A useful batch script; work update

I realized that a big part of the data entry portion of my job is retyping information contained in the filenames of my completed Work Product Units (WPUs.) So, I came up with a batch script to automate some of that process.

This is a Windows cmd script (not Powershell) that will create a file called list.txt containing all of the files of a certain type in the current folder, omitting the extensions, in the order the files were created.

for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('dir *.PDF /b /OD') do echo %%~na>>list.txt

For my needs, this is .PDF, but you can replace the extension with whatever type of file you want to list. Or just do a bare "dir" to list all files. I made a batch file called list.bat, so I just copy it into the folder containing the day's WPUs and run it. Then I open list.txt and copy and paste it into the appropriate column of my spreadsheet.

I'm pretty pleased with how much I've streamlined this part of the job: between my batch file and use of the spreadsheet's XLOOKUP function to link certain data pairs together, there are only 2 fields I need to enter manually. I can fly through an entire day's worth of WPUs in just a few minutes.

My estimate that I could work on about 25 WPUs a day and stay caught up has proven accurate. The last week has been nonstop work, but it's not my fault, it's because the person in the chain before me struggles to get the WPUs to me in a timely manner. So I had about a week in which I did nothing but deal with the occasional correction, and then a week after the logjam in which I worked nonstop to get caught up.

The week of no work was quite nice: I even brought my computer to work a couple days I was there by myself so I could work on SMB1R levels. I didn't want to get under my desk to unplug the AC adapter, so I just ran it on batteries and got around 3 hours of use. But it's okay, that's about the maximum I'm able to work on one thing anyway. The rest of the time I mostly read. It was great.

But despite this, I still prefer consistency to the "feast or famine" pattern. I struggle to maintain focus on one book for an entire day, and I usually can't break it up by playing games or working on a personal project because computer use is monitored, and I don't think I can get away with using my laptop when there are other people around.

Starting next week, they're computerizing something in the department responsible for the logjam that was inexplicably still being done by hand, so I'm hoping that (a) the pipeline flows continually going forward, and (b) I have way fewer mistakes to deal with.

If I can get back on a ~25 WPU/day schedule, then my 8 hour work days will consist of around 4 hours of work, 1 hour of walking and 3 hours of rest, which will be good for my mental health. Studies have shown¹ that most people do about 3 hours of actual work in an 8 hour office work day, and 5 hours is the theoretical maximum for productivity, so 4 feels like a good middle ground.