What? It's 2020 already?

in

Oh no, I’m supposed to have a Yearly Theme all ready to talk about aren’t I?

Here’s the problem. Been a bit busy with the old Christmas family hosting gig I took on, so let’s try to figure it out now as we go.

Last year’s theme was definitely a ‘one and done’ theme which revolved around the Big Move. The year previous to that was my Year of Lean, which actually worked pretty well. I’ll chuck that one into my figurative box of potential themes. With that in mind let’s consider the year in review, what’s going on this coming year, and what I’d like to improve upon.

Work

Work, attitude towards work, and work-life balance can always be improved. How did I do this year?

The things that I think went well this year at work were:

  • Training for our newest graduate. He’s coming on brilliantly, and the bulk of the credit for that goes to the rest of the team. My main part in helping has been in trying to give the team the time to dedicate to him.

  • Work-life balance. I don’t feel like I’ve let work invade my home life to an unreasonable degree at all. I think I managed to successfully limit the work I brought home to only that which was necessary given the nature of my work. I can say I’ve probably done a 50+ hour working week just once or twice this year, usually when multiple external deadlines have fallen together.

  • Keeping the plates spinning. I’ve just about managed to keep everything up in the air without significant droppage, and it has been a hectic year.

    Things I think can definitely be improved:

  • People management. I’ve been an accidental manager for a few years now, but I constantly feel like I fail at getting the balance right between getting my head down and doing the same work my team members do (because that is part of my role), and keeping my head up to keep an eye on how they’re doing. It’s too easy to put the blinkers on and say “I’ve got to do my thing” and forget there are a team of people with similar or identical tasks to complete which require my input.

  • Allowing time for self-development. I haven’t done a great job in keeping up with CPD this year. Sadly, it’s one of the things that’s easiest to drop when you need to already be working late to get a tender in.

  • Delegation. I feel a physical, tangible reluctance to give up certain tasks to others. There is quite the list of excuses I regularly tell myself:

    • Oh, it’ll just be quicker if I do it myself

    • This way I won’t need to check the work coming back in at a potentially inconvenient time

    • I don’t want to overload my team*

    • It won’t be done exactly the way I like it

    • Most of these excuses are exactly that. Excuses.

*Ok, so this one is less of an excuse and more of a reason. I know I get the best out of my team when everyone is focussed on a single task at any given time. I do not believe that anyone performs well when multitasking. The way I try to act as a manager is to do everything I can to protect my team from the hosepipe of incoming crap from above me, allowing them the freedom and space to get on with their own work to the best of their abilities.

What this means is that I try to spin as many plates as possible, and pass them onto team members one at a time as soon as they’ve got the last task off their desk. This way the minimum number of people (ideally just me) are multitasking, and the maximum number of people (everyone except me) are focussed on exactly one task. The downside is that is that I end up spinning a lot of plates basically all of the time.

Home / Everything else

Ok, in this category let’s lump together everything else. Health, fitness, other things I want to aim to achieve or improve at, or even just try out.

Things that went well in 2019:

  • Our family successfully moved house in 2019. After making some repairs to the roof, and sorting out a manhole which had been concreted over in one of the downstairs room since the 1970s we have reached a stage where we’re about 95% happy with how the house looks. Hopefully, 2020 will be a year in which we simply get to enjoy our new place.

  • Cats. We doubled our cat quotient this past year, and I neither know nor care if this ends up affecting this year’s theme, but I love my 4 year old micropanther, and I love our new 5 month old tortoiseshell kitten. Cats are aces.

  • Reading. I didn’t read as much as I did last year, but I read a decent amount of books, and I branched out into a little bit of non-fiction too.

  • Tech. I fully broke out of my old habit of seeking out the New and the Shiny for the sake of it in 2019. My phone is now 3 and a half years old, my laptop is about 4 and a half years old, my iPad is about the same, and my Apple Watch is a few years out of date. I don’t care. They all still perform brilliantly, and they won’t be replaced until they start to show signs of letting me down.

  • Music! One of the co-hosts of a rather good podcast was kind enough to spend some serious time recommending some new artists to me, after having spent a decade in the musical doldrums. I’ve since discovered that many of the artists from the playlist are exactly to my tastes; some blindingly obvious (turns out Taylor Swift is good at doing songs - who’d have thunk it?), some a little less well known (hello Alice Merton!).

Things I want to improve in 2020:

Given we moved house in 2019 and that took up a massive amount of time, energy and heartache a good deal of little things necessarily had to make room. Here are things I’d like to improve upon in the coming year.

  • Fitness. I picked up a knee injury about 10 months ago, and I’ve struggled to get back running ever since. I know that what I need to do is build up the muscles around my dodgy knees with bodyweight exercises and very short runs, but I’ve lacked the time, inclination or energy. Got to do something about that.

  • Sketching. I miss sketching. I used to attend classes, but it was tough to fit into my schedule. This year I’d like to try to set aside some time at home with my drawing board and just put in some hours.

  • Writing. I’m very pleased with what output I managed on this website, but I’d like to produce more, even if only about a dozen people read it.

  • Attention span. I think I need to spend some scheduled time away from my phone and the wider internet. I can tell this year of obsessing over the news has been harmful to my ability to concentrate, but on the plus side has proved beyond doubt that obsessing over events which you cannot control is utterly futile.

Pulling it all together

Ok, let’s consider the improvements I want to make and see if we can make any obvious connections:

  • People management skills

  • Delegation

  • Self development (CPD)

  • Fitness

  • Sketching

  • Writing

  • Attention span

Most of these kind of fall under the banner of Self Improvement, which is a start, but it is rather generic. I wonder if Time can tie them together, because I need to make the time to actually improve myself, or dedicate to my team? Or maybe Awareness? Being aware of what I want to do to improve and being conscious enough of it to to make the effort to alter my behaviour? I’m warming to that. It’s punchy enough to stick in my brain, adaptable enough to cover the bulk of what I’m aiming for.

Let’s try it out: Year of Awareness.

Hmmm. Maybe not? How about Rebalance? After a year of being focussed on One Thing, I’m rebalancing and focussing on lots of small things? That covers everything, but refers to none of them. Is that ok? Maybe something that’s the opposite of my failings? Is there something that’s the opposite of being blinkered? Year of Heads Up? That kind of does come back to awareness. Being aware of the world around me, and not being too laser focussed on one thing but also being aware of the desire to improve myself.

You know what, I think we’re there.

2020 - the Year of Awareness.