to be surprised at how slowly people work?

[seoid]

I work 24 hours a month, so essentially three working days. In that time I produce almost an entire 24-page magazine from scratch, including sourcing, editing and laying up articles and writing about 3,000 words. Within that time I also MN a bit and go on facebook. I can be a bit stressed coming up to deadline but mostly it's fine, easy to do.

I've always been quite hard on myself, but actually I'm realising that many of the people I've worked with have been incredibly slow in comparison to me. Does anyone else find this? I've always thought I'm a fairly average worker but actually as time goes on I'm finding that simply getting the job done actually puts me a fair bit ahead of the people I work with, who seem to faff and miss deadlines and be totally unreliable. I had a meeting with our new CEO yesterday and he was full of praise for me, which was nice. Once I would have been surprised at his praise and felt a bit of a fraud but actually now I think there is quite a high level of incompetence out there, such that if you actually know what you're doing and get it done then you're already ahead of the game.

AIBU?

House cleaned in half an hour?
I'm quite quick at it, and don't go into details but even I can't do that. Would you change the beds, Hoover all over, clean the shower/bath, tidy stuff around and sweep floor in the kitchen?

I temped at a solicitors, along with two paralegals who were in between jobs (I was doing on my summer holidays from a science degree). It was entering stuff on case software, opening cases, putting in contact details etc.

I did more than the two of them put together and I used to chat to one of the staff there as I worked. I think it's because I'm good at patterns - after the first ten or so I knew exactly what steps to do in what order, which tabs to click etc.

Although I was shocked I was better at a job they'd both been doing for a while! I thought I should have been paid piecework

I dunno: I had a job writing about physics/eng for a national newspaper, with about that level of output per month - but it took me a lot longer. When I did write, or edit, too quickly, the quality dropped noticeably. It takes time, too, to identify and interview the most suitable expert contributors.

It's great if you can work incredibly fast and maintain readability and accuracy, but I preferred my team to take time over stuff that was going to be unleashed unto the newstand (within deadline, but missed deadlines were very rare).

Depends on the job. In my current one I try not to time waste and make quick but safe decisions. I don't know if they're always the best decisions because I'm under so much pressure that safety is my first concern. So in many ways counterproductive.

In a previous job I had more time for faffing. I produced work of an excellent standard, I was pleased with it, I didn't feel rushed.

In whatever job you are I think if you're demoralised it starts to show.

And wow that there are so many who could move mountains.

I've also temped and was quick at what I did. But I was there for days or a couple of weeks. Not months and years of tedious work. That's an unfair comparison.

There's nothing wrong with the water cooler chat, or its modern day equivalent. People need to interact.

I think the difference when I temped was I could keep going on one task - when I finished that there was more to do and it didn't matter where I was at the end of the day.

In a lab I can't do that, I have to plan where's safe to finish, which tasks need prioritising etc.

I've worked freelance and short term contract before and am usually very quick. I'm currently full time and it's amazing how much of my time is taken by noise. I don't mean physical noise but all the little things that are wanted from me; answering question, giving opinions, responding to emails on anything and everything. Being pulled into general company & team meetings. I wish I could just do my job.

Next week, on top of my day to day, I have to do a work shop, do a pre-workshop, write some procedure documents, give a presentation of my strategy, get data & manipulate it into some kind of sense. What have I done today? Try to ignore all the other stuff and demands thrown my way.

I think it depends a lot on your aptitude for what you are doing, but yes I also feel like this sometimes. Today I was actually thanked for 'always replying speedily' to emails from another dept I work with- because I usually try to reply to any queries within a day of receipt. This is something I would have thought of as a basic courtesy, at least to reply with a placeholder even if you don't have the information, but also to look for any information as soon as you get chance but apparently many people don't (actually find this when I am ordering things as well, and with email replies many people seem to happily leave things sat in their inbox for weeks on end). I don't really get what many people actually do all day- admittedly I am less social than some so don't spend much time chatting but I do faff, and do take breaks, so wtf are they up to that prevents them from finishing things or replying to queries? OTOH if I was writing, I would probably be slower than you as I find it difficult to be coherent (see also above) over long passages of text so perhaps it's just that we suit our jobs but others don't so much?

24 hours doesn't sound much for the kind of work you are doing seoid. Can you break it down any further? Eg how many hours do you spend sourcing, writing, editing and laying out?
I'm interested because I'm employed in a part-time job a bit similar to yours. Sometimes I'm really busy and have tight deadlines to meet. At other times there isn't enough work to do and I have to string it out and make it last (as long as I keep to deadlines). I'm paranoid that someone will spot if I'm not busy and make me redundant.
I wonder if the people who work slowly are doing it for a reason - to keep looking busy?

I think a lot of people who are slow are just completely unorganised and they get stressed easily, making them slower! I seem to complete work in half the time of 3/4 of my colleagues and sometimes it is just a lack of common sense making them slow!

Worse than that is people who TALK slow. This really really ( probably irrationally!) annoys me! We do verbal hand overs at work and some people can talk for 20 minutes without telling you any pertinent information! Argh!

Slowness annoys me!

Stealthboast.

Anyway, different jobs require different ways of working. Working in a 'creative' type job you can either be the kind of person who bangs things out or the kind of person who puts in a lot of deep thinking and pondering over their ideas before settling on one. Neither way is 'right' or 'wrong'. In some jobs where attention to detail is necessary then it would be a positive handicap to work like this, such as in accounts or payroll where things need double or triple checking for accuracy.

Anyway, OP you are brilliant and everybody else is just shit. That's what you wanted to hear really wasn't it?

I'm quite interested by this though. I work quite fast but I'm not going to judge another persons style of working. I think a lot of people on here are making generalisations of the 'Oh look, aren't I marvellous' type. Whacking something out in double quick time isn't always the best or most effective way of doing a job. People who are being moaned about for slow are often being conscientious, meticulous and are paying attention to detail. I think people who just rush through things and are on here giving themselves a pat on the back are being egotistical and frankly a bit ignorant if they don't see that sometimes other people's methods of working can have benefits too.

I think a few of you would make really unpleasant colleagues actually, no matter how quickly you finish work I think a lot of people might really dislike being on a team with you. Particularly if you're skiving off on Mumsnet and Facebook then telling everyone how brilliant you are.

I could work more quickly.

But I'm bored and not motivated! When I am, I am on fire.

Sounds like you do a very similar job to me. A 100-pager takes me about 2-3 weeks. But then I have day-to-day things to deal with which takes up a couple of hours each day:, 300; emails to sift through a day, budgets, covering for my part-time manager (who I'm hoping isn't you ), sales meetings, sorting ads, getting sign off from various clients/authors, website stuff.

It's the boring daily adminy bits that wear you out, disrupt your workflow and eat away your time. If I only had 3 days a month and could just focus on the fun bit I'd be a lot more productive!

Excuse the erroneous semi-colons.

to replying to emails within a day

what if you have a few hundred to sort through, but thats before you get down to, you know, your actual day to day job

even a place holder reply to each would add an few hours onto your day (assuming a minute per email read plus replied to)

Everything Scrumbled said. You've only got 1 job to do and you don't get any of the other noise, so it's not that surprising - though I don't doubt you're quick.

Also, the emotional aspect does come into it - you appear to like what you're doing. As you're part time you aren't knackered, and probably don't get the internal voice pointing out that oh well, there's only another 12 weeks until you've got that holiday, oh well, at least you don't have to sweep up chicken guts for a living, oh well, at least you're alive, and so on.

actually, reading your comments on getting the house cleaned in halfan hour, i wonder if you just dont notice a lot of stuff that needs doing, op?

Some people wouldn't run to the tap if their knickers were on fire.

I work for a local council and I suspect a good 75% of my colleagues do very little. I am so sick of the meetings about meetings and endless procrastination and red tape about every bloody thing that I also have 0% motivation. Nothing gets done and I feel like my job doesn't make a difference to anyone.

I've worked there nearly 15 years and despite being in my early 30s many of the people I work with (who are mostly older and more senior than me) treat me like the office junior. It's infuriating.

I'm leaving to start my own business very soon and can't wait.

I don't work harder than I used to, I work smarter. Some of that has come from experience so my thoughts are more directed, and less time drifting onto tangents. Some of it is that my time is more restricted, originally self imposed when I recognised that I'm inefficient at home, and decided to keep work in work. These days that's imposed by the (im) practicalities of family life.

Having worked in many places, but doing the same role, the efficiency and beaurocracy of the work place varies. In some, I've had many hours per week wasted on pointless inefficient paperwork that diverts me from the core functions of my job.

A painfully slow colleague recently retired which was a great relief. Even listening to him was painful and got my mind twitching about other useful stuff I could do in the time it took him to complete a sentence that I'd already predicted the end to. Sadly, it wasn't the considered process of an astute, perfectionist mind. Far from it.

I think I've always been fairly efficient, but being PT really makes a difference. I work solidly while at work, while others surf the internet. In some ways I think you have to work like that to justify being allowed to work PT (though obviously my salary is prorated too). But you are also fresher and don't have to concentrate for as long.

YANBU. Most people are scarily slow and I often wonder how we evolved as a species given that :).

What I can never understand is why people take so long to do tasks they dislike. Surely you knock those jobs off fastest so you can spend more time on work you do enjoy. It doesn't help that I'm stupidly competitive. I compete with myself to see how fast I can knock jobs off.