mean? The easiest way to get started is to stare straight ahead and start doing your work. When you’re staring at a blank point in space, you’ll find your mind will begin to wander, and soon you can start controlling where it goes. I used to stare at the exact center of my computer screen in between tasks and think about the scripts I was writing, solutions to problems in my personal life, basically anything I needed to do. Soon, I could go into auto-mode in a few seconds, 6 hours would go by, and all my work would get done somehow and I’d be refreshed and prepared for the rest of my life. You may find you have a few kinks, which means you’ll need to go back to Steps 2 and 3 to fix them. Common kinks are bosses who are constantly asking you to do things, or a change in your work protocol. If changes happen, narrow in on the exact details of the change, alter your work flow as necessary, test your new process, and continue auto-mode.
When you get it working right, it may feel weird the first few days, and you may experience huge amounts of extra time. When I first experienced this, I thought I was going to get in trouble for not doing anything “productive.” However, I soon realized that I was outputting the same amount of productivity as I was before I went into auto-mode. But now that I had optimized everything, I could just sit back, zone out, and relax while my bosses thought I was working just as hard as I used to if not more.
You know how they say that even though people may be working 40, 60, 80+ hours a week, they’re really only productive for a small fraction of all those hours? Well, now you’re enjoying being at work while being very efficiently awesome, and reaping the benefit of the large fraction of time that you now have due to your efficient productivity. That extra time is time you could be scrolling through online blogs (*wink*).
5. Update Steps 2 and 3 when needed. From this point on, updating Steps 2 and 3 will be the most work you’ll have to do towards going into and staying in auto-mode. Even after you go into auto-mode, you may find you need to periodically update your list, if only mentally. But don’t worry, updating is superbly easier to creating the list because you’ll only be changing a few things around. If you find yourself constantly updating your list and you very much dislike your job, you may need to think about firing your boss and getting a new one.
It may seem like this is more work to have to keep updating, but it’s really up to you. You can not update if you choose, as long as you do a good enough job in the first time around. Or you can choose not to update if you don’t care about getting a raise or promotion. However, if you do want those raises and promotions, update as often as you feel necessary. This may mean that auto-mode doesn’t get much usage, but rest assured that when you’re happy with the amount of money you’re getting and the position you’re at, auto-mode will be so optimized that you probably won’t be needing many updates after that.
Efficient Awesomeness at Work
“But doesn’t this mean I’ll be doing less work? That sounds ‘bad’ and I have feelings such as ‘anxiety’ about getting caught in auto-mode.”
You’ll probably have realized that except for the part about AUTO-MODE, the above is what efficiently awesome employees do at work to succeed. Well, you’re right. And for these super productive employees, they don’t need auto-mode because they love their jobs and the extra time they get, they simply use towards more awesome achievements at their work, for side projects, or in their private lives. Auto-mode is for those who are in a position they don’t like very much and quitting may not be a solution they are ready or prepared for. For those of you in that position, what exactly is it you’re afraid might happen? Give yourself a mental break, put on auto-mode, and maybe with the extra time and mental energy, you’ll be able to prepare yourself for quitting and getting a better job.
COMING SOON: How to quit your job!
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Agreed.
September 10th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
C agrees, I’M KING OF THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:31 pm
C is a fucking idiot to agreeing with this article.
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Ms. Wu seems to disagree. Please, Ms. Wu, do share with us what it is you find so disagreeable? Is it so very offensive to think that people might possibly turn off their brains when they go to work? Is it a travesty to suggest people do this more efficiently?
September 1st, 2008 at 11:33 am
The thing is, I’d RATHER be aware of my misery and boredom. It makes for great blogs, great songs, and general cynicism, which is usually quite entertaining. This is why I decided to not take my ritalin.