Back to Work Tomorrow: One Thing I Can Change

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Back to Work Tomorrow: One Thing I Can Change

They say that if you change your course by just 1 degree on a compass while you are sailing by ship you will eventually end up in a completely different place. It’s a big thing in motivational coaching - look it up. And when I was a teenager and I was pretty unwell my family sent me to a lifestyle coach in Poland. I have no idea whose idea it was. I have no idea why. But it worked. He was an absolutely lovely man, he was really caring for me, and he really taught me a lot of things that worked. 

And his big thing was: change one thing at a time. 

So after having needed to take two days out again - and this is on a backdrop of really intense family stuff that I cannot talk about on here because it’s private - and of really personal stuff too which I don’t want to talk about - but nevertheless taking those couple of days out has made me realise that work stuff HAS gotten on top of me too. And I will be sure to discuss this with my managers etc. It wasn’t the obvious cause of my stress but I can see that it has been too and I want to talk to people about it - being a junior is hard, being neurodivergent is hard, being both is harder still and working for a big tech company is an honour but it’s a difficult place to start too (and I have just recently switched disciplines from backend to Frontend - a switch I’m really positive about). 

Worth noting that this was about 10x better than the last time I felt this way but yes it was more to do with family stuff this time and difficult personal circumstances more than anything - nevertheless helped me to see how my work wasn’t helping. 

So what’s this one thing I am changing?

While I want to talk about things I ultimately accept that I am the adult and responsible in my own life. And while I want things to change I can only work with how things are. And ultimately while I wait for help there is only one person who can really help me: and that is me. Or rather: other people can help me to, but why wait? I can give myself help faster and better than anyone else can!

So what am I changing?

I’d like to take time every single morning to refocus my goals and to remind myself what my aims are. Every morning even if I think I know it all I’d like to remind myself: what are my active tickets?
  • What are my open PRs? And read through those
  • What are my active tickets - what do I have in “in progress”?
  • What tickets do I have lined up?
  • What current steps am I on, on my current tickets?
  • Am I blocked by anything?
  • What is the main aim and outcome of each task?
  • What are my acceptance criteria and am I meeting those?
  • And I want to EXTERNALISE it 
  • I want to get it all out on paper
  • And/or I want to make a little infographic online that I can store on a private notion document somewhere - or public depending how much detail it is
When will I do this? Before standup. I have one thing that I might need to move but let’s see. Ahhh I know where I can move it to! Thank you 

 Because this girl does not give up

 She fights back 

P.s. sometimes in that time I might just end up coding. That’s great. The main thing of all of this is to get my work done. And get it done with less stress and with less hassle. If a part of planning is working, that’s great. If a part of the planning that I do is getting my work done that I’m planning - then that’s even better than just planning. Thank you 

P.s. 2 while I was in Brighton today I thought about Kintsugi - the Japanese art of painting in the cracks of broken pottery with gold. If I think of all the horrible stuff I went through in my life - and some of it is too horrible to articulate - then I see that it was exactly that stuff that made me soft and gentle and kind. It made me someone wise. Someone people liked being around. I was always kind and enthusiastic and positive. And fun. But this goes deeper - it helped me to be kinder and gentler - and helped me to care. It helped me to really care. I hope so anyway. Anyway thanks. Thank you 

A photo of Susanna looking radiant and elegant
Me after the conference last week with my massive tattoo lol 

P.s. 3 if you’ve made it this far - what’s my favourite song on the new Taylor Swift album? It’s Ruin the Friendship. It’s me in a song. Sadness, romance, openness, vulnerability 

Vulnerability

Thank you

Thank you


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