Try again…

Everything gets all jumbled up, sometimes

I got some of what I intended done, yesterday. But I spent a lot more time being distracted and letting my mind wander in all sorts of different directions.

A lot of remote managers at work are in town, this week. And the recruiter who placed me in my current position stopped by my cubicle yesterday. They haven’t done that in close to a year. What the heck are they doing in my part of the universe?

I could be wrong, but it seems to portend yet more changes on the organizational horizon.

And that is most distracting to me.

HowEver (and this is a big new development for me), I actually know what direction I want to go with my career in the future, and the path is open for me, anytime I want it. I’ve got a veritable army of recruiters all eager to place me somewhere and get me into a good-paying position. The more I get paid, the more they get paid.

So, it’s no big deal, if I get laid off.

But it is a big deal, if I’m not prepared — and that’s something I forgot to do, yesterday. Last week, I found a bunch of free training at our company’s employee intranet, that will really help me gear up for the next steps in my career. It will help me get free and be fully qualified to do the kind of work I am aiming to do. And I did some of the training on Friday afternoon. But yesterday I was so distracted by so many different things, I forgot to resume it — that is, I forgot why I should resume it. I didn’t have good focus, and I was pretty scattered, trying to organize myself and get my planning and follow-through system in place.

I worked at it all morning, and by afternoon, I was tired, but I pressed on. And I actually “got lost” in the process — ended up spending way too much time re-hashing numbers and calculations and scheduling items, that I would be better off just putting aside and coming back to, later.

Plus, I didn’t get my swim, yesterday. My last meeting ended early, and I could have gotten to the pool in time. But I got distracted and by the time I got around to driving to the fitness center, the parking lot was full, and I realized it was way too late to be swimming.

So, I turned around and drove back and finished up the day on a pretty strong note.

Still, I didn’t accomplish all I set out to do. And I need to have a better system for handling things. I get so caught up in things, I lose track of time… and then I get tired and get even more distractable.

So, I need to break down my activities in to smaller “chunks” that I can handle more effectively… and not get lost.

This is especially important for this new training I’m doing. I’m really excited about it, as it offers me a clear path forward — and the methodology they use is not only widespread, it’s also really, really good for me. It “ticks all the boxes” for me in my work, and it’s a skillset that’s very much in demand, so there’s no lack of work.

So, it’s important that I follow through. And that I not forget to keep going with it. I really went off the rails yesterday. Then again, I did get some important things done, so it wasn’t a total waste.

I just need to try again today.

And so I shall.

Onward.

Not dancing around it, anymore

Well, the job interview I was supposed to have today didn’t pan out. The company went with someone who was asking for less money and had more specific skills, even though they probably had less overall experience than I. Oh, well. Back to square one, I guess.

I’m getting a bit downtrodden about the job search thing. I have put myself out there in the market, but I haven’t gotten the kinds of responses I need — and what’s more, I feel like I’d have to really “shoehorn” myself into some of the positions to make them work. I am not finding the kinds of direct hits, I’d been hoping for.

Well, the economy is challenging, so that’s to be expected. At least I have a good job already. It’s stable and it gives me predictability so I can build up my skills — which I’m doing right now. The more people I talk to, the more inquiries I get for specific skills that I sorta kinda have, and that I can get up to speed with on my own time. It’s abundantly clear, what I need to do with my free time. Now I just need to do it, instead of dancing around it and trying to figure out something new and different to do with my life.

I’ve been shying away from technical work, because I’m not up to speed with a lot of new technologies. But that can change with time. The thing that’s stopped me, has been my trouble with reading and understanding and retaining information. I also run out of steam and get discouraged, because this is much harder than it used to be. It’s a combination of things — age and TBI and being out of the technical market for a few years.

Also, the last time I was in a highly technical job, I was really struggling and faking my way through a lot of what I did, and I just couldn’t do it, anymore. But now I have reason to think I’m going to do better than I did before.

One of the huge benefits of seeing all my old friends and family this past weekend, was realizing how well I’m doing — and how much better I’m doing than I was before. I literally did not recognize some of the folks, the last time I saw them. I had grown up with them, but seven years ago, just a couple of years after my TBI in 2004, I had no idea who they were. Their faces didn’t look familiar, and they had to introduce themselves to me.

That was pretty embarrassing, and it left a mark on my spirit. It was just one more thing that held me down.

But this past weekend, when I saw them again, I could recognize them up front and I knew exactly who they were. I was amazed at the difference — I actually recognized them. What a relief.

And if I can remember them, and my brain is working so much better than it was before, then I can certainly get back in the swing of things with working on my technical skills and making some progress there.

Surely.

The incentive is pretty big – all the jobs I keep getting contacted about, which are in my desired rate range, are technical ones for skills that I can — and should — have in my portfolio. And these are things I can learn myself. I’ve been doing this type of work for close to 20 years, so why the heck am I holding back on learning these things?

Here’s why —

1. I have sorely struggled with things that I used to know how to do, which now give me trouble — things like reading and remembering. It’s demoralizing and exhausting.
2. Fatigue knocks the stuffing out of me on a regular basis, so I can’t even begin to sit down to work on things I need to work on, after the day is done.
3. I get started on one thing, then I get distracted and I end up doing something completely different.
4. I lose track of time and forget what I’m doing, and that keeps me from moving forward.
5. I had it in my head that the old way of making a living was cut off – I had to find a new and “better” way to do things. The only problem is, those new ways don’t pay as well as the old things, and that’s demoralizing, in itself.

So, all these are excellent reasons for my not moving ahead, but they’re no excuse. I know what the problems are, and I know how to address them. I’ve been meaning to… but I’ve been scattered and at cross-purposes with what I want to do with myself. Now I can do something about that, and just settle down and work on what I need to work on. Sharpen my skills. Showcase my talents. And get that job I have been wanting to get.

The other thing I’ve been dancing around, is the commute thing. If I’m willing to take the train to a nearby city, I can make a lot more money. And I’ll be in a city, which is energizing. But the monthly commuting costs — over and above everything else — will be close to $400/month, which means I need to make A LOT more money. That ups the ante, with the type of work I can/should do. It means I can’t settle for a lower-paying job. I need to go for the best I can get.

And I need to just apply myself wherever I can. Not spread myself too thin. Take things one at a time and do them in order. I have easy access to books and instruction materials and a computer, so there is nothing to prevent me from just settling in to do this work. And come out on top.

The only thing stopping me, is me. And that’s enough of that.

Onward.

 

Tracking my progress in a way that makes sense

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I manage my daily life and affairs, lately. After reading some of the Give Back Orlando GBO) material, I became pretty convinced that tracking my successes and failures each day is an important part of keeping my life together and getting (back) to a place where I want to be. In many respects, my brain is working quite differently than it did even 5 years ago, before my fall. I have a harder time reading and comprehending, I have a harder time remembering things, and I have a harder time sleeping and keeping myself on track. I’m also a lot more tired than I ever recalled being when I was younger.

And no, it’s not just getting older. That’s part of it, but the changes were too abrupt after my last accident, for me to easily write it off to that.

Anyway, I tried to track my daily performance like the GBO book told me I should. And I really did make an attempt to keep myself on schedule for some time. What I found, however, was that my life and my type of work does not lend itself to strict scheduling. And if I try to keep myself on a specific timetable, I am setting myself up for failure.

Basically, this is how it works with me: I am a software engineer, which is pretty creative work. It’s very technical, yes, but the design and coding and testing of the programs I wrote, is not something that can always be done predictably. This is especially true because I design software for the world wide web, and since different people with different browsers use it, there can be different behavior and problems that emerge as a result. I could go on a long rant about browser inconsistencies, but there’s no point to that. The people who know about them already know what I’m going to say, and the people who don’t understand probably don’t care.

Anyway, despite being a technical and machine-driven activity, software engineering is still a very organic process which depends heavily on human components, like the skill of the programmer, their level of experience, how they’re feeling on a given day, how rushed they are… every different human factor that influences other kinds of activities influences software engineering. After all, the stuff is created by humans.

And because of this variability, the work I do is really hard to schedule accurately and keep on a hard-and-fast timetable. Yes, we have deadlines we have to keep to, and yes, there is a master project plan we’re all coding to, but from day to day, it’s impossible to say for certain that I’ll be done with a certain piece of code by 11:30 a.m., and I’ll be moving on to the next by 12:00. It just doesn’t work that way for me. Maybe it does for other people, but not for me.

And when I focus on this specific time-table approach, and I mark down my inability to finish something by a certain time as “incomplete” or a “failure”, I’m setting myself up for more failure. I looked at my lists, when I was sticking with the timetable, and I got really depressed and down on myself. I had hardly any successes marked off. The tasks I was working on turned out to be much bigger and “hairier” than I had anticipated, so not only was I falling behind, but I was punishing myself for it, too.

It just wasn’t working.

Now, a part of me thought, “Well, you should just work at it more and get the hang of this scheduling business,” but when I thought about it, it seemed to me that it made more sense to take a more task-oriented approach. Rather than scheduling set times to be done, I should really focus on the individual things that need to be finished, and worry about the how and what, not the when. Focus on the quality and making sure that I was thorough in my work, rather than holding myself to a set schedule.

I also realized, in doing this, that the usual time allotments I was accustomed to giving myself did not work anymore. I realized that this work I do is taking longer for me to do… and it’s also a much more involved process than it ever was before. I’ve always found myself coming up with solutions to problems when I was far away from my notes and my computer and my work setting. There’s something about the creative process that keeps chugging away in the background, while I’m “doing” other things… and comes up with solutions to problems at the least expected times. Just because a solution occurs to me at 2 a.m. when I wake up suddenly, instead of at 4 p.m. the day before, when I had set my deadline, doesn’t mean the solution is a failure, or that my work is lagging. It’s just a different way of getting things done, and I need to make the most of that.

Indeed, while I do appreciate the GBO material, and it does make sense for everyday activities, like completing chores in a timely manner or taking care of regular business, in my line of work, building in that kind of rigidity just works against me. And because my line of work is fluid and tends to shift a lot, with priorities being reset by my boss and other coworkers on a regular basis, the rest of my life tends to be fluid, too.

So, while I don’t always feed the pet and head out the door to work by 8:00 every day, that doesn’t mean I’ve failed. If I manage to do it by 8:30, and I still get to work in time to get everything done… or if I take a little longer in the a.m. to miss the heavy traffic, and spend some time thinking about my coding conundrums… and then arrive at the office with a solution fully formed in the back of my head before I ever touch the keyboard, well, that doesn’t make my scheduling anomalies a “failure” either.

But still, I have been building in more accountability and management for my daily life. I have since modified the to-do list, where I put down a bunch of things that I must do each and every day, so I have things to check off as successes, in the midst of everything else. I also don’t hold myself to a set schedule, but I group my tasks together under common categories (work-related and personal). And I consult the list frequently throughout the course of each day.It’s a tremendous help for me.

I used to feel really rebellious about it, but that was when I felt like I was being set up by my own process. Now that I have created a management system that works for me, it gives me a sense of structure and accomplishment and greater control over my life that I really crave, in order to be productive. I like being productive. I love checking off items I’ve gotten done. And it gives me something to tend to and celebrate. Woo hoo!

I am also carrying my time/activities management into every day of the week, including weekends. Giving myself “time off” is counterproductive, because I end up missing important things I need to get done — like mowing the yard and returning library books and taking the trash to the dump and cleaning my study… all which I often intend to over the weekend, but completely forget because I haven’t written them down and I didn’t check my weekend notes to keep myself on track.

As a result, I miss the narrow window of nice-weather to mow, and then my uncut lawn languishes through the days and days of rain… getting longer and longer and longer and looking pretty ratty. My garage starts to get an odor of trash, and I end up having to haul 3x as much to the dump, which is hard on my back. I rack up library fines. And I lose important papers in my study.

Lessons learned. Over and over, till I get them. Weekends may be “off” times for others, but for me, it’s list-tending time.  Fortunately, it’s not a bad thing for me, and I’ve constructed it in such a way that I have plenty of freedom to move within my own structure. Bottom line is, I get things done that must be done. I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself to do them by a certain time, because it just isn’t always possible. But when I give myself some leeway, I find myself able to do it all — and more.

I’m quite happy with this system I have. And I’m also using it as an opportunity to learn some new technical skills. I have some gaps in my skillset that I need to fill, in order to be really, truly employable all across the board. I’m quite employable now, but having these new skills will be good insurance against shifts in the job market. So, I’m building out a time/activities management system for myself that uses these new technologies. That way, I have a time/activity tracker I can access just about anywhere there is a computer with an internet connection, I can update my progress in real-time AND I can collect all the data about my performance on a daily and weekly and monthly basis, and watch for trends. I can gather this data and generate reports so I can see, months down the line, how I’ve been improving — or where I need to improve.

And I’m expanding my technical skillset at the same time.

It’s all good.