Office life v. home...

Kinda struck me today that life in an office (with others around) is quite different from sitting and working alone at home

Today one of my sisters flat mates worked from home and was sitting at the same dinner table as me the entire day. The dynamic of working in the same room as someone else is interesting and its interesting to see how it affects work...

The social interaction or the occasional 30 second dialogue is often just the break necessary when you are concentrating on something... of course not when you are deep in concentration on a special project and are deep into it... but its important to realise that its not good to concentrate on something for 8-9 hours a day straight... Even with a lunch break in between its bad for the mind to sit there and think about the same thing for 8 hours in one day... without many breaks... a little walk is one form of break but unwinding for that split second with communication is a nice way to allow the mind to wander just for a while and relax...

its probably quite rare that you get 8-9 hours for yourself at work (impossible if you ask me)... concentrating on one thing, day in day out for 16 days... definitely not healthy.. so when looking for work its important to try to put yourself in situations where you at least some of the time (but definitely not all of the time) get some social interaction WHILE you work... as long as you are disciplined this will just end up being minimal .. possibly 10-15 minutes of chatter but enough to make a big difference to your mind... it makes the stuff you are getting done of a high standard... otherwise the brain needs to day dream to try to get that mental break it needs...

This evening I went out to go shopping for the weekly supplies... £18.32... now thats not gonna last for an entire week, but not far off... only need to buy some bread and maybe one/two more dinners and it'll be set... not too bad... anyway.. while shopping at Sainsbury, these two girls walked past discussing random things as people do... I was picking out some shower gel at the time and the conversation these two girls had immediately made one realise a few things... they were students; they were from Rich families... they were at a different stage of life...

Girl #1: Oh god, I absolutely hate buying my own toiletries and basic things like salt and stuff... and I hate having to think about buying things like milk. I mean I don't have the money for these things. I want to buy pretty things... and I just like want those other things to be there when I need them.
Girl #2: Oh I know, its terrible. Whenever I go back to my parents place I normally get them to buy all my supplies but it means I have to go back quite often. Like everytime I need toilet paper...

thats where I left the conversation... but quite funny to listen to people ... these two were obviously students (freshers.. first year students) who had just moved in in Oct. ... still coming to grips with the issues... I think that a lot of people felt during their university years or whatever had that ... "gosh, before these things were always just there... " moment... and of course a lot of our parents wanted to help us through the first years at university in different ways... and to different levels... but these girls had obviously not seen the light yet... and one only hopes that they realise the value of things like tiolet paper, shampoo, milk... in the future.. i'm sure they will...:-) but its interesting what you hear when you're out n about...