Days 94 - 104: Finding my limits
Emotions
It’s been a while, I needed a bit longer of a break to let work settle down a bit before getting back to writing. My stress level has generally been crazy high, I’ve been juggling more and more things and it’s been difficult to settle into a good rhythm. I’ve actually noticed my general happiness level not being very high, despite having some good moments and hearing positive things. At some point in the last few weeks I reached my limit in terms of volume of work. Thankfully, I was able to take some time off to regroup, relax, and get work completely off my mind.
These tough moments are really difficult and staying positive has been almost impossible but I’ve been through this before and I know that it’s temporary. At some point (in hopefully the near future), my workload will go down and things won’t be quite so busy. For right now, I’m still feeling the stress and frustration of everything going on. Whenever these cycles happen, I always remind myself that from time to time, work will get crazy. What matters is how crazy and how long the craziness lasts - I see light at the end of the tunnel for my current situation and that’s what gives me the confidence that things will get better.
Tasks
Tons of meetings the past few weeks, even a few days that were 8-9 hours straight. A lot of 1:1s, standups, design discussions, and weekly standing meetings. On top of the meetings, my IC workload was increasing for a while. My team was at full capacity so I took on a good amount of work (I understand this isn’t sustainable, still figuring out what to do in this case in the future) and spent time during meetings coding and testing changes. I’ve really felt like I was both a lead and IC at the same time recently but without the time to really be an IC. There were a few days I ended up working more either early in the morning or in the evening. Usually I don’t mind this as much, especially when it’s something I’m really enjoying but in this case, I was frustrated about the situation.
When I reflect back, the most difficult part of my job recently has been trying to balance everything during the day. Constantly context switching generally makes you less productive but I’ve felt like context switching frequently has become more of an expectation because of my workload. When I’m in meetings all day long, people ping me and need help to get unblocked…or I have to code or test something because I don’t have any other time during the day (or the other option is to work longer days). I’ve put years of effort into creating a balance between work and life and this has been a time where that balance has been challenged.
Learnings
Whenever you’re under a lot of stress and pressure, it’s really easy to think, “the grass must be greener somewhere else.” I try really hard not to think this way because for me, I know that this probably won’t be true. I’m on an amazing team and I get to work with amazing people - the ebbs and flows of work are going to exist wherever I go. The goal is to have more good days than bad days and when I look back over the last few months, I feel like I’ve had more good days than bad days.
With this post, I’ve reached beyond my original goal of 100 days! I’ll hopefully find some time to do a recap and then I hope to write some other content in the meantime. This time has been fun/exciting/stressful/fulfilling and I’m looking forward to what comes next. I’ll continue learning and growing as a manager and a leader and I hope to keep influencing the people around me and my organization.
