Tag Archives: work

Your ‘B’ Game

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You can’t always bring your A game to everything. This is something we try to teach kids with a perfectionist streak. We run scrum projects where we give a clear ‘definition of done’. We encourage them to choose where best to focus their perfectionism, because trying to be perfect everywhere is debilitating, and students tend to get overwhelmed and not get everything done.

This is an aspect of the gifted student profile that can be both a superpower and also the Kryptonite that weakens the student. Perfectionism can be the thing that makes a student produce exceptional work, and it can be the reason they give up, or end up handing something in late, because while the project or assignment is good (even very good), it isn’t meeting a high or previous standard already achieved and so it’s just not good enough to complete, or sometimes even to try.

And so sometimes you need to teach kids to bring their ‘B’ game. Show us what you’ve got right now, because it’s probably good enough. Let’s see it? Great, you’ve met the outcomes, let’s move on. No, it’s not your best work, yes, if you put more hours into it, it could get a higher mark. If you want to improve it later… and if you have time… then go ahead, but why don’t we just focus on the next assignment now, and not fall behind again.

It sounds like easy advice to give, but to a perfectionist kid, this is hard work. What’s even harder though is expecting that you can bring your ‘A’ game to everything you do. Because this isn’t just debilitating as a student, it’s hard as an adult too.

When you’ve got more tasks on your ‘to do’ list than you can achieve; when email seems insurmountable; when meetings fill your schedule; and when getting one task done is taking time away from two or more other tasks, well then bringing your ‘A’ game is impossible. Sometimes you have to just embrace you ‘B’ game and give everything you do just enough to get it done… and save your ‘A’ game only for things that really matter.

Speed and collar colour

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Two things are happening simultaneously.

First, the advancements we see in AI are moving at an exponential rate. Humans don’t really understand how to look at exponential growth because everything in front of them moves faster than what they’ve already experienced.

How many years did it take from the time light bulbs were invented until they were in most houses? I don’t know, but it took a long while. Chat GPT was used by over 100 million people in less than 2 months. And the ability of tools like this are increasing in ability exponentially as well. It’s like we’ve gone warp speed from tungsten and incandescent lights to LED’s in a matter of months rather than years and years.

The other thing happening right now is that for the first time at scale, it’s white collar, not blue collar jobs that are being threatened. Accountants, writers, analysts, coders, are all looking over their shoulder wondering when AI will make most of their jobs redundant. Meanwhile, we are many years away from a robot trying to figure out and repair a bathroom or ceiling leak. Sure, there will be some new tools to help, but I don’t think a plumbing home repair person is something AI is threatening to replace any time soon.

These two things happening so quickly are going to change the future value in careers. Whole sectors will be reinvented. New sectors will emerge. But where does that leave the 20-year accountant in a large firm that finds it can cut staffing by 2/3rds? What careers are not going to be worth going to university for 4+ years for? The safest jobs right now are the trades, and while they too will be challenged as we get AI into autonomous humanoid robots, the immediate threat seen in white collar jobs are not the same for blue collar professions (as opposed to blue collar factory workers, who are equally threatened by exponential changes).

These changes are single-digit years as opposed to decades away… and I’m not sure we are ready to handle the speed at which these changes are coming?

The long road

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Last night I got home after 8 pm. Today will be my early day home around 5:30. Wednesday I’ll get home after 8pm, and Thursday will be 10pm if I’m lucky.

While many people are counting the days until Christmas, I’m just looking forward to the end of the week. Some of the events keeping me late are fun for me, one (a dance) is great for the students. I am happy to participate in these events, but I can honestly say that I’m tired already, and it’s only Tuesday morning.

It’s weeks like this that I feel my age. I realize that younger me would have skipped through this week like it was a minor blip. Yesterday I got home and did absolutely nothing until falling asleep on the couch around 9:30. I went to bed soon after and my alarm woke me up just like it has for the past two weeks… whereas for the two weeks before that, I probably only heard it 2 or maybe 3 times, with me waking up before my alarm most days.

It’s Tuesday morning and I see a very long road ahead of me to get me to the holidays. I need to psych myself up to stay strong, and get my sleep in too. Because so often in my career I reach the first weekend of a break and I get sick. My body stays strong to make it through this final week of school and then when I can finally relax my physical health crashes. I’m determined for this to not happen (ever again). It really sucks when I finally get a break and my body ‘lets go’.

I’ll take my vitamins, maintain my healthy habits, get a lot of sleep, and slowly travel this long road to the holidays.

Hard to let go

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I had a very long and busy week last week, and that flowed into a long and busy weekend. I ended up with an empty tank, both physically and emotionally. I woke up Monday morning feeling awful and took the day off. My back ached, I felt like crap and I slept most of the day.

What I didn’t do was check my emails. I legitimately took a day off. Usually that means working from home, but I didn’t even open my laptop yesterday, and my phone stayed on ‘Do Not Disturb’. This morning I continued to feel bad and so I ended up taking a second day off (rare beyond a full back spasm or bad cold). Again, I stayed away from work much of the day, but I did put in a couple hours this morning to get some important communication out that was promised. And throughout the day I had a few things pull me into work mode via Teams and text messages.

And so I just looked at my email and I have 133 unread messages. That would have been higher without what I did today. This is the challenge of taking sick time… the work still comes your way. It’s like you take a sick day only when you absolutely need it, then you come back to so much work that you feel punished for taking care of yourself.

I’ve been working on this, trying to find balance. I will stay later at work and not look at email when I get home. I will add things to my ‘to do’ list at the end of the day and actually get home in time to make dinner. I will prioritize Teams, where my staff connect with me first and not look at email to start the day.

Still, it’s hard to let go. It’s hard to not sneak work in when I’m home. It’s hard to think, ‘I can deal with this tomorrow.’ But this morning I could feel it in me, ‘Take the day today and you won’t need another one before Christmas break… go back too soon and your battery is going to drain again, you aren’t healthy enough.’

So I did the unusual thing and listened to my own advice. Usually I don’t let go, I push through. I’m realizing that’s not just hard on my physical health but my mental health as well.

Do I have a lot of emails to get through? Yes. Does that add to my stress? Yes. But tomorrow I’ll attend to people first and email later… and I’ll catch up. The important thing is that I gave my body and mind the rest it needed and I’m 95% sure I’ll be back at work tomorrow.

Full schedule

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For the last few days almost every minute of my day has been scheduled. It’s Friday morning and I’ve just decided to skip a breakfast meeting that I usually enjoy going to because instead of it felling like a good way to star the day, it feels like one more thing I have to run to and get back from. As it turns out, my weekend is almost as booked up as my week.

One simple indicator of a full schedule is when I’m constantly playing phone tag with people. When I’m having to constantly juggle trying to call people while listening to their messages and reading their texts, I know things have been busy. Less subtle is the fatigue, it sneaks up on me. I feel run down, my fitness routine goes into maintenance mode. My meditations are filled with distraction and a constant need to remind myself that I can think about the upcoming day later. And did I mention the fatigue? I feel tired and ready for bed before dinner, and the day is far from over.

I’m actually writing this at 6am, on my treadmill… One hand gripping the support rail, the other typing. I’m just skipping my meditation today, it won’t be meditative. Instead I’m going to listen to some soft music and really get a good stretch in. On the way to work I’m going to buy myself a triple shot Americano and maybe some egg bites.

I’m going to build in a slow start to my day, before my feet hit the metaphorical spinning hamster wheel, and I’m going to find my center. The more I think about it, the more relieved I feel about missing my breakfast meeting. My schedule is still a bit crazy for the next few days but at least this morning I have some control over it, and I’m grounding myself.

Then it’s head down and off I go!

Ability and Agility

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I love this quote, shared in a video on LinkedIn:

“It used to be about ability. And now, in a changing world, I think what we should be looking for is agility. I want to know how quickly do you change your mind? How fast are you to admit you’re wrong? Because what that means is you’re not just going to be reacting to a pandemic or to AI, you’re actually going to be anticipating those problems and seeing around corners, and then leading change as opposed to being a victim of it.” ~Adam Grant

It’s more than just anticipating problems, it’s about being agile, understanding challenges, and addressing them while they are small. It’s about understanding your strengths, and the strengths of your team… as well as weaknesses.

It’s about Agile Ability, which is why I titled this ‘Ability AND Agility’, rather than ‘Ability VERSUS Agility’. We need to embrace our failures and learn from them, recognize problems early, even predict them and be preemptive. This is so different than a culture of accountability and blame.

The desired student, employee, partner, colleague of the future will learn what they need to on the job. They’ll be exceptional because of their agility and willingness to learn, not just because of what they came to the table already knowing.

Breaking bread

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I’ve had a few opportunities to have lunch with, to break bread with, colleagues in the past several weeks. Having a meal together, outside of the usual staffroom with its comfortable banter is a treat. It is a good reminder of the fact that we all have lives outside of this thing called work.

I find that my connections to people can become fixed in a place-based kind of experience, and we all play the roles we are supposed to play… to leave that environment and break bread is an opportunity to find new connections, to be ourselves and not just our roles.

Meetings and spaces in between

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Have you ever gone to a meeting and wondered, “Why am I here?” Or questioned why the meeting wasn’t just a memo or an email? Are there ever times when your schedule can be filled with meetings such that there is almost no time to get anything done? Then one day you look at your schedule and you notice an entire day with no meetings.

If that happens to me, the first thing I think is, “I’m going to get so much done!” And that ends up being half true. Why only half true? Because the void in the calendar gets filled. Interruptions, distractions, and work getting done but stretching to fill the space faster than you imagined.

There is a sweet spot where the spaces between meetings is ideal. If the gap is too small, it’s hard to get anything meaningful done. If the gap is too big, it needs to be filled with intention… there needs to be a goal that is calendared in the space. Or the space gets inefficiently filled. That’s not to say I’m wasting time, but I’m not getting bigger, more ideal, tasks done unless they are planned.

It’s easy to fill time doing stuff that needs to get done, but not necessarily doing the things that really move me or my team forward. It’s easy to fill the in between spaces with tasks, not goals, with busywork not work that I want to do.

The things I must do crowd out the things I want and hope to do. My calendar fills, the spaces in between get filled. I stay on top of what needs to be done but struggle to get the things I hope to do done. Those items often get rushed or not done at all. Unless I fill the spaces in between with intention, they get filled with tasks. necessary tasks, but not the only tasks I want my day filled with. The key is to fill my calendar with intentions, not just meetings.

Special Events

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I was recently at a special event that was held in a venue it was never held in before. I had amazing seats that let me see not just the event up close but also the people who worked the event up close too. What I saw was an amazing community of people who all knew what their job was, and who did it with joy and camaraderie.

You don’t always see that in large organizations. You don’t always see that when a team needs to work in a totally new environment. It takes a special kind of organization that can make a large production work in a new environment, where stresses are different, and yet everyone still understands their role and can still create a really positive environment for themselves and their customers.

It’s hard to build a team where a positive culture permeates so well, and when you see it, you know you are seeing something special.