Well, it’s been a week.
This week marks a year since the UK started this Coronavirus Lock Down Saga, happy 1st Birthday you ugly Mo’ Fo’.
It also marks a year since I have been wrestling with a massive work project, what do these both have in common you ask? Well they have both been a journey that’s for sure, they have both have had ups, downs, swerves and heel turns.
This project has gone through software upgrades and process changes, quite frankly I am pretty sick of it…… well that’s a lie it’s become an extension of myself really and I can get protective and precious of it, but god damn it has taken a part of me.
So, I can get overwhelmed sometimes, well in truth a lot of the time. At work (and pretty much every aspect of my life) the easiest way I can get triggered is when there’s to much at once, I get blinded by the chaos, freeze up and can’t comprehend how to move forward and get stuff done.
Well on Tuesday the long-awaited trial of my project started…. well, that’s actually another lie the trial had been active for 2 weeks without any data coming through so we scaled it up.
After sitting watching my Robot, her name is Rosie, for 2 weeks (not constantly that would of been a gross misuse of my work time and probably sackable) nothing coming through I figured it would be an easy ride on Tuesday morning when I turned up the volume. You know maybe 1 or 2 test cases coming through later in the day, how wrong was I? The answer to that is very.
Within an hour I had test data coming through fast, robots not logging in, questions coming from trial user, questions coming from there the trial user’s managers, more calls being put into the diary than on any other day and I was stressed!!!
I didn’t know where to start, I could feel myself becoming withdrawn and shut down and knew I had to get a grip.
I needed to take a step back and breath before it got out of control.
I have found this happening more since I have been working permanently from home, in the office when things got hard, I had a close-knit team physically close by and we all helped each other lighten each other’s loads. With us all being at home we are still a team but it’s harder to shout up for help.
4 days on I say I survived, and the first intensive week of my trial has actually gone well.
Is my project fully working? No, it’s not but that’s why we trial things, we work out the bugs with a small group of users before letting it loose on the masses.
So how did I manage to regain control? In all honestly, it’s a little bit blurry but I essentially took that step back…. like physically, I walked away from my desk, went and cuddled my kitten for a moment, took some deep breaths, made a drink and tackled each problem 1 by 1.
If I hadn’t took that step back, I’d probably still be sat at my desk no further forward 4 days on.
We have all made it to Friday, I have had a can of cider, which has gone straight to my head and I think I am gonna go upstairs, put the electric blanket on and relax, hit that reset button ready to enjoy some free time this weekend.
We survived Outliers… not just the week but this last crazy year.
One Step at a time!
Later GimpyBits out.
GimpyBits 