We have lived with ourselves since we were born. We know what we are thinking, and we know where our words and actions are coming from. However, it is difficult to translate that to working with others. We might be entirely sincere, but the words, phrasing, or time at which we choose to comment are important and impact the translation of that sincerity. The same is true for the listener as well, they bring their situation to the conversation just as much as the speaker.
It has been painfully obvious to me, forever, that I have a strong, overly confident personality that I present with overtly terse speech in how I communicate. If you are reading this and thinking, "oh my gawd dude, you are a pain in the ass" then I would say you are fortunate not to have known me 20 years ago.
However, there are things I do consistently to ensure I'm not going beyond my position at work unnecessarily, or too aggressively. I say this because I suffer from wanting to just dive in and do the work. Often times it is so much easier just to write a Pull Request doing the work and avoid the social situation explaining the reasoning/idea/behind the work. I want to fix the issue and move on, because some days I'm impatient, other days I am blocked, and still other days, my family life is chaotic and I bring that to work with me.
The specific areas I discuss below I do not do perfectly, or even well. They are areas I work to improve upon daily. Still many may snicker about some of what I say below, because you have seen me explicitly not do these things, and that's fine, I admit I'm not there yet. I also appreciate being called out on these things, so please speak up. I am always, always trying to learn how to be a better person, friend, co-worker.
Below are some items I've highlighted in my day to day that help me avoid high stress, working too many hours and not taking my work "home" with me after a long day. I have learned to be healthy in my work, able to log off at the end of the day and not hurt relationships outside of work because I am overly stressed. I hope these help you.
This is super important and something that people like me do not do on a day to day, week to week basis. Lack of focus is amplified by Slack, email, GitHub (and other forms of social media). Being able to jump into every conversation is the reason for many of these tools, however, if we can add a constraint to our interactions with others, focusing solely on our work/area of expertise, we can approach situations confidentially and without stress.
What do I mean by that? Well, frankly it means that in a certain window of time I am focusing on only a few areas of work. I may or may not be the expert on that work, but I am likely the "go to" voice surrounding that work, and am, or will be, relied upon to answer for it. This also means I am not necessarily the expert on other work (I'll explain more about institutional knowledge below) and that while I may have some input, I need to be mindful of how I present those ideas, and not intrude on other experts time/work.
Let's talk about the Incident Management System (IMS) I built as example of what I mean.
Now granted, incidents are weird when it comes to scheduled work. I personally love to firefight and solve problems quickly and they require a temporary (yet an extremely impactful) shift in focus. They can be stressful because they do not exist in a vacuum, you have all this other work piling up while an incident is ongoing... it's tough. It was hard for me early on because when I built the system, I was literally the only Incident Commander, so I was involved in every incident. It wasn't until a couple of weeks in that I realized incidents and IMS were my sole focus of work. This allowed me to be able to calm down and lower my stress levels about my other work. Sure I missed some deadlines on that other work, and I discussed those situations with the people responsible for my managing my work, but being there to train others on how to run incidents was extremely valuable, and called for that shift in focus.
Now that my focus has moved elsewhere, I may still get annoyed by incidents when they are haphazard and not being run "the way I think they should be", communication or work is dropped or something else. I can't solve every problem, and I have to remind myself that I am not there in the moment, and while I have opinions, it is not my place in that moment to share. I am not the expert on that incident and it's surrounding work.
If it's really something that needs fixed, I find another approach after the incident to poke some of those ideas in peoples brains. Whether an issue, or in another primary channel, just asking questions. I have been amazed at how quickly people see the fault and learn the lesson. That doesn't mean I'm always right, only that I provoked a reaction that might lead to a similar outcome to the one I want to see.
All of this took an incredibly long time (too long probably) for me to learn. I am talking years of stress and difficulty communicating with coworkers. Once I did start to figure this out, my stress levels dropped significantly. I no longer felt I was the only one who could do it right, or that I was responsible for those problems. Instead, I focused on solving them over time and by empowering others to learn and experience what I had gone through. This has the added benefit of building into others and their expertise. All of us should build into each other.
I have been here for three years. I've seen some things (:smile:). That means I have an extensive knowledge of what, why and how (perhaps even when but it isn't as important, and the other three typically are enough to find "when"). It is easy then to take this knowledge and drop it like a large book on someone's head. Or to step into a channel and just rapidly type out what I know. I mean, why not, I am an authority on what happened, I should direct people to that information to help them do their job better!
While history is important, it is not an authority. Things change. Reasoning, scope, tooling, technology, products, personnel, it all changes. History may inform the other person why it was done one way in the past, and depending on the situation may be exactly what they need but how that history was presented can have some drastic effects socially, even if it was the right thing technically.
This one also took me a long time to see, mainly because, while I had experienced it from others, it wasn't until a certain job where I was so brutally beat over the head with institutional knowledge that I became totally ineffective at my job. I was a prisoner of my own mind that I wasn't good enough, or didn't have the history to do the work. Every problem, even if I knew everything about what I was trying to do, I ended up lacking the confidence to even get started because any move I made someone would drop in and hit me in the head with their book of institutional knowledge.
This is the hidden impact of being an "institutional authority" rather than an "institutional historian". People can be impacted negatively by me dropping my experiences unprovoked. I can also be impacted because I suddenly might be picking up new work because I have the history. This then means I am likely increasing my responsibilities while trying to avoid increasing my time. Put more succinctly: More stress.
This one plays off the last point. I have had the incredible pleasure to work at some really impactful companies since I started working remotely. I started at Engine Yard, went to Heroku, then GitHub and now Simple. These have all been incredible learning experiences. That knowledge is vital to my ability to do my job now. However, it is all in the past. Situations and solutions may not apply here. The general lesson may apply, but it might present a considerably different solution.
It is important for me then to use my history to ask informed questions of others. This, for me, is the best way to use my experiences. Questions are a great method for sharing, they help the other person work through the process much more effectively than me simply spewing out my solution. Questions allow me to apply my experiences to the situation in a way that the other person might understand. I can't possibly fill in all of the context of an experience I had or a decision I made in the past, but I can cover a lot of needed context through asking detailed questions about the present situation. By doing this I am serving the situation by offering experience instead of directing the situation because of my experience.
In the past I had an unhealthy balance between my own instincts and people I considered mentors. I was so new to the industry that I just trust everyone else around me and not my own instincts. Once I felt I obtained a level of expertise I then began relying more on my instincts than those around me. This led me to working too much, leading to burn out and high stress levels.
I believe the truth lies somewhere in between my instincts (and my experience) and trusting those around you to do their job. At the end of the day, more than one person is needed to run any company, write this code, manage this team, etc. If we can't trust people that are hired to do this work, then the company has another, much bigger, problem. Trust does not mean you always agree with someone, not even in the slightest. You can disagree with someone and trust that they have the best interests of the company in their work.
This is the greatest struggle I encounter every day. Being remote I think it is harder to work in these situations than for others who might be able to see people face to face during discussions. It is a struggle to find that balance when typing out a conversation in chat, and say a service is down. But this might truly be the most important part of our job, finding that balance and bringing our expertise to the conversation to lift all of us up and amplify our work.
I have spoken to a number of people that suffer from Imposter Syndrome. I have suffered from it in the past, often to debilitating levels. Recently I was asked if I struggle with it and while I know I haven't for a while, it was surprising to me to say that out loud. I no longer struggle with Imposter Syndrome and it feels really great. I began asking myself, "Why, what has changed?"
The answer to that question is complex, but I believe a lot of it is what I just shared above. I want to solve problems, and I have extensive experience and institutional knowledge to do so, and that is good. However, I am one of many that are working on a complex system, and while I may be able to offer help over "there", and some more over "here", I do so at the risk of alienating my co-workers, adding more work to my already tight schedule which might lead to more hours, less time with family, more incidents, etc. Instead I focus my work, ensure the work I am doing has the greatest impact for the time spent. I ensure I have the entire story of the related interactions so I can work to create a solution with a longer shelf life, one that allows us to move on to new problems. I also work diligently on continuously improving in every area where I spend my time.
We do not live in a vacuum. Learning to work on meaningful problems, finding whole solutions that avoid creating more work, and working with others to achieve those goals are only some of the ways to lower stress, gain confidence in our work and trust others.
Considering all of the above, one of the hardest things to do at the end of the day is to log off, to walk away from all of the work that isn't done. This might be the most difficult part of our day. I ask that you also consider that it might be the most important.
My brain is wired to solve. I see a problem, big or small and I want to solve it. The team I am on has a kanban board with 50+ pieces of work that I could start working on right now, some of them would take a day, maybe less... why not just keep going, I can clear the board! This kind of thinking is why the lessons I learned above is so important.
Very few things need to be solved at this moment. Most technical products are not something that can be solved. Over time they are an evolving product, one where work will always be available for us to do. Why do I think I can solve it today?
Beyond that, it isn't for me alone to solve. The work to be done is entrusted to N number of individuals to pursue to their fullest, to enrich their careers and empower customers. Even the most remote thought of "I can do this fast, just another 10 minutes" begins to weigh on us over time. Think about the ramifications of this work:
- I'm missing out on quality family time
- I'm encouraging others to behave this way
- I'm potentially discouraging others in their work ("Maybe I should stay after to show I can do more work too?")
None of that is healthy, nor effective in achieving my personal goals. I want to lift up my coworkers with my work. If I am discouraging them and making them feel less impactful is disastrous. Beyond that, there is no benefit to doing more work now. It's a vicious cycle of work, solution, work, and on and on. The company, my team and myself gain nothing from staying extra hours to do more work, to solve that one last problem. We cannot achieve perfection.
I say all of this because I have lived through this experience. At a previous gig I worked stupid hours. The work never went away. Mix that with destructive coworkers, trouble with family and I ended up miserable, with zero productive outcomes. It was only within the last 3-4 years that I committed to this idea and I feel so much better that I have. Is there work to be done? Sure. Have I worked beyond 5pm? Sure. But it has been an exception, not a rule.
I encourage everyone to setup a block of hours you work and then enjoy life outside of work. Don't put work email or Slack on your phone. If you do decide to install these applications make sure you don't have notifications turned on that disrupt you outside of work. Those are distractions. If you are absolutely needed online (and few of us are outside of office hours), you are likely on an oncall rotation. A notification from Pagerduty means you should be online, anything else is just unnecessary noise and distracting you from living outside of work.
I can't stress this point enough: Log off.
I hope you found this helpful. Please feel free to ping me if you have any questions.
Thank you for your time.