Excellence in Software Engineering
Make Every Single Hour a Happy One: Tips to Survive Your Tasks
17 July 2019

Author: Nurettin Mert AYDIN, Group Manager (Energy)

Lost yourself working on your tasks again? Have you just felt that you are having hard time breathing? Like your chest not expanding enough to cover a whole, relaxing breath? Feel like you won’t be able to complete your tasks on time?

These might be some signs of falling down when coping with stress or even burning out. So, it might be a good idea to take a deep breath and find out what you can do to overcome such issues and suit yourself a productive and fun path for your professional life.

Instead of suppressing things, try to respond as early as possible. Do you have an objection to a task? Do you believe that there could be a totally different version of the way things are being rendered? Take some notes, short ones and have them ready for short presentations.

Talk to your lead or manager as soon as possible.

Do not set yourself back. Share your findings, your thoughts with your higher ups. Let your higher ups evaluate your ideas, manage certain problems regarding the projects or the team.

Instead of acting like a state machine, try to think about the big picture: Where, why and how the output of your project is going to be used.

Document more, make sure that other people understand what you mean. Inspect more, make sure that you bring different perspectives to your team. At least leave some notes for yourself, for your own good. Although considered as boring, efficient documentation brings you alternative ideas for the tasks you have been working on and even inspires others.

This next one sounds a little bit hard to accomplish yet it is always possible, well, at least, to try. Isolate yourself from the scene for a moment and try to think positively. It is always easier to find bad, negative things going on with the tasks, the projects and the people around you. The hardest part is to find out and emphasize the good, positive ones.

Remember that you cannot accomplish everything by yourself. This is not rational and expected. In order to succeed that all you have to do is to communicate sincerely and efficiently. Trust is the golden key. Trust other people and try to think about how they contribute rather than comparing and contrasting all the time.

Smile.

Do not just sit there and focus on your tasks all the time. Stand up, look in the mirror, drink some water, not another cup of coffee nor another glass of tea, plain water that is. Read a book, one book related to your work and another one totally irrelevant.

Think about your working environment and how you occupy space in that environment. How do you contribute and how do you perform?

As you feel suppressed and think like you will not be able to complete tasks in a timely manner with the desired quality, do not forget that you are part of a great big team, you are not alone in this journey.

Most of the time you might feel like you lose track of time, stamina during working and most of the time your body and mind raise some alerts and often you discard or suppress these signals allowing them to revisit in higher amplifications. Make sure that you take short notes related to these signs as well and make sure that you revisit these notes each month to see what really bothered you and what you could have done.

If you feel like you lose focus and cannot find the necessary means to complete your tasks, give yourself a little break and consider going on a vacation. It might not be an all-inclusive beach access, a small garden for the weekend may have you replenished quickly and flawlessly.

Try alternatives.

Apply alternatives to working habits as well. Have you been on the dark side (dark themes for computer applications)? Well switch to the light theme(s) to see how you adapt. Change your desktop wallpaper.

These might all sound so stereotypical but think about the reasons why you lose focus, feel like you cannot produce anymore, have headache patterns, etc.

There are always things to improve regarding the way you are handling things. It is all a matter of finding them out and trying and this will not only increase productivity of the individual progress but also help you build a more tolerable life.

And just before the last but not the least… Do not ever forget that the problems that you face are not unique to you, there are millions out there facing the same problems or even more.

And here is the last but not the least… Everything is shared (well, almost): Success, failure, you name it. Share as much as you can.

Make every single hour a happy one.

PS: None of these statements or approaches above may be 100% scientifically proven or valid, this is my small, messy, overtold yet humble compilation of advices that I could gather during my professional journey so far.

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