Wrapping up another week at work. It's been a manic one. It's been almost a full year of working from home, and I have some thoughts. This week I've felt sharp. Really sharp. Riding a sharp and focussed wave at the moment so thought I'd try pen some words.
Having a little think back on past 365 days, it's been up and down. REALLY up and down. Some weeks I've spent the entire week wishing the working week away, and some weeks, Friday has arrived too quickly because I've been so in the zone working constantly on something and the feeling of there not being enough minutes in the week.
This week, I've felt really switched on and sharp. I do wish I could feel like this all of the time as I feel like everything that feels like is going wrong or could be better, would be a lot better if I was more engaged more consistently.
Unfortunately, or should I actually say, naturally, there's many other weeks when I haven't felt sharp. When I have those weeks, I don't really help myself. I'll procrastinate a little more or do some work which isn't what I've been asked to do. Bad weeks have usually come from my own doing. For example, estimating a piece of work and then getting into the nitty gritty and realising it's a monster compared to what I or anyone had first anticipated, but now I've committed. Now I feel like I'm letting people and the project down when I say this isn't achievable when I'd initially said it was.
Having some time to reflect on the past year, a lot of my rubbish weeks I've found have stemmed from a familiar pattern of underestimating the complexity involved in something, and then suddenly feeling like I'm snowed under. Starting some work caught me on a bad week and everything compounding from there.
There was a tweet I read a while back and I can not remember who said this or when (if you recognise it, please let me know so I can link to it) but it said something along the lines of having really low resilience while working from home in a pandemic. This resonated with me a lot. This is also amplified by being in the public sector. A meeting which didn't go so well where you could usually talk to someone in the office about it afterwards. Talk it out, get pulled back down to Earth and being pragmatic. The 1 million different usernames and passwords you need to remember and needing to contact help desks for certain software and hardware things and somewhere else for other software and hardware things. Hardware breaking down and needing to raise it and fear of colleagues thinking "yeah right, equipment is broken, of course it is, enjoy the time off".
I've started helping myself more consistently recently by stopping myself over promising on everything in work. Push back a little bit to give myself some breathing space and being okay if you think some people might be a little bit annoyed by that.
Not being as naive and assuming everything is easy, nodding in over confidence, when actually, we're building a super massive complex service and we're at a point where nothing is easy and things always need to be thought out very clearly and carefully.
Being more realistic with myself. Being comfortable with the idea that in this particular 2 week sprint, it's not a bad thing that I don't feel like I'm going to drown. Moving away from the feeling of always needing to prove myself. Constantly asking myself "have I outputted enough this week?"
It's rarely been an 'other people' thing. It's boiled down to "me" and not being realistic with myself and being too harsh on myself. I am by far my own harshest critic.
Being a little bit easier on myself recently, I've noticed I've started becoming more focussed and sharp, more regularly. I have space to concentrate on big pieces of work because I'm not context switching so much and mentally draining myself by Tuesday.
I'm starting to become more satisfied, more regularly, with the work I'm producing.
Having started out my trade in a consultancy, I quickly realised that there's the times where you need to meet very tight deadlines that are non negotiable otherwise we risk people not getting paid. There's also the times after one of those deadlines, where things quieten down a little bit and you have space to breathe again, but then start to feel bad that you're not full of busy and then start over justifying yourself. I've been reminded of this recently and to embrace this again but without feeling bad about the slightly quieter times. Embrace those quieter times to help slowly recharge your batteries for when you next need to bring your A game to a piece of work.
If you’re reading this, and you’re nodding in agreement, or shaking your head in disagreement. Please do message. I’d like to hear if anyone's felt similar and help each other out.