Welcome back!
Last week I’ve been on vacation in Paris. I hope you enjoyed the post about photography even if it was a bit unusual. I leave you a new photo at the end of the post!
But let’s talk of coming back to work for a moment…
Takeaways (TL:DR)
Design is not a choice, there’s a trite adagio who says “The alternative to good design is always bad design. There is no such thing as no design”. In the same way I think at times when we are so focused on managing what we are going to do that we overlook the impact of what we are leaving off the charts of our attention. Delegate, setting expectations, proactively ask for a clear, longer term planning is our responsibility to reduce the risk of backfires.
🍊 Welcome to the latest issue of Already, Yet – a weekly retrospective about not feeling ready, but doing things anyway.
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Weekly retrospective
“Welcome back” is also what sarcastically I’m saying to myself as I’m writing.
I just came back from my vacation, I took this time off in an unusual period of the year and, despite what happens during summer holidays when everything slows down because most of people working on projects stops around the same days, life went on pretty fast.
I think I heard this story before, or I lived it in the past because of unexpected events like getting sick, you come back, relaxed, energised, and waiting for you there at the door you find way shorter deadlines, emergencies and accumulated work that weights you down as if you should pay pledge for your well deserved time off and consume all the energies.
Before leaving I did my homework and delegated all the things I knew they couldn’t be postponed. I alerted various stakeholders that if they had emergencies they could rely on my colleagues. I thought I was covered. And yet if found myself submerged not only by the thing I deliberately left suspended for a week but as well by a pletora of new things with scary near deadlines to handle.
So today I’m asking myself why is this happening:
Is it just an unlucky coincidence that my biased brain wants to see as a pattern at all costs?
Is it just normal routine work that contrasts from the rhythm of vacation?
Should I have delegated more than only what was essential?
Could I have done or asked asked for more planning and anyway foreseen some of the unexpected task I found at my coming back?
Should I have done more in advance and in reality I was already overwhelmed before even leaving?
Are we all just leaving in hectic times with an unbalanced workload?
More in general:
Is there anything I could have done to avoid this situation?
In retrospective, yes, of course. But from another point of view I don’t have an answer of course. As often, the answer is probably a mix of all the possibilities considered and way more others.
Is there a solution now?
Again, yes, of course.
First of all I can organise myself but tackle each thing step by step, living the moment, and not stressing out thinking about everything all together.
I can still delegate now what I haven’t before. There’s a team out there waiting to help, this is what teams are made for, and there’s no better way to be a vulnerable leader and create opportunities for mentoring and collaboration than recognising the fact that I’m overwhelmed and I need some help.
Last but not least, in case of despair I can still tap to my refreshed reserve of energy and put in some extra effort and time if the situation requires it.
Have you ever fell in the same trap? What do you think of this situation? How do you take responsibility and manage your time off to preserve your comeback? Let’s discuss in the comments!
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Thanks for reading to the finish and see you next week!
Tobia