I absolutely haven’t had enough of experts
But don’t underestimate your capacity to immediately forget sage advice
On Monday, I started the day with Eleanor Tweddell’s excellent book Why Losing Your Job Could be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You. It turns out that taking voluntary redundancy without any concrete plans is, in some ways, remarkably similar to compulsory redundancy. Among the collected wisdom in this title is some sterling advice about not trying to do too much at once:
“Once you start gaining momentum, your to-do list will get busy. You’ll start getting a lot of things to do, people to see, webinars to watch … You’ll feel like you have to do everything so that you don’t miss opportunities.”
Bang on, Eleanor. That is exactly what life has been like in the past few weeks. But she goes on to warn of procrastination setting in quickly.
“One moment, we are looking at our to-do list thinking about how urgent everything it all seems and the next we are alphabetising our spice shelf.”
She goes on to explain procrastination is just how we react to an overwhelming workload. Additionally we’re wired to seek out the ‘hit’ of completing a task, no matter what it is. She quotes another author, Tim Herrara:
“Our brains tend to prioritise immediate satisfaction over long-term rewards. A study found that subjects were more likely to perform urgent, smaller tasks with a deadline than more important tasks without an immediate time constraint, even if the option to perform the urgent task is objectively worse than performing the larger one.”
“They are so right!” I thought. I resolved to keep my eye on the prize. And then, obviously, I spent the entire week on short-deadline tasks. In fairness to me, some of those things really did have to be done. HMRC are unlikely to grant me an extension on my tax return because “I need to concentrate on the big picture”. None the less, it’s a perfect example of an urgent task that is “objectively worse”.
Some of you* may be wondering whether the whiteboard experiment lasted more than 24 hours. It certainly did but with a shift in its role. I’m still planning my days but am also updating the board as I go with what I actually did. Thanks to the colour-coding, the areas that aren’t get enough attention are starkly revealed (see above) but this approach has also had a very steadying effect. Instead of feeling like I failed to stick to the plan, I can see at glance what I have prioritised and achieved. And I know I said I wouldn’t put anything on there that wasn’t career related but I deserve recognition for tedious but necessary time-sucks. Hours on the phone to an IT support line isn’t ‘wasted time’ and, frankly, I deserve a bloody medal. And a lollipop. And a sticker acknowledging that I WAS VERY BRAVE.
*None of you.
CV clinic
Speaking of tedious but necessary tasks, I began my CV. Wow. I think this might be the reason why I haven’t applied for a job in more than 10 years. Apparently, some people love this task; the fact that I view it as a necessary evil probably says a lot about how I viewed my recent career history. As I sat describing my various roles, I began to suspect I would have been on Ark Fleet Ship B.
Thankfully, I found I had a few things to guide me and make the whole thing less onerous. So I’m going to share a top tip with you whenever I stumble upon something truly useful.
No 1: Keep your old job applications, especially any that use online forms
My last few job applications required me to fill out a number of standardised forms asking for very specific information: exact dates, bullet-pointed lists of responsibilities - basically everything had to be in a format that a computer could parse. But this sort of detail makes it really easy to build a skeleton CV. And the older the better as this is the stuff you won’t remember later. It’s also an interesting and fun little time capsule to peruse, even if it is also sobering to look back at what seemed very, very important to your younger self.. (Sidebar: the forms also required me to fill in my school exam results. I am 46. My GCSE grades are: “Piss off, nosy.”)
In short, never bin your job applications, regardless of whether you got the job.
Setback of the week
There is one area in which every IT department displays ruthless efficiency - switching off your email account. Having already turned in my gun and badge (laptop and staff pass) on my last working day, on 1st January the door was firmly slammed behind me. This in itself was more of a relief than anything else. I never got anywhere near Inbox Zero and I was glad to be released from the nagging sensation that there was “one last thing” that I ought to be doing. However, there were knock-on effects for anything that used my staff email address to log in. Not long after the start of lockdown, the Guardian gave everyone access to LinkedIn Learning. Thousands of video tutorials, ours for free. But now I can’t access it.
You may be thinking, “Um, if you had access to it for all that time, how come you didn’t take advantage of it before?” Well, I did have a look when we were first gifted with membership but the only courses on offer appeared to be the standard business dross. Office Drone: 101. How to Speak Management. Staying Efficient While Crying at Your Desk. (Protip: if you put a few books under your monitor and raise it enough to shield your face, no one will notice you quietly sobbing. True story.) So I ignored the whole LinkedIn thing and then, by sheer fluke, I logged back in a few weeks ago and discovered that a bunch of podcasting tutorials had been adding - ie, exactly what I need. I binged as many as I could but it was richer seam of video classes than I had imagined and there just wasn’t enough time
In short, keep an eye on the corporate membership schemes your company gives you. Things that initially appear to be utter rubbish may develop into useful perks.
Stationery corner
As if last week’s calendageddon wasn’t enough, I’ve been also rummaging through the gargantuan amount of stationery I brought home from the office. My stationery, not theirs - back off, copper - the Guardian hasn’t had stationery worth snaffling for years. (I remember when it was all gel ink pens and hardback notebooks… and all this *gestures at Kings Cross* was just Bagleys.)
The amount of barely-started notebooks is criminal but who can resist a new pad for a new project? Not me, apparently. The inside of my locker was like a shrine to Paperchase. Among limited edition Moleskines and conference freebies, was this absolute gem. A novelty gift from my colleague Monica in reference to our team’s regular insertion of cat pictures into company presentations.
As you can see, Paperchase have documented some sort of diabolical scientific experiment to turn cats into mermaids. “Purr Maids.” I know. So many questions. Leaving aside the paradoxical nature of these creatures, I’d like to draw your attention to the myriad yet somehow repetitious organisational options that this book provides.
My favourite bit is how they’ve distinguished between ‘Thoughts’ and ‘Ideas’. That’s pretty deep, right? And thinking about that keeps me from wondering how and why the some of the cat-fish acquired tiaras.
If you’d like to get This Might Have Been a Terrible Mistake as a email instead, click the clicky button below.