Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Get Work Done?
canuck asks: "I am currently a university student and have a major problem: being able to simply sit down and get work done. I can set aside a day to work, whether it is homework or contract work, and I will be lucky to have an hour done before dinner time. The only time I can actually get solid work done seems to be after midnight under a lot of pressure (ie. a deadline the next day). This has led to too many 5 a.m. nights and turning down too many invitations to go out only to stay in and accomplish nothing. I have stopped playing games, stopped watching TV, tried reading the Seven Habits book, and am currently seeing what classical music does for me. I don't think I have ADHD, and I am not sure what else to try. If it is computer work, the web is always a click away, and I can always escape to my imagination. I know many of you will have had the same problem. Can anyone please give advice on how to overcome this problem, be it a little trick, medication, or anything else?"
Exercise would be my first recommendation. It will keep your sleep habits in line pretty well. Physical activity seems to be what's missing from most of our lives today. If I don't make it to the gym, my schedule will slip quickly to 1AM, 2AM, 4AM...which isn't good since I left college years ago ;-)
The other thing I would recommend is finding a buddy to go do exercise with you. It helps if you're both accountable to each other for showing up. And just having someone to do it with you doesn't hurt. This carries over to work as well.
I'd imagine you sit there thinking about a million things, but you can't concentrate on what you need to do because it seems like you can put it off. The later, you wind up with many things to do and little time. You get a bunch of work done at this point, but there's so much you have trouble keeping up with it. I had the very same problem in college.
Another thing that might help you is getting a job a couple hours a week. As long as I've had something constant to do, it's kept me going. Just don't get something that follows you home...go there, do your work and then head to class or do some homework.
Honestly, part of it is just sheer will as well. You have to resist the urge to just read a page and put stuff down. Set a bedtime for yourself and a wake up time for yourself and follow them.
That's about the best advice I can give you. If you do have some mental disorder such as ADHD only a psychologist can diagnose it. Although many times it's over diagnosed.
My record is 55 hours of straight coding.
Followed, no doubt, by six weeks of debugging.
I am very familiar with your problem, and the thing I'd recommend is getting a decent amount of physical exercise. I always find it easier to concentrate on schoolwork (or any other work) after 30-45 minutes of running and a shower.
:)
The biggest problem is motivation. Often when I don't feel like working, I definitely don't feel like exercising either
Unfortunately for many people there is no commercial, paying field which they'd enjoy.
If he's really worried about procrastination on the job, however, something a little more structured like systems administration might be a better choice. When you have people screaming at you because they just lost all connectivity, the urge to procrastinate for the most part vanishes.
I'd start with not setting aside an entire day for work, that's just overwhelming
...) in terms of how much of the
for anyone. When you start by telling yourself "I'm going to work all day" you
are probably going to fail because just the sheer length of the day and magnitude
of what you have to get done can become overwhelming.
The key to fixing your problem is probably to make the tasks in front of you not
seem so overwhelming through a number of techniques. I sympathize with your plight
because as a student myself I had a hard time initially, but it's worth knowing
that over time your ability to work hard for longer will improve... like so many
other things it's a question of practice.
Music may or may not help you, that seems to be a very personal thing. I can't
stand to have music while I work (because I want to listen to it and not work)
but have a colleague who has music on (low volume) all the time. Personally I
have found that the quiet droning voices on NPR help keep my mind on the job and
if something I really do care about comes on it's a little welcome break from
what I am doing.
You might also find that some other non-work activities actually bring more focus
when you are working. If you go to a gym, run or do some other physical exercise
I've found that it has a great effect on concentrating the mind. If you are
drinking a lot of caffeine laden drinks while working you might find that cutting
back enables you to concentrate more because you are not overstimulated by caffeine.
But specifically...
1. Prioritize the work
Sit down and make a list of all the tasks that you have to get done. I use a
real paper notebook for that sort of thing because it's satisfying to cross them
off as you go.
Once you've made the list order them (1, 2, 3,
job you'll get done, or how hard they are to do. If you knock off a few hard
tasks at the start when you are more focused you'll start to feel better and the
smaller tasks coming later will seem less overwhelming. (I think in the Seven
Habits book this is "Put first things first"---but really it's commonsense, if
you get out of the way the stuff you are dreading doing you'll feel better and
get more done).
For example, right now I am working on the test suite for my open source project
and it's *boring*, *long* and *hard*. But I've got a list and slowly by slowly
I'm seeing progress.
One reason that lists can be problematic is if you write down all the tasks and
realize that you haven't got enough time... hence the next topic...
2. Set yourself some goals
It's important to take your list and set some goals. "I'm going to finish
task X by lunch". Then try to stick to them. If you find yourself unable to
stick to the goals and timings then go back and replan. You'll have a better
idea of how long the task is going to take and that will motivate you more...
Thinks "If I finish Y tonight, then tomorrow I'll just need to do A, B and C"
3. Reward yourself
I've found that stopping my main tasks and doing a little other task that I
find interesting is a good way to keep the motivation up. For example, I'll
have a goal "finish X" and when I've done it I'll stop and do something unrelated
which I enjoy.
For example on my open source project I have this long boring test suite to write,
each time I complete a task I work on a fun task associated with the performance
of the project. You can do something similar which means you actually praise
yourself through a reward for going something done.
4. Eat well
Nothing like being hungry to screw things up. Eat good food, stop for meals and
eat them.
Good luck,
John.
Agreed. I have ADD, I'm not hyperactive(i do fidgit). But the current buzzword is ADHD, and many people completely forget about ADD as an option if they aren't hyper.
Goto a doctor and try to get on stratera or some equivalent.
AND STAY OFF OF THE WEB... its the worlds greatest time saver/waster
moo.
I used to suffer from this problem REAL BAD. Like you, I could not get anything done, even if I locked myself in my office for the whole day. The Internet, MP3's, TV, whatever was available served as a distraction. I purchased countless books on procrastination, all of the "PUMP YOURSELF UP" motivator books, asked other people for advice, etc. Nothing worked. Then one day, I don't even remember how, I came up with a system that worked. Each time I had a project to work on, I would sit down the night before and develop a plan. 1) I break down each of the major tasks needed to be completed. 2) Under each task, I break down all of the subsections that needed to be completed 3) Under each subsection, I fill in the details that needed to be done (sometimes in paragraph form). 4) After everything is listed, I go back through and assign time guidlines. When I follow this, it works out great. I think the whole problem is that sometimes a big project like writing a term paper is just overwhelming. Rather than trying to figure out where to begin and what to do, it's easier just to click onto your browser of choice and say "I'll do it later". When everything is listed and broken down into little sections, the project isn't as overwhelming. Just a bunch of 'little projects' that need to be done. I'm not if this will work for you, but it makes things MUCH easier for me. Good Luck
Hell yes, stay off the web. This has to be my number one time waster. I sometimes just find myself mindlessely hitting refresh every 5 seconds or so on /. or some other news site before I realize that I'm zoned out. There's just too much information on the web out there, you can easily get lost in it. Found myself reading a factoid list of Earth info (wow, I didn't know the longest mountain chain was under the Atlantic!) for an hour the other day while I should have been doing other things. Only use the web if you really need to (or anything else that allows deviation, for that matter).
I'd like to emphasize the importance of meaningfulness to help combat procrastination.
When I started college, I was a psychology major. Whenever I sat down to do work, I could never bring myself to do it before midnight, just like you. In fact, I'd often procrastinate by doing work on the school newspaper's website.
After a year and a half of procrastination hell every night I suddenly realized that if I procrastinate by writing code (alright, it was ASP, and VBScript doesn't really count), maybe I should make CS what I do ALL the time. I became a CS major and have been happier ever since.
As a side note, even though I'm much happier I still don't start work early (usually around 10 PM). Do yourself a favor and don't put unreasonable expectations on yourself -- don't sit down at 3 PM and say "okay, let's get cracking!" if you know you won't. Relax until after dinner, and then start up work. It'll save you a lot of frustration and you'll probably get started on your work sooner.
And PLEASE don't take ritalin or something else like that. 60% of the students I know procrastinate their asses off. It's not because all of us have ADD, it's because sometimes studying sucks. To underscore this point, whenever I've worked a real job (two internships doing CS stuff) I've never procrastinated simply because I find significantly more motivation to do the work. So it's not like my rampant procrastination was a mental defect.
This might sound ludicrous to those who live off of caffeine, but I've found caffeine absolutely has a completely detrimental effect on my ability to get work done. I become panicky, nervous and confused, and I can't keep a clear train of thought.
This certainly does not apply to everyone, but may to you.
All this takes is discipline. There is no real secret to this. We are not talking just deciding to do things better, we are talking about actually making a shift in how you focus on your goals. I hate to say it, but it will mostly come with maturity. All you need to do is decide, "It is time to get serious about this all. I will do my work now and not put it off for later, I will not procrastinate, I will not surf the net or play doom or anything, I will get my computer work done." It just takes some dedication and dicipline.
Sorry, I know you are looking for that magic pill that is the solution for this, but there isn't one. This just takes a shift in the fundamental way that you see your priorities.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
I have exactly the same problem you describe. I can sit at the desk, stuff right in front of me, and still end up doing no work for hours. I may surf the net, read mail, pick up a suddenly interesting (but unrelated) book, make coffee, doodle, making suddenly important phonecalls, decide my chair needs reupholstering or whatever.
Only when I am cornered like a frightened rat, with the third extended deadline breathing down my neck, voices screaming at me to get going (no, not in the head; they belong to people hat need my results) and my stress level is high enough to induce cardiac arrest am I able to focus and actually do it.
A partially successful strategy is to put yourself in a situation where you have another, even more important, task to do; this will transform your duties into avoidance activities and will suddenly get done quickly and easily - just witness how clean and well-organized your apartment is after an important deadline. Of course, that does mean the new, hugely important task will be lingering instead.
On the downside, I have never found any way to really solve this. I just put up with failing myself over and over again, putting off stuff I should have done long ago. On the upside, even with such faulty strategies, I have managed to get a Ph.D. - and high blood pressure, jeadaches stomach pains and stress-related mood swings, but hey, you can't have it all.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I don't agree with that assumption. I really like what I do. A lot. But, I often have a similar problem with procrastination. In my case it's often because I enjoy thinking about the problem and solving it in my mind. Implementation is a long boring part that I sometimes even dread. Documentation is even worse.
... the list goes on.... How do you do this and not begin to be exhausted by it?
I noticed this kind of problem started with me in about 1995. I was a Mac dev at the time and was suddenly finding myself exhausted by Apple's continuous cycle of producing massive huge API's for devs to learn...all just to abandon them shortly thereafter. PowerTalk was one such example. If you want to build a world-class product it's going to need to have all 1 million checklist items finished as features in it. Which means you have to follow all the trends and respond accordingly. Trouble is, each one trend is a huge job.
It used to be that a single person could produce a great work in the computer field as a hobbiest. Commercial software wasn't a whole lot more impressive than shareware. Now days it's tough to go alone. You can do it if your application targets a niche. But, imagine writing a shareware word processor alone today? Who would bother? Why? OSS gives us a way to deal with this by removing the "alone" factor, replacing it with ad-hoc teams, or virtual teams, or even real teams. But, OSS is starting to really piss me off. Maybe people that still support OSS haven't been out of a job for enough months.
So, today, there is just so much to know and learn and follow. It's too easy to start feeling that it's all just a bunch of crap trivia and lose interest entirely. I have long-time (18+ years) dev friends that now sell cars and hope to never touch a computer again. At my last job I'd look out the window at a construction crew and wish I could be shovelling dirt, too. Of course, they looked up at the building and wished they could be out of the rain.
How do you keep up your C++ skills, and your Perl skills, and your Java skills...while learning UML, trying out Struts, contributing to Mozilla, developing on opinion on Rebol, D, or Erlang... offering "tech support" to all your family and friends,
Another poster suggested exercise. He might be right. I used to run a *lot* and play inline skate hockey. But, all that ended about 1995. So, for me at least...it's either lack of exercise, or the fact that CS is more complicated chock full of trivia than ever before, or the combination of both.
The web is a massive time waster. I didn't
need it (didnt have it!) when I was in college.
Cancel it, or pick up a 2400 baud modem. You can use that to check your mail, but it will keep you off the web because it will be just to slow..
Now you can get your work done instead of reading Slashdot, and all sorts of other silly webpages..
I've been diagnosed with ADD and I have two suggestions for dealing with procrastination and focusing problems. Note that I don't to either of these much anymore, as I'm medicated, but they worked well enough at the time.
t asks_and_contexts_. One minute you're studying faithfully --- at your mental office, so to speak --- and the next, you're in your mental rec room, playing FreeCiv; or in your mental coffee shop, chatting on /. And, Oh God, the futzing that one can do with a GUI! Desktop icon arrangement. Wallpaper. Themepacks, for heaven's sake. It's a temple of distraction in here.
/etc/inittab to boot to initlevel 4. Learn to love vi or nano or emacs: They work great for comp sci projects, and if you have an essay or a paper to write, do it in vi first, import it to word_processor_of_your_choice (for formatting) only when you're about to print it.
Suggestion #1:
I have a little theory to the effect that, for a certain percentage of the population, GUIs have made focusing a lot more difficult: Sure, your taskbar, icons, buttons and menus make it easier to switch rapidly between many different tasks and contexts, but they also _make_it_easier_to_switch_between_many_different_
So here's what I recommend: Ditch it. Ditch the GUI. Install Linux, if you haven't already, and configure
If you can't ditch the GUI for whatever reason (i.e. you need a proprietary Windoze app, or you can't bear to install Linux) then I recommend setting up a new account (linux) or user profile ('doze) that will only allow you to run only those applications which you need to get the job done. If that doesn't work, you should seriously consider getting yourself a (second-hand?) laptop upon which you will place only work-related programs --- preferably, one without WiFi or some other way of exposing it to the Lethean floodwaters of the 'net.
Suggestion #2. This next one is a little weird, but it works well for me. Note that it might work less well if you don't have any roomates, as it depends greatly on your desire to avoid embarrassment. It also requires that you have an extra room in your house.
Make yourself a home office in a well-heated room, and keep only work-related things in it. When you go to study, take in all the food, caffeine, and books that you'll need for a stint of about five hours. Set an alarm clock to go off in five hours. Now, close the door, and take off your pants. Yes, you heard me, take off your pants. If necessary, take off your shirt as well. Put them in a plastic bag, and tie the bag shut. Put the bag away (the further away the better.). This way, you can't leave the room suddenly without raising eyebrows: If, say, you have a sudden impulse to jump up and watch TV, or phone a friend, it'll take you a good five minutes to dress, which should be plenty to reconsider and sit back down.
After a couple of months of this, you get in the habit of staying in the room until the alarm sounds, you don't have to take off your pants anymore.
- undoware.ca
A workable strategy is acceptance.
Accept that you are a procrastinator, and that you will not get anything done until the last minute. Then plan accordingly.
Say you have a paper due in a month. Great. Talk to the professor and set up a meeting a week from now where you will show your outline, thesis and detailed plan on how to defend it.
In another week, set up a new meeting with the same or different authority figure to go over your list of references and help clear whether you are quoting the right stuff or not, and whether those people in the references really can be interpreted the way you do it.
And the next week, have another prearranged meeting to go over your language and style.
Suddenly you have hard deadlines for every aspect of that paper, which means you will actually be quite comfortably done when the real deadline appears. True, you will still be stressed and feeling behind, but on the positive side you do see that the work is actually progressing nicely. And with this predisposition, you will never _not_ feel stressed in any case, so just make it work for you.
the trick is to make these deadlines _real_ - arranging for a friend to take a look at the paper won't do it; such a "meeting" is too easy to blow off, and a friend will be forgiving if you haven't done the work. It needs to be with people that will cause real, negative, consequences if you mess it up.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
A friend of mine, after having listened to me complain about my marks (I was a straight A high school student, as I was never pushed there, and I couldn't understand how my marks were so bad in University) suggested to me that perhaps I wasn't in the right program. I took a week where I looked at what I was doing with the majority of my time - it was reading, just not for class - so I changed my major to English, and I begin doing that full time in September. For the past year, since I decided that I was going to change to English, my marks have risen 15 percentage points and I feel much happier. I also tend to start my work earlier (except for right now, I have a project due on Wednesday worth 25% in my last science course ever, and I haven't started yet) and my work ethic has risen from doing about one hour of studying to four hours straight.
English isn't for everyone; you need good reading and comprehension skills, plus the ability to bullshit (read: compose) essays. I would suggest to the questioner that for one week he should write down what he is doing instead of working - be it talking to people, surfing the web, or whatever - and try to find a degree or program that will allow him to do that for a living. It may turn out that University or College isn't the place for him. I would also suggest he consider Trade Schools, as most people in the business are retiring in the next 10 years, so there is about to be a high demand for Plumbers, Electricians and Millwrights. Hopefully, he'll be able to find something that suits him.
I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own. - Christopher Walken
You can put all your "distracting" applications into a group that your "work" login doesn't allow access to. You can remove the network cable except in specific pre-planned periods.
.
Nowdays I have to get a lot done, and there are a few things I've found very helpful (and believe me I used to do my homework in the lesson it was being handed in for 8))
- If I think of something else that needs doing I write it down, I don't start doing it disrupting the current task
- If I think of stuff late in the evening I write it down so I dont spent the night trying not to forget it
- Split big tasks quickly into a list of little subtasks, cross them off as you finish them
- Don't sit on irc , its the ultimate productivity killer and distraction bar none (some people seem to swear by putting all their non "work" stuff on a seperate desktop so its not in their vision except when they take a break)
- Remember you can read your email just once or twice a day. Ditto web news sites/slashdot
- Don't look at a pile of things and think I really ought to be doing something. Do *something* even if its pick the easiest looking task to knock off the list.
- When you build up a pile of tasks that can't be done in the required time (wait for final year university 8)) prioritize them and cross of stuff you have to discard, don't sit around doing nothing because you can't do them all.
- Get into a routine (I'm dire at this but when it works it helps). Get up read email, go do work the same pattern every day.
Ultimately though its about willpower., someone suggested exercise, one good exercise way to learn about relaxation and willpower is martial arts. Not all of them are about beating the crap out of people (although if you like that sort of competitive thing there are plenty to choose from), others like Aikido are much more about self control and at the extreme soft end they verge into deeply internal things like T'ai Chi
**Worst advice ever**
/. community. He's seeking out different ways at becoming productive. Your response was delightfully unhelpful.
Him: "Can slashdot tell me what I need to get myself boostrapped and productive?"
You: "You know what you need punk? To bootstrap yourself and get to work!"
He knows what his problem is, that's why he's asking the
Some people are blessed with the talent to just be effortlessly productive. Others need to put effort into it, some will not become productive until a crisis hits them, and a few will never be productive at all (which costs everyone time and money.) If you're in the first group, then congratulations, if you're in the second group, then congratulations that you found your system, if you're in the third group then I'm sorry for whatever may have happened (that also seem to have added a new crutch to you that you're not entirely aware of.)
Unfortunately, in the modern world, this is very difficult.
None of this breeds any kind of productivity ethic. Even if you are very interested in a field, and approach its study with enthusiasm, you are likely to run out of steam before you reach the end of your study, gradually disillusioned by the degree to which you must endlessly specialize, sublimate your own identity, avoid creativity, sacrifice future freedoms and learn the ins and outs of petty business, all in order to simply build a career doing something you thought you liked.
I personally feel that most men (and women) given a chance would prefer to be craftsmen (and women) of some kind, in whatever their chosen field, bringing a quality and uniquely personal product to the people of their own community. Instead, because of the nature of the modern marketplace, many essentially become clerks and civil servants in one field or another order to be able to draw a wage.
As a result, and lacking enthusiasm, we end up sitting around browsing the Web and dreaming of something better... but those who develop the fortitude to switch inevitably find that their new field is, on balance, not all that different from their last one... still all business, anonymity and colorless, impersonal nonsense.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Actually he is right, moreso if he tweaks it just a bit by making it difficult but not impossible to access.
Want to get serious work done? Walk across the room and disconnect the network cable from the wall. Really need access (like to submit your homework, as you suggested) walk over and plug it in, submit your work, and then unplug it again.
For someone that is easily distracted, removing the ease of distraction (ie, a direct connect to the net) is better than Ritalin.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
In the case of a student, maybe it's "look for book X in the library" or "re-read chapter Y", or "write some header comments in each file", or "write a function to parse these strings". After that, the other steps become clearer.
My wife has worked with ADHD kids and tells me this is the best thing she's seen to focus and motivate them to produce (other than intrisic motivation, which is of course the best motivator, but this technique does lead to intrisic motivation).
Think about what you should be able to accomplish in 15 minutes. Set an egg-timer for 15 minutes, and do that task you visualized. You can eventually work up to larger increments. You'll probably find yourself beating the timer in some cases.
I know it sounds simplistic, but knowing that pressure seems to be a large motivator for you, the motivation of knowing that bell is going to go off sounds like it might do the trick. This stuff works on adults as well as children. In my wife's experience, it's never failed her (with her students).
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I felt the same way as you regarding ADD. It doesn't really exist. As a matter of fact, I had the exact same argument: How can you not be able to accomplish something at school or work, yet play games into the middle of the night with unbreakable concentration?
:) I will be on the two pills for the rest of my life. Which really stinks, but I am up for promotion, so I guess it doesn't stink to bad.
Games are short term goals. The longest games last an hour or two at most. And even then, there are even shorter term goals within a single game. One could argue that FPS games have the shortest term goals of any game out there. Every second that you haven't been killed, you have reached a goal. If you happen to kill a person AND not get killed, you get two goals in one second! But I digress.
Work, on the other hand, often requires longer term goals. You have to spend many hours dedicated to one task to achieve a goal. One trick is to break that long term goal into several short term goals. Another trick is to take goals off of your task list. This is the one that I needed to do. I was getting so upset with myself for not working, when I thought I should be that it caused many internal problems. You have to know when to play and when to work. You must make it OK to enjoy life a little. I would always feel guilty about playing until I decided that it was OK to play online for a couple of hours.
The problem is not just one little thing that can be fixed with a pill. It takes training and self discipline... and a pill. For over 20 years I tried to convince myself that I did not have ADD, that I was just lazy. I joined the U.S. Navy to prove it to myself. Guess what? I have ADD. I need a pill to help my brain concentrate on one thing at a time. I sought help from a counselor, who then sent me to see a psychiatrist for one reason, and one reason only; to get a prescription for my ADD. You see, I am a smart guy, I have drive and determination, I am good at video games, but no matter how much I wanted it, or how much I tried, I could not stay focused on a single task for any length of time. I walked into the psychiatrist's office and we started chatting. Within 10 minutes she tells me that she knows what my problem is and has only one question to ask. She asked me, "So, how much coffee do you drink a day?" "Well, I don't drink coffee, I drink Dr. Pepper. And I drink about 3 liters a day."
Come to find out, caffeine has the same effect on the brain as Ritalin. There are actually about 7 different types of ADD, each with a different symptoms and treatments. The severe cases require Ritalin. Mild cases require exercise and counseling. I fall somewhere in the middle and take a different kind of medication. I am down to 1 liter of Dr. Pepper and two pills a day
My advice, don't waste your life fighting a losing battle. Go see a counselor and find out how to fight your particular problem. I didn't want to admit to myself that I had ADD and it cost me some of the best years of my life.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
This system has several advantages. First, I'm never faced with an insurmountable task. When I began, my house was very cluttered, and it was hard to get excited about cleaning it. But it's not so hard to think "I'll just clean the living room for 30 minutes and I'll be done and on to something else". Second, for thinking tasks (like coding), the fixed time means I don't stop "between thoughts" on a project. When the time is up for a task, I stop right where I am, even in mid-sentence or mid-expression. The anticipation this creates keeps each task fresh in my mind, so I can pick up at full speed the next time I begin that task.
The "secret" is, IMHO, to be a gratification-delayer. Psychologists some time ago did studies on young children, asking them if they'd rather have a marshmellow now, or two after some time interval. Those who could delay gratification and wait for the two marshmellows, proved to be more productive and successful adults. In fact, these researchers found, IIRC, that this ability to delay gratification had the greatest affect on a person's adult success, more so than race, religion, socio-economic background, and so on.
From your comments, it appears as if you are not one who can delay gratification. I would encourage you to change this post haste. How does one do this? That, clearly, is the 64 thousand dollar question. While I don't know what will work for you, here are some suggestions you might want to give a try:
Do not underestimate the importance of learning how to delay gratification. It can mean the difference between a successful, happy life and one where you are constantly burdened with deadlines, financially strapped, and constantly stressed.
In any event, best of luck, and I hope you find a solution to your problem.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.