What do you do as the first thing when you wake up? What is the second? What is the most important thing for you on an average day? Why am I feeling so tired each day recently?
In the last couple of weeks, I was struggling. Heck, I still do. Since the work from home situation started I felt that I’m working more each day and slowly but surely I lost it. In the first weeks, I was able to keep at least game development multiple times a week on my schedule, but suddenly it’s gone as well. I can stop myself do my job and I’m feeling worse each day.
Every single one of us felt this at once (except maybe game development) or will feel that exhaust. One of my workmates got to that level that he was ranting on a call and didn’t see the way out. He tried to do one assignment for an increasing amount of time but he was blocked as he depended on information which he wasn’t able to gather. My advice was: try to go generate some success for yourself.
In the recent weeks I was feeling kind of the same: an increasing amount of incoming data, urge to process and react, I wasn’t able to keep up with the increasing amount of incoming stuff and suddenly I was trying to breathe some air before I’m being pushed again below the water. I forgot my own advice and this is what I got from it.
This week I thought: okay, we had enough, we need a solution. Ideas were starting from automation, create a more organized way to process incoming data, try to reduce the number of channels where data is coming in. Let’s see where I got!
Automation: nope, no time for that now. I need results fast. However, some things can be made simpler. I used the available tools to restructure existing info and make use of “noise” in those data to organize the stuff I need to handle. If you’re able to identify a couple of good attributes to categorize, you’ll become faster to process and distribute the tasks based on those. I started to see the light. Finally. I felt successful. I was logging off with a very tired smile on my face. Time to sleep.
On the next day: gosh, how much task is this??? What the hell am I gonna do?? At my job, I’m communicating with multiple contacts on the same project. Those contacts are the source of information for me. Each one however sends their own most important stuff so it’s easy to imagine what happens when every single one of them is sending you 2-10 different tasks. Here comes the old-tool: ask for a single source of truth. Each day we’re having a meeting where we discuss bugs/behavioral change-requests, design topics, you name it. With a little help from my contacts, we’re able to structure all the info from all parties to a single list, a single file that can be synced, processed, updated easily.
I’m sure tomorrow can get even harder, but having that tired smile again on my face I’m reminding myself: I’m out of the water, sailing on the see, breathing fresh air. I think the main takeaway for me: if you’re under the water, stop for a sec and try to think differently.
My advice to my workmate as well: stop, sit back, take a deep breath, and make small steps. Make sure you do every single day at least one small step. You’ll get there. You’ll solve it and you won’t regret it.