Day 075 – Productive Wins

Welcome to Day 75!

You know it started like one of those days where you were going to spend a lot of time expending energy and not get a lot of reward.  That’s how my day started, slow. Work felt like it was slipping further and further behind and accomplishing anything worthwhile seemed futile. Everyone needed to make things happen were busy.  

The day had stalled, it was a dead end.  A change of tact was needed.  Obviously, fighting the never-ending sea of emails wasn’t working, so surrendering to the sea seemed like a good course of action. That meant checking for “urgent” ones.  Once actioned as far as possible, tackle them in age order. Just one at a time. 

First, finish what has been ready for review and send it out.  It was stuff that was completed and awaiting final review, this was stuff already in the pipeline.  If it was incorrect, feedback was assured.  Done!  

Second, contact Sam about the burning issue he had and needed to speak to me about urgently.  Not available?!  Tag Sam for status change and grab him then. Move on.   

Do something that can be dropped at a moment’s notice in case Sam calls with the burning issue and requires everything to be dropped.  Aha! Safety training!  Just what I needed.  It’s been sitting at the bottom of the list waiting to ambush time at the busiest and most inconvenient moment.  Let’s do that. It’s also guaranteed to get interrupted (oh please!).

Have you ever noticed that these dry topic training emails seem so innocuous with lots of time to complete them, which you keep ignoring and then, “bam!” the deadline is here?  While there’s no real reason to be surprised, it still feels like, “surprise! Remember me?”  … Well, not this time, Kemosabe!   

The other advantage of doing mandatory training is that usually it has a sure-fire way of ensuring you get interrupted half-way through the training.  Wonder if that’s because I’m usually doing it half hour before the deadline.  Anyway, let’s get started on the training.  Done.  Completed already?  Where was my interruption?  That was easy.  Okay.  Done.

Alright! Time to start on that complex chain of emails with multiple stakeholders, it’s been trying to get resolved for days because it needed thinking and working through.  If mandatory training didn’t attract an interruption, doing something that requires thinking time surely will.  To resolve this chain, it involves contacting colleagues outside of the usual suspects.  

“Oh, hi Charlie! Long-time no speak… [insert medium length catch up and work chat here]”.  In addition to finding out how Charlie and family were going, the conversation was useful as it resolved some other emails awaiting action.  What I’m done, already?  Removed 20 emails with a single phone call?! Wow!  Hmmmm…. Still no burning issue from Sam; wonder whether he solved it … 🤔.

So, what began as a slow unproductive day, turned into an unusually satisfying one. Tackling the noise emails instead of the noisy emails seemed to work. By the end of the day, Sam’s burning issue didn’t flare up today, it might be tomorrow’s problem.  Today’s done. 

Sometimes, when everything is going around in circles, you just need to take a tangent and focus on something you can control.  Not something frivolous – it’s the year of the cow/ ox after all – but just something minor and manageable.  There’s always a burning issue from the Sams of the world.  Just allowing for it in my headspace today seemed to encourage prioritising activities and time management. It’s not possible every day, but there are days when you reach a dead end but still want to be productive. 

My friend, Melatrix used to always have a “guilt” pile.  It was a pile of documentation that needed filing one day.  One day, I had time and asked if she wanted a hand. Mel’s response was, “oh, I just like to have them there to show management I’m busy and remind me that I always have something I’d rather be working on.  It’s my guilt pile because I know I need to get rid of them but somehow never find time”.  

Recalling this conversation, I began to wonder whether the emails at the bottom of my list are my version of a “guilt pile”?   Do you have a guilt pile? 

Let’s see what the cards said!