Hyperfocus causing problems at work

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I'm sure many of you have this happen, but I find it becoming more and more crazy...

I am a graphic designer & web designer, and I work with a number of other designers. I am far and away the most productive. In the time it takes another designer to do a website, brochure or whatever... I do 4 or 5. I work to the limits of my computer, hot-keying and multitasking to the extreme. I work so fast that my coworkers sometimes stand behind me and comment that they can't even see what it is that I am doing, the screen is just flashing all over the place as I work. For awhile I actually worked on two computers near-simultaneously because they were both too slow to keep up, though I recently had the machines replaced with a machine that must have cost a fortune, and is well equipped to sort-of keep up with me. Meanwhile I am so focused that I don't even notice people right in front of me. I only stop when the computer does.

If someone speaks to me or the phone rings, I totally lose concentration. It'll take me sometimes half an hour just to figure out what it was that I was doing because I have EVERYTHING open. If my train of thought is derailed, it's a big deal to figure it all out and start again. The end result is that when left alone, I am 4 or 5 times as productive as anyone else. But when not left alone, I'm only somewhat faster than them.

I have to be the absolute best in the department in order to keep my job, because my lack of social skills means that everyone else is well-liked and I am looked down upon. I have to make up for that with extreme productivity and perfect quality.

The problem now is that my boss and those around me are annoying me a lot more these days than before. This means a good size drop in productivity, and I have no real solution for it. Sometimes they want to bring me into work-gossip discussions, which I couldn't care less about. Other times my boss wants to micro-manage me by coming by my desk every half hour or so and asking me about projects or watching me work. She doesn't understand the "flashing screen" is actually me copying and pasting stuff, closing and opening program windows, typing in code, etc.... She just sees it as me switching programs, which to her means I must be trying to hide stuff. She's said as much to me before. I try to explain that I am working extremely rapidly, and that's why I have such high numbers, but I don't think she gets it. So she demands status reports all the time, and that is resulting in the lower productivity, which in turn threatens my job.

I'm not sure what to do about it.

f*****g NTS!" UGH! Sorry that they don't appreciate you. They are always focused on the unimportant, peripheral stuff, while we do all the work, and then they complain! And may I say that you sound like an awesome worker?

machinex, your boss might resent the fact that you raised the bar to a level your coworkers cannot reach. Maybe you make your coworkers feel stupid and your boss knows it.

You have a point, there, MW99. I don't know why we have to compete at work. I had forgotten that aspect of it. Rest assured, whatever the reason, hard work is NEVER appreciated for what it is. Always, it is seen for something else - in this case, machinex has a gift that he/she is willing to use to enrich the company worked for, and it is not appreciated.

I used to work as a graphic designer creating Flash animations for online courses. My main problem was that I worked slower than everyone else because I'm a perfectionist. BUT, my animations would be perfect when I was done and wouldn't need any revisions, while everyone else would have tons of revisions to do after their animations were checked.

I was a perfectionist, too. But of course I was still fired because "Things just weren't working out." When they told me that, I should have handed them a pencil.

MAN, I AM HOME! Machinex! You just described MY normal situation. I WISH I could give you help. One bit of advice. Do NOT let them on your computer. Those idiots will taylor everything to THEIR liking(And they START by shuting down all those windows!! !) and you may have to learn LOTS of stupid things just to get back to where you were. In your case they could turn off anti aliasing, reset class handling, change screen resolution, etc.... I swear, EVERYTIME they get on my system it takes like 5 minutes to recover if I know the stuff, and sometimes 2 days if I don't. BTW they RARELY really know what they did! 8-(

As for hiding stuff, WHO CARES!?!? If you are the most productive one, you should be THE one they want to keep!

1) Have you brought up your concerns about this reflecting badly on you? She has to know that if she requires these updates they take time and energy which is (logically) then not used completing projects.

2) Next time your coworkers try interrupting you with work-gossip issues, politely say something along the lines of "(insert boss' name) Keeps wanting updates on top of everything else now, so I'm sorry... I really don't have time to talk right now."

3) Do you have a quantitative way of showing your boss:
a) You are more productive than your coworkers (because you do things differently)
b) the reduction in your productivity because of the increase in updates to her.

4) I assume you have explained it to her. She may need to come and watch you work to know that you aren't doing anything wrong. Is she computer literate enough to understand what she's seeing? Perhaps you could invite her to come watch you for a while, long enough to see you opening and closing programs, typing code, etc.

5) Have you expressed your concern that the time changing gears and giving her updates may reflect badly upon you?:

Could you politly express your fear of being set up to fail? (Warning!: I can be hard to ask that without sounding accusatory, It all depends on if you think you can express it to her positively)

If she's at all competant she won't want a significant decrease in productivity (that's lost money). Could she be under some outside pressure to make sure you're on the up and up (coworker complaints?)

good luck

A BIG reason why Germany lost WWII was because hitler wanted to micromanage. THAT led to:

1. slower wins.
2. old info hurting performance, and helping the allies.
3. The allies breaking the codes.
4. The allies knowing about EVERYTHING after breaking the code.

The average project manager is probably WORSE!! !! !! !!

A bit late to reply, probably... but thanks. I read all the replies, even though I didn't wind up having the time to reply. I found out she was under a lot of pressure from up above.... and I was probably the easiest target, socially speaking. If you're going to take out your frustration on anyone... try the quiet guy!

I 'fixed' the situation by confronting a few people about it. Turns out my skills are really valued, and they would rather resolve the problem than lose me. So her boss fixed the problem .

From now on though I supposed I better pay more attention to work politics. I almost got burned.

And I agree... Hitler was a moron. Micromanager... another term for a control freak who will wind up losing whatever he's doing.

Always use your chain of command!

Gah. Why is *hyperfocusing* called *hyperfocusing* when in correlation to *the work place* but when it's in correlation to the classroom it's called *zoning out*?

<shakes head>

People will zone out in the classroom in the work place, on the road and in any other situation they don't want to be present in. It's aka disassociation. You simply remove yourself from a place and space mentally and go somewhere else - usually on the astral plane. Sure, your brain can be doing something like curing the national debit or doing some complex mathematical equation during - but you - your MIND is somewhere else completely. And no. The brain and mind don't necessarily share all faculties. Duh.

Hi Machine X,

This sounds very familiar to me. I work in DTP and like you, I have to have many applications open all at the same time: Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, Lotus Notes, Word...

I definitely function far better when left alone. One of my bosses works remotely so we communicate by email, fax and phone. Sometimes he will phone as often as 20 times a day which is infuriating because it breaks my concentration, especially as the half a dozen or so things in his call will have NOTHING to do with the project that I'm working on at the time, and I just can't picture "page 73 of Mark's book" when I've got page 12 of a magazine open in front of me.

He's an old dog reluctant to learn new tricks... I have tried over and over again to persuade him to jot down lists of tasks/notes and send them by email rather than phoning so often. I even got my psych to write to him to explain how disruptive this is. But picking up the phone is such an automatice reaction to him that it's not going to get any better.

And as for the REDIAL button - disaster - I'll put the phone down, turn back to the interrupted project to tisdy up at the interruption point so that I don't lose track of it - but the phone rings again!

His most annoying habit is to phone me to tell me that he is about to send a fax or email, and then phone me again two minutes later to tell me that he's sent it.

It is so unproductive, and leads to lots of stupid mistakes because he gives me a note about one thing and then tells me to look at something else before I've had chance to fix the first problem. Things get forgotten or misplaced by this method and I end up feeling really stupid when a silly mistake comes to light. It can be very distressing.