Days 79-83: Less motivation
Emotions
Overall, a pretty happy week. Some stress as well but not as much as previous weeks. Much of the stress from the previous week that carried over dissipated pretty quickly as things were resolved so that was good. Very little conflict in general throughout the week, leading to a more pleasant overall work week.
Tasks
Less meetings this week than the 3-4 weeks prior so it was nice to have more breaks during the day to get some other work done. The meetings that I did have were mostly really fun - a lot of discussions with the interns, a couple interesting meetings with partner teams, and my weekly 1:1s with my direct reports. My motivation was a bit lower this week since I worked a lot of hours for a couple weeks before and felt like I needed more downtime to recharge. I did take a bit more time for myself but I did so consciously, knowing that I am at my own mercy when it comes to balancing my work.
I was also fortunate enough to find a bit of time to code this week! It’s been a long time (~3 months) since I really sat down and coded something. I managed to get 90% of the way through implementing my item and I’m excited to continue it this upcoming week. I also had a little more time to do more of the bug/feature tracking across my team and was able to get the ball rolling on some loose ends that need to be tied up. Despite the lower motivation, it was still a pretty productive week in my mind.
Learnings
This isn’t necessarily a learning for this week specifically but something that I want to point out - I always tell anyone that I mentor to take downtime when you can and balance your busy times with your less busy times. This is a responsibility of the individual and everyone’s desired balance is different. This week happened to be a week where I felt things were a bit less busy than they had been prior and I treated it as such. I’m expecting some busier times in the next couple weeks so taking this downtime now will hopefully allow me to stay more energized in the short term.
