Shemsu
Member
Greeting everyone,
I'd like to share an idea about how you can turn a situation involving tedious activities to your advantage. I was reminded today of times when I worked in a factory and made the best of it by doing mental gymnastics to avoid, as a friend put it bluntly, growing more and more stupid by the second, when we were doing two or three operations on a moving line for seven hours each day, six days a week. Some days when a truck full of candy arrived it had to be unloaded (operating a forklift can be fun if you're into doing anything with the utmost precision possible) and the bags of candy labeled. No one was too keen on doing it, so I usually volunteered.
This is just an example and many other situations can be used by the mathematically curious.
I unload a truck with 24 pallets of candy. Each pallet has 144 boxes with 12 bags of candy inside each box. They all have to be labeled because they were originally meant for another market and there's no declaration in the local language.
I have huge rolls of label stickers and take 6 boxes at a time. Unsticking 4 labels from the roll I do one SA-TA-NA-MA and putting them on 4 bags another one. 12 bags per box and 12 times unsticking labels from the roll thats 24 times the mantra. Six boxes at a time it's 144 times or 3456 times per pallet or 82944 times for the whole truckload. At each stage you get nine when the number is reduced to one figure by addition.
Instead of feeling mind numbed at the end of it I had the opposite effect. Happy, energized and ready for whatever else the day threw at me to my colleagues amazement. That's just the arithmetical dimension of the operation. I also had a geometric fun time by organizing the boxes in unusual ways which was also used to do another mental exercise.
Don't let the workload bring you down. Let mathematics and the knowledge we share make your day and subsequently improve the quality of your life (until you get a better job that will allow you to start your own business and fulfill your dreams).
SWP
I'd like to share an idea about how you can turn a situation involving tedious activities to your advantage. I was reminded today of times when I worked in a factory and made the best of it by doing mental gymnastics to avoid, as a friend put it bluntly, growing more and more stupid by the second, when we were doing two or three operations on a moving line for seven hours each day, six days a week. Some days when a truck full of candy arrived it had to be unloaded (operating a forklift can be fun if you're into doing anything with the utmost precision possible) and the bags of candy labeled. No one was too keen on doing it, so I usually volunteered.
This is just an example and many other situations can be used by the mathematically curious.
I unload a truck with 24 pallets of candy. Each pallet has 144 boxes with 12 bags of candy inside each box. They all have to be labeled because they were originally meant for another market and there's no declaration in the local language.
I have huge rolls of label stickers and take 6 boxes at a time. Unsticking 4 labels from the roll I do one SA-TA-NA-MA and putting them on 4 bags another one. 12 bags per box and 12 times unsticking labels from the roll thats 24 times the mantra. Six boxes at a time it's 144 times or 3456 times per pallet or 82944 times for the whole truckload. At each stage you get nine when the number is reduced to one figure by addition.
Instead of feeling mind numbed at the end of it I had the opposite effect. Happy, energized and ready for whatever else the day threw at me to my colleagues amazement. That's just the arithmetical dimension of the operation. I also had a geometric fun time by organizing the boxes in unusual ways which was also used to do another mental exercise.
Don't let the workload bring you down. Let mathematics and the knowledge we share make your day and subsequently improve the quality of your life (until you get a better job that will allow you to start your own business and fulfill your dreams).
SWP
