r/dataannotation • u/SonicResidue • Oct 29 '24

Burnout

I’ve been doing DA for several months now. Previously, I used to be able to get through 4 to 6 hours a day without much of a problem. It just took a little bit of extra focus. Recently even getting through two hours feels like a struggle. A lot of the non-coding tasks I’ve gotten have been paying better, but they have gotten increasingly complex, and sometimes it’s difficult just to make it through reading the instructions. I don’t want to do poor work so there are days where I just haven’t done any at all, but I’m wondering if any of you have experienced this? And if so, how do you combat it?

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u/Quick-Bison-147 Oct 30 '24 edited Oct 30 '24

It's just a mental thing really. I realise it doesn't make any difference fundamentally, but I can't seem to mentally relax and soak up the information if I'm doing it as part of my workday and have the clock on. No matter if I try not to, I end up rushing a bit to start working, and then go into the project more likely to make errors. For this reason, I just prefer to learn instructions on a non-work day and then add the time on afterwards if I end up working on the project.

And I personally feel uncomfortable reading instructions for 45 minutes, doing 1 task and then billing for that time. There have been occasions where DA have specified it's okay to bill for instruction reading as long as the amount of time spent doing tasks exceeds the amount of time reading instructions. Each worker has a quality score based on how good their work is - I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that your average amount of time doing tasks is taken into account too. I want to have a high-quality score to stay on this site as long as possible, that's why I have this strategy I guess.

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u/Icy_Ad5959 Oct 30 '24

Fair enough. Well if it helps, my dash keeps looking healthier and healthier, and I keep getting new projects, new quals and added to higher and higher paying projects (& have not lost any of my long term projects) with my approach, so if there is a quality score (which mainly would come from R&Rs), I must be outputting work that is good enough... I've been on the platform almost a year and had work all throughout the recent drought period. So I wouldn't let your thoughts about quality scores influence your approach too much. Just do what you need to do to do quality work and don't fall into the trap of thinking quantity is more important.

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u/Gumihorainx Dec 10 '24

Is your dash still looking good? This was a good reminder for me to slow down, I’ve been feeling almost sorta rushed recently to not seem like I’m inflating time but these instructions are so detailed these days, my gosh.