Things have been crazy busy at work for the last few weeks. My phone has been ringing non stop and there is often a line of people standing next to me with requests.
When I am in this situation my natural tendency is to hurry to try and get through everything that needs to be done and satisfy the queue of people. My observation this week has been that this is absolutely counterproductive. Hurrying has caused some stupid mistakes on my behalf that I would normally not make. In fact when relating one experience to a good friend who is close enough to be brutally honest he chastised me with “you should know better”.
So what is the answer? For the next week I will be making a conscious effort to improve my “flood gates”. When work piles up and everyone wants something from me, rather than scramble to compress the time that everything takes to please everyone I need to take a moment to prioritise then let a manageable trickle through the flood gates.
Engineering is a tricky thing that requires concentration and time, it is not something that should be done when in a rush. I have a queue of people at my desk because people are happy with my work, I can’t then let the pressure of that queue cause the quality of my work to drop.
