Coronavirus SIP, Day 39
Apr. 20th, 2020 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
Consistency?? What's that?
I think I might have burned myself out on work for a minute. In order to take advantage of the fact that folks are stuck at home, my day job has been throwing out a few different promotions to get people to try us out. On one hand, I get it -- it's a tremendous opportunity that would be hard to pass up. On the other hand, the implementation leaves a little to be desired. We have a tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot with communication, especially. I'm not sure if we're moving too fast to be clear, or to anticipate what our customers might get caught up on. So...tons of support tickets.
I've been working a lot of overtime over the past month, just diving deep into tickets and working on my solve rate as much as possible. During times of backlog, we're expected to close 200 tickets a week -- which isn't an unreasonable request. There's something about my workflow, however, that makes it a difficult number to achieve. At first, I was a bit TOO detailed with my ticket summaries and while I think I've gotten better about that, knowing which pieces of information are relevant and which can be safely discarded. I think a bit part of the problem for me was not knowing enough about an issue to figure out what someone might need to resolve things, so I just included everything.
By the end of the week, though, I just could not give a crap about another customer trying to game the system or get something for free, which are a lot of the tickets we've been taking. Again, on one hand I totally get it -- we're actually a pretty expensive service and right now there are...what, 20 million Americans newly unemployed? Spending a bunch of money on secondary education is a pretty risky investment right now. Even when the economy recovers, there's no guarantee these new skills will translate to a new, decent-paid job right away. I think if I were in these folks' positions I'd be trying the same thing. At the same time, when you're dealing with over a hundred of these requests a week you get...jaded about the whole affair. Especially when people get angry at you for saying "Hey, our policy is our policy dude."
That being said, things are going reasonably well at work! Management is working hard to keep up morale through this, with a lot of virtual events and meetings about how to keep company cohesion and make sure everyone's aligned with our objectives. Compared to my last job, I feel much more supported here.
Last week I completely fell apart with just about all of my goals. I didn't get much writing done, hadn't read much at all, and was spotty with my exercise. I'm going to be working this week to be a bit more consistent with that, even if that means doing less writing per day than I had wanted. What's weird is that once I get *started* I'm fine -- it's the inertia that makes it hard.
That's the reason consistency is so important for me at this stage. The more you push past the inertia, the better you get at doing so. Facing the blank page often is a good way of making friends with it. I really have to do more work on managing and working with my anxiety.
Unfortunately, these are just not the best times to be pushing myself with anxiety. Even still, this is stuff that is most important to me. So...doing the work, but with a more gentle pace, is the play here.
I think I might have burned myself out on work for a minute. In order to take advantage of the fact that folks are stuck at home, my day job has been throwing out a few different promotions to get people to try us out. On one hand, I get it -- it's a tremendous opportunity that would be hard to pass up. On the other hand, the implementation leaves a little to be desired. We have a tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot with communication, especially. I'm not sure if we're moving too fast to be clear, or to anticipate what our customers might get caught up on. So...tons of support tickets.
I've been working a lot of overtime over the past month, just diving deep into tickets and working on my solve rate as much as possible. During times of backlog, we're expected to close 200 tickets a week -- which isn't an unreasonable request. There's something about my workflow, however, that makes it a difficult number to achieve. At first, I was a bit TOO detailed with my ticket summaries and while I think I've gotten better about that, knowing which pieces of information are relevant and which can be safely discarded. I think a bit part of the problem for me was not knowing enough about an issue to figure out what someone might need to resolve things, so I just included everything.
By the end of the week, though, I just could not give a crap about another customer trying to game the system or get something for free, which are a lot of the tickets we've been taking. Again, on one hand I totally get it -- we're actually a pretty expensive service and right now there are...what, 20 million Americans newly unemployed? Spending a bunch of money on secondary education is a pretty risky investment right now. Even when the economy recovers, there's no guarantee these new skills will translate to a new, decent-paid job right away. I think if I were in these folks' positions I'd be trying the same thing. At the same time, when you're dealing with over a hundred of these requests a week you get...jaded about the whole affair. Especially when people get angry at you for saying "Hey, our policy is our policy dude."
That being said, things are going reasonably well at work! Management is working hard to keep up morale through this, with a lot of virtual events and meetings about how to keep company cohesion and make sure everyone's aligned with our objectives. Compared to my last job, I feel much more supported here.
Last week I completely fell apart with just about all of my goals. I didn't get much writing done, hadn't read much at all, and was spotty with my exercise. I'm going to be working this week to be a bit more consistent with that, even if that means doing less writing per day than I had wanted. What's weird is that once I get *started* I'm fine -- it's the inertia that makes it hard.
That's the reason consistency is so important for me at this stage. The more you push past the inertia, the better you get at doing so. Facing the blank page often is a good way of making friends with it. I really have to do more work on managing and working with my anxiety.
Unfortunately, these are just not the best times to be pushing myself with anxiety. Even still, this is stuff that is most important to me. So...doing the work, but with a more gentle pace, is the play here.
