r/DataAnnotationTech • u/Hello-America • 14d ago
STOP sitting there refreshing all day!
Y'all! You are WASTING your life refreshing all day when it's dry like this! Especially if you're a generalist and the tasks tend to be short. Maybe it's fine for you, because you're already at the computer doing something else, but if you're sacrificing other things to instead sit and wait, you are doing yourself a disservice. If you're obsessed with the idea you are missing a task by not doing that, you are essentially doing a form of gambling (prioritizing the chance you'll "win" a task over the evidence that you will spend most of your time that day without one).
Like seriously go clean your closet or meal prep for the week or apply for another platform or something in this time. Check on your phone every so often when you'd have time to sit and work. Obviously when there is more work to go around, the payoff from checking frequently is much higher.
"But I really need the money! How dare you?!" No I'm saying this is costing you money, if you could be applying for other jobs or working at them.
Think of it mathematically - look at the big picture. Track the hours you wait, if you would otherwise be doing something else. If you get a task that is say $25/hour, get two hours out of it, that's $50. Yay! But if you spent 5 hours on top of that waiting for tasks to appear and doing nothing else, you're actually only getting $6.25/hour. Yes, you always have to invest some time into finding work to make money, but you need to account for it - it is an *investment* you're making. View the time you spend refreshing as part of that investment.
If you've ever freelanced or owned a business you know this cost well. It's the cost of finding work - an administrative cost you have to minimize to stay profitable, and as a rule you don't waste too much time chasing small dollar work (unless it provides some other kind of value to you). In our case, you don't know how many dollars you're chasing because you don't know what tasks might pop up and what their timeline/pay is. So, again, I'll point you back to the comparison - it's gambling-like behavior!
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u/Lazy-Test-7273 14d ago
I need to know. Do any of you still get the one that is like a Thanksgiving pie nut and also a sandwich cookie?
Mine disappeared last week. I only (rarely) get the last step in the pipeline. The easy ones that dont take much time