Tag Archives: Work

Prepare, Prioritise and Persevere

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Do you ever get the feeling you’re never quite getting to the end of your work? Or perhaps a task you hoped to start on Monday still feels no closer on Friday on the account of so many other things getting in the way? Yeah, me too.

In my daytime work, there are things that are still bubbling in the way in the background that I’d love to get done but many daily and monthly responsibilities, letdowns by other people you have to rely on (as apparently whilst to get it perfect you have to do it yourself, you also can’t be everywhere at once) and meetings/problems/projects that drop in at the last second, they often get pushed to the wayside for weeks or even several months at a time.

The important things I’ve learned through all this can be taken down to 3 Ps.

The first is Preparation, a term I already try to incorporate into a mantra I call PASTRY (an acronym I hope to later explain in a future post on sister site WAVE Media). You should always be prepared for the unexpected events, even if it seems unlikely they will happen. On top of this you should prepare for what happens when other bumps appear in the world which whilst trivial, can soon add up. If you have a contingency plan though, at least you can rest in the knowledge that you have it under control.

The second is Prioritisation. This one is usually a given, but clients often feel that they’re work is the most important. Being the one doing the work, it’s best to be the one in control (or at least partially) of deciding what is to be done first and then following in an order that allows for minimal disruption. The rule of thumb I’ve learned in this is “Do they need it now?”. If yes, crack on. If not, add it to the queue and be honest with them that it might be a while. Simple as that. At the end of the day, there’s only one you and being only human you can only do so much.

Finally, there’s Perseverance. The world keeps turning each day and people hope their projects they’ve requested will keep up with that. In the relentless run of work, it’s important to keep going as best as you can as failure is only really guaranteed if you don’t try. Your clients will appreciate your perseverance when the going gets tough and you might just surprise yourself. As the anonymous saying goes:

“The moment you’re ready to quit is usually the moment right before a miracle happens. Don’t give up!”

Happy Sunday and go get ’em!

Mike

The Conveyor Belt

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One week on from blogtober and a short break from blogging whilst I assemble a proper schedule, you’d think I’d be well rested and have stockpiled millions of posts and with a smaller schedule take a more relaxed view to writing to you all.

No.

It’s been busy. Very busy. I was lucky enough to have a week’s annual leave towards the end of October which allowed me to start planning on this new venture, but of course I was stillwriting each day and planning for the next. On Halloween, I was back at work and glad I started the draft of the announcement earlier in the week as ir wasn’t a particularly quiet day. The next one got even busier, keeping me past my normal finishing time with extra work added on. The next day was just as jam-packed running our major annual symposium for the RCPE with no real time to stop over the 9 hours so we worked for. The final two days were down with trying to catch up with where I was before my leave began and the evenings and the weekend were time to just unwind so I could rest for the next day ahead.

Without meaning to sound like I’m compalining it’s quite scary at how quickly our work escalated after summer (considering summer was a continuation of the spring and was meant to be a quiet period), but our workload now feels a lot like the classic comedy factory conveyor belt sketch that apparently was made famous by the I Love Lucy show version, but there are many varients out there including the original from the film Modern Times (TV Tropes explains here the mechanics for those that aren’t sure what I mean) and right now we’ve reached the “speed it up a little!” stage.

With this in mind, blogging won’t be as frequent I’m afraid to save things going into a constant stream of “overdrive” (and possibly becoming a “new normal”) – not through laziness but as a fellow human being I do need to eat, shower and unwind so that I can sleep in time for the next day (which is really important or the next day will be even more stressful). I’ll still post here weekly though and ensure you get at least one post a week on each blog (except for Friday which is still fortnightly).

I hope you will all understand and hopefully over time things will be able to become more frequent again as demand changes, or at least becomes more managable.

Hope you all have a great week and nobody feels too overloaded

Mike