Observe and Analyse

I have been in a grumpy mood all day today. I hate days like that. It's weird because I had a nice chat with a neighbour I'm pretty sure I'd get on with, but we never really spoke before. Everything started off fine.

But my entire morning was beset with email after email. Constant, neverending questions. All of which require me to look into things, and research and give proper answers. I obviously don't mind this - it's part of the job, and I actually enjoy it in moderation - but across multiple features and projects, it is extreme context switching, which is exhausting and a tired Jasper is a grumpy Jasper. And it's not something I like billing for even though, arguably, it's a more valuable ability than code-writing. The more you (effectively) plan, the smaller tasks get. Good planning is a skill that draws upon experience massively, and I tend to take that for granted because it doesn't have much tangible output. Thus, guilt around counting it as Real Work.

The afternoon wasn't much better. We have a couple of small projects at the moment that I'm having to drag along by the hair, which is also exhausting and not fun. Tiny little bits of occasional progress after tonnes of back-and-forth, lapses in coordination, unknown unknowns in planning, and a lot of waiting around for external tasks to be completed. That last one tries my patience - it's so difficult to hold clients to their own deadlines, because pretty much all of them feel that they can break them if they want. I get it, it's their deadline so if it moves they know about it, but people don't realise how it affects your ability to schedule your day.

If a client says to me "I'll get you this tomorrow", I add a todo for tomorrow that I'm going to progress that task tomorrow. Then when that thing I need doesn't come tomorrow, I have a hole in my planning. I can't chase saying "umm you didn't get this to me when you said you would" because I know from experience that I'll Get It When I Get It - it's either done or it's not. Me chasing won't change that. You have to be flexible and work around things. So waiting on other people to do things means they often arrive late, which makes scheduling my time extremely difficult. I can guarantee that things will be ready for progress on my part right when I'm in the middle of something else that I started because of external delay, which means the current delay blame can feasibly shift to me, and it does! Then if I have a few small things with one or two clients that are all subject to this type of delay, it weighs heavy on me.

I guess I do know why I'm grumpy!

We did manage to take a late lunch and watch Tabitha play netball at school, though. That was nice. I love that she's so into sport. Even if she doesn't love something she puts in tonnes of effort and I admire that about her.

I did the observe and analyse of my group session for level 2 coursework this evening. It was fun, even though I was absolutely not in the mood (see above). I think I have a reasonable idea of the plan I'm going to make for them, and the types of things we're going to do to progress them. All four of them have a couple of similar, or related, issues that should make quite a cool technical/tactical plan, which is lucky for me! And they're all super engaged and seems like they want me to succeed, which I am very grateful for.

Just proofreading the above, I'm concerned that any clients reading this might take it personally. I have edited this post heavily to specifically frame the above issues as challenges of this job, projects, and internal/external collaboration, and not criticisms of people I work with.

The above issues are common; in no way unique to today! Projects never run on time, and rarely run smoothly. Estimating how long things will take is extremely difficult, and even I still massively mess it up. People need to ask me questions, and I sometimes I need to answer a lot of them. But when it rains, it pours and I am still a person and sometimes things make me grumpy, and looking at how and why that is helps me to process it and wake up fresh and ready tomorrow.

If you want to talk about this, please use the "email me" link below and let's have a conversation.