20210320:20 - Back to Basics
Bringing my work focus back to core responsibilities
Since December I have been fairly distracted at work -- "chasing butterflies" is a good description. I have been constantly flitting from one idea to the next, taking on new asks whenever they come up, and doing all kinds of extra bonus things, but not sticking to any of it. Also my main job has suffered, I barely have even looked at tickets let alone make contributions towards some.
There are a few personal reasons why I've been feeling unable to dive in, giving me a general low energy, which also has not helped. But the main issue has been that I was so distracted by "what do I need to do or learn, to improve?" that I forgot my core responsiblity, which is to resolve customer problems by solving support tickets on a daily basis.
I've been unfocused. I need to get back to the core reason I was hired in the first place.
This week, in addition to our 1:1 which is on a Friday, my manager and I worked together on Tuesday to set goals for the week. I decided that I would put personal growth and extra tasks on hold, and focus on tickets. Jane agreed this was a good approach, and offered more support during the week, should I need it. On the Friday we would review. She advised that working on tickets is a habit that I'll need to form, that it will take 30 days (I think actually it could take fewer days, or even more). We will see how it goes.
This week's goals
So this week I started my day differently
- Close gmail -- I will set a time in the afternoon to look at these as I don't operate from there anyway
- Review gcal -- I don't have a lot of appointments, but I do get anxious about commitments to others, so it helps me to review what the coming day looks like, and set reminders or alarms
- Open Zendesk and start with assigned tickets and CC views (use the GitLab app on the left to find CC'd tickets)
- When finding new tickets, work from the SM needs assignee and SM with SLA, but feel free to take tickets with more time until they breach, at least this week
- I have set myself a goal of 10% SaaS support too, but this week I focused only on SM
- Slack can be a distraction, but for now I'm not changing how I use it: it sits open on my MacBook's screen which is below my main monitor, and notifications are still on
The aim I had in mind was to contribute about 15-20 public comments on tickets, and maybe even solve a couple. Prior to this week I was making fewer than 10. Yes, it was pretty dire.
How did I do?
I think it was a very successful week. I did chase three butterflies:
- answering a question for Technical Writers on the Admin Area wrench not being visible in Mobile -- this was early on Monday, and it was because I found it in my emails at the start of the day. One of the extra things I have sort-of taken on is being a Support Stable Counterpart for Technical Writers
- working with the APAC support team to complete vetting of upgrade/downgrade paths for customers of JiHu migrating into the gitlab-jh edition
- attend the Gitaly Cluster Deep Dive on Thursday, APAC-friendly time. I had already decided that I wanted to do this, and Gitaly is a thing that I am interested in learning about in the future: we have an increasing number of customers using it, and in GitLab 14.0 more will come online as NFS is deprecated
But mostly I stuck to my guns, briefly reviewing my day at the start and then sticking around in Zendesk and the #support_self-managed channel on Slack.
I actually made quite a few comments: 27 public ones and 17 internal, and I Solved two, with a positive SSAT review for one of them! I'm happy with that: I'd like to be making low-to-mid 20s in comments (about 4-5 a day) as a baseline.
Challenges
The JiHu task was a last-minute ask (of the team) from the APAC Senior Support Manager. The challenge, for me, was to not take on the DRI role when the group was asked on our Tuesday team meeting. I am glad that I did not: Anton did a fantastic job, and the most important thing he did was to agree to the scope of testing with Shaun, and stick us to it. He also shepherded and encouraged us to take only a part each of what was to be done. These are things I would not have done well, let alone coped with this week. Rather, I was able to "play" with the task I had taken on, complete it and be happy with that. It was a few hours out of my day and it felt good to collaborate with others.
What to improve next week
This was the first week. It's not a habit yet: I'll need to do this again next week and I want to see some consistency before I will consider myself on a new path. After that I can consider the other dimensions of my work and how I'll take them on again without letting this slip too badly.
It's important that whatever cadence I arrive at is sustainable. I don't want to burn out trying to maintain around 20-25 comments a week, that is not the goal. It's about consistently doing the work and achieving Results, not how many comments that I make.
I did not review my emails in the afternoon. There are a few that I need to catch up on still. I'll have to set up a reminder or schedule for looking at it on Monday.
I am writing this up on Saturday morning. That's because I woke up and this was top-of-mind. I would rather have set time aside on Friday afternoon for this, although yesterday I did work on a ticket (still open, not locking at it now) right up until quitting time, so that was a good reason.