Days 15-19: Balancing act

Emotions

I’ll be honest, this week was really tough. There was (as the title implies) a lot to balance and that led to a lot of stress for me. There were a lot of deadlines throughout the week both for myself and members of my team and some days it really drained me emotionally. However, not all of it was “negative” (and to be fair, all the stress I went through is only going to make me better in the long run). I still had some really happy and fulfilling moments where my past management experience with interns and the knowledge I gained from books I read really helped me.

Tasks

I had fewer meetings this week, in part due to the fact that we were advised to work from home by the middle of the week due to coronavirus. My time outside of meetings revolved around two main areas - bugs and email. I spent a good amount of time triaging, investigating, and fixing bugs in addition to helping some of my team members with their bugs. We had a lot of new bugs flying around so I had to make sure that things were getting to the right people and put in the right release.

This week was also the week that my title change and team became official in the system. This led me to getting a bit more email than previous weeks because now my team members actually report to me and I received more emails because I’m the manager for the team. There was also more later in the week because everyone was working from home so I had to spend more time reading and writing emails. Some of it was tough - I sometimes doubt myself when I’m replying to emails and definitely made some “mistakes” but I’m learning and improving.

Learnings

Balancing the work that I do and the work that I push to my team is difficult and will be a never-ending challenge. I’m so glad that I experienced some of these struggles this week so I could learn and hopefully improve. In general, I’m feeling really optimistic about all the difficult times that I’ve already been through and the difficult times that are to come because I know that it’s only going to make me better.

From working from home on Friday, I had reaffirmation that I really value the face-to-face interactions that I have with everyone at the office. It’s an unfortunate reality that I’ll be working from home more until coronavirus settles down in the area but it will give me a forced opportunity to learn how to be effective remotely. Every day on this journey has been a challenge so far but I’m feeling more and more up to the task of accepting all the challenges and growing through them.