How to increase conscientiousness? / Make fewer mistakes

[Frita]

Ooo, as a former diagnostician, this is the stuff I geek out on. I will try to be brief.

What you describe sounds more like processing speed, the cognitive amount of time it takes to complete a mental task. It is possible to have global lower processing in all areas (math, reading, writing, listening, speaking), some, or just one. Math fluency is a combination of speed and accuracy, which are inversely correlated. Slow down and accuracy improves. Speed up and accuracy decreases. This is not a learning disability but can adversely affect one. Also, people with Autism or similar features are more likely than neurotypical people to have slower processing speeds.

Have you always had this issue, or has it developed recently? (I ask because medication side effects, stress/anxity, nutrition, exercise, fatigue, and medical conditions could also be a cause.) Lack of automation is a bummer because that would be the best workaround. Have you tried to reduce the visual component of the task by increasing the font, using boldface, changing the typeset to characters with a lot of surrounding white space, highlighting pertinent data, and/or having contrast between the type and background (black type with yellow background has highest contrast)? Taking breaks and having shorter work periods could help too. Do you work on these invoices in one monthly batch? If so, is there a way to spread it out more.

To repeat myself a bit, performance anxiety will dramatically decrease processing speed/fluency. Don't beat yourself up. Try a mantra, like, "Everybody makes mistakes." When you find one, pat yourself on the back for being conscientious. Perhaps there's a way to gamify it, measuring to show progress.

On a side note, how great that your boss is supportive! Some people who find bookkeeping cumbersome may not find the job appealing. It sounds like there are positives of the job and that you have the conscientiousness to notice your performance and want to improve in this area.

[chenda]

To get around this, I delay sending anything off until the next day, and turn reviewing yesterday's work as my morning "get into work mode" start of the day. This reminds me of the previous day's work, and any details to be cleaned up.

I do this a lot it's a good idea, unless you can get a colleague to second eye your work. I also find I only have about 4 hours of useful concentration per day, ideally late morning to early afternoon. Outside that time I won't do anything challenging and just do easy stuff like deleting spam or de-santising the laptop...

[macg]

Two things I would suggest ... one, and I don't know if it would actually help in this instance, but overall, I use the GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) process to help organize all the things I need to do - we talked about this in some other threads. Two, in regards to repetitive tasks, I work in IT, and I do exactly what some people have suggested - anything you can automate, take the time and automate. It not only makes everything more consistent, but it reduces the stress of remembering everything. It's been a long time since I have used Excel, but I would argue that it is worth taking the time to learn about how to fully use forms/macros/formulas/etc, and automate as much of the repetitive work that you can...

I would also echo the sentiment that everyone makes mistakes, and to not get too down about it...best of luck!

[Qazwer]

I do not know your health system well enough. But it might be worth getting appropriate psychometric testing to determine if there is something there. Frequent number flipping is a red flag that there might be dyscalculia or its ilk as you mention. If you can get formal testing for free through your health insurance, what is the harm? Then you can work with a specialist on overcoming issues. Given your stated ability to handle a farm and do a large number of excel sheets, it does not sound like you suffer from an issue with conscientiousness. The mistakes clearly bother you and you take the time to try to fix them. There just might be specific techniques to use.

[Ego]

I would track the mistakes and see if there is a pattern. It may show that there are particular sections of the invoice where you are prone to make a mistake.

[horsewoman]

What you describe sounds more like processing speed, the cognitive amount of time it takes to complete a mental task. It is possible to have global lower processing in all areas (math, reading, writing, listening, speaking), some, or just one. Math fluency is a combination of speed and accuracy, which are inversely correlated. Slow down and accuracy improves. Speed up and accuracy decreases. This is not a learning disability but can adversely affect one. Also, people with Autism or similar features are more likely than neurotypical people to have slower processing speeds.

I suppose I'm too fast/hurried - I get done lots of stuff pretty quickly, but I'm sloppy. I've tried to work on that in the past (breathing exercises, deliberately slowing down - but I slide back into old behaviours easily in that regard.

Have you always had this issue, or has it developed recently? (I ask because medication side effects, stress/anxity, nutrition, exercise, fatigue, and medical conditions could also be a cause.) Lack of automation is a bummer because that would be the best workaround. Have you tried to reduce the visual component of the task by increasing the font, using boldface, changing the typeset to characters with a lot of surrounding white space, highlighting pertinent data, and/or having contrast between the type and background (black type with yellow background has highest contrast)? Taking breaks and having shorter work periods could help too. Do you work on these invoices in one monthly batch? If so, is there a way to spread it out more.

I've always leaned more towards fast/sloppy, that's not new (pretty impatient, too!)
The invoices are only an example - the one that stresses me most because my mistakes are affecting other people. In most other areas the only one "suffering" from late fees, missed deadlines and lost documents/stuff is myself, or sometimes my daughter if I mess up parent stuff for school.

I colour-code my lists and stuff, and group (when possible) like things together - typically Aspergers... This helps a lot.

To repeat myself a bit, performance anxiety will dramatically decrease processing speed/fluency. Don't beat yourself up. Try a mantra, like, "Everybody makes mistakes." When you find one, pat yourself on the back for being conscientious. Perhaps there's a way to gamify it, measuring to show progress.

On a side note, how great that your boss is supportive! Some people who find bookkeeping cumbersome may not find the job appealing. It sounds like there are positives of the job and that you have the conscientiousness to notice your performance and want to improve in this area.

Yeah, like most people who suffer from "head in the cloud syndrome" I need a pretty hard kick until I even notice that my anxiety gets too much...
I've talked to my boss about this, and she strongly encouraged me to a) be less critical of myself and b) to overhaul my work process (spreading the billing out over the whole month instead of powering it through in 2 weeks). She's a gem, ins't she?

I would track the mistakes and see if there is a pattern. It may show that there are particular sections of the invoice where you are prone to make a mistake.

The repeating errors are kind of obvious, no need to track them - but I guess I was a bit blinded by my mounting anxiety because until it was pointed out yesterday in this tread I did not think of improving the template my co-worker set up.
So far I had to manually type in the billing period (typically the last month), which I often forgot to do. Today I looked up a little function to that automatically. There is hope!


Anyway, I guess I really need to be more aware of the changed circumstances of my job and how my "peculiarities" are affected by them. I've got a couple of ideas how to restructure the billing cycle so that I can look over the invoices with fresh eyes before sending them out.
To everyone who told me - be less critical of yourself - thank you! I guess I needed to hear that!

[Frita]

Looking forward to an update on restructuring your work situation. That may snowball into improvements in other areas of paperwork solutions. Some of the most accepting and flexible adults I know are on the Spectrum. It seems that one can learn a great deal from working through such challenges.

[horsewoman]

After test running my new system a few months I'm very happy with it. In the end I decided to stay with Excel, since I found no software that looked like it was a good fit for our pretty complex client/provider structure. To get a better workflow I jotted down all areas I regularly used to make mistakes in and really tried to find ways to circumvent them or to build in control instances. The most benefit came with batching the clients differently, so that I could do more batch processing of the same sequences, and by redesigning my printed out reference list. I put some automations in the template (like: invoicing period is always today minus 25 days, written out in the name of the month).
As was suggested by some of you, I no longer send the invoices out on the day I compile them, but wait a day. I'm happy to say so far I did not find a single mistake the day after, so the overhaul seems to be running smoothly. Thanks again for all your suggestions, they helped a lot!

[Frita]

Yea,@horseman, that is great news! I was wondering what happened to you as I haven’t seen you on the forum much.

[Alphaville]

great!

[horsewoman]

@frita - I went down a music production / video producing rabbit hole the last few months, going deep into software, hardware and all kinds of technical stuff.... After those countless hours in front of monitors plus my actual office work, I had no energy left for internet browsing. That's why I wasn't around much lately :)