Days 75-78: Increasing difficulty

Emotions

This was a short week since Monday was a holiday and overall, it was an extremely stressful week. I had a lot of ups and downs emotionally and really started to feel a lack of time to get everything done that needs to be done. Despite all the stress, I did have a lot of happy moments too but it was a tough week in general. It also didn’t feel like the fact that it was a short week really made much difference in how I felt, it was just some unfortunate situations and misunderstanding that led to me being in some less than ideal positions.

Tasks

Summer internships are well under way and my interns started this past week! I’m always excited when interns join, they bring a lot of new ways of thinking and energy to the team and I’m always thankful to have them around. I spent a good amount of time helping them out to get them setup and have some discussions - connecting with them definitely contributed to my happiness throughout the week. I’m excited to see how they learn and grow throughout their time and I am looking forward to building what I hope is a great experience for them.

Much of my stress during this week was around some misunderstanding of requirements in some of the work that my team has been investigating. We had to quickly set up conversations and do some redesigning - I really dislike having things change quickly and unexpectedly so I wasn’t too happy about the situation. At the end of the day, it is what it is and it’s not like it won’t happen again in the future. I’m sure I will look back on it and be thankful that I went through this but in the moment it was frustrating.

This was yet another week almost completely filled with meetings and I started to feel more of the stress of not having enough time. I did work early mornings the entire week to be available and help my interns that are in a different time zone and I ended up really appreciating the time those mornings to get some individual work done. During the days where I had meetings literally the entire day, I felt more distant with my team and just wanting to stay more connected. I think I need to utilize Teams more to stay in touch with everyone.

Learnings

This summer will be extremely challenging trying to balance my first couple releases as the lead of the team and having interns as well. I’m looking forward to the challenge but I know that there are going to be days where I just feel overwhelmed and I want to try and prepare for those days mentally ahead of time. Every time I’m in a difficult situation or that I’m stretched, I just need to remember that it’s another opportunity for growth, regardless of whether I’m succeeding or not. I have to keep this in mind throughout the entire summer to help keep myself from burning out.

I am also learning more and more the reality of me being one individual and only being able to accomplish what I can accomplish. Something that I’ve struggled with in the past is saying no to more tasks/features/projects and I’ve definitely grown in the past few months to be more comfortable turning things down. This is another lesson that I have to be more conscious about as well since my plate has been overflowing recently (and I imagine it will always be this way). I also need to be okay letting some things go/letting some things slip but I don’t think I’m quite there mentally to feel comfortable doing that. I’ve always set my expectations for myself extraordinarily high so it’s difficult to accept not accomplishing everything that I feel like I should be accomplishing.