I look with admiration at people who can remain patient in any situation. I’m yet to master this skill and to make matters worse, I’m not the best at hiding my impatience either, not when coupled with frustration. It’s something I’m working on.
With certain things I have endless patience. With others the fuse is very short and in situations like right now where I’ve worked long hours pretty much every day for a few months, my patience runs low a bit quicker than normal. Over the last few days there’s been one situation in particular where my patience have run out very quickly and where I hand on heart can say that I haven’t been the best at hiding it.
I’m just over a week from finishing my contract in it’s full time form and I’m heads down in quite complex logic and annotations of functionality as well as content behaviour. It’s a part I really enjoy but it requires focus and keeping track of multiple things in multiple documents whilst at the same time getting the logic right. The situation that’s been driving me slightly insane is constant interruptions in the form of questions. Little questions that each time means I have to pause my music, take my earphones out, ask “What did you say?” and then answer the question. Every time that happens it takes me a couple of minutes to get back into the same focus as I was in before I got interrupted. And each time I get a little bit more annoyed.
The point of sharing this story, despite it not putting myself in particularly good light, is two fold. First of all each one of us have our weaknesses that we can work on but in order to improve and become better we need to know what those things are. As an impatient person I’m well aware that my patience is something I have to work and I know what the situations are that push my buttons so to speak. However, and this is the second point. There are things that can be done to avoid ending up in the type of situations that brings out the worse in you. As much as I love an open plan office there are certain times when having your own office and being able to put a note on the door saying “Do not disturb” would be really nice. Unfortunately that’s not always possible but what is possible is choosing to work from home when those critical tasks needs to be done. Or, speaking to the person who keeps interrupting you and explaining the situation. Communication is always a two way thing and it’s our responsibility to be clear with people and to avoid situations like the one that’s just happened at work, building up.
Tomorrow – Day 216 | Certain things don’t need a to do list
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/e-basak/7472611048/
