My wife got angry with me yesterday………. Like really angry. For something which I’ve never considered wrong or inappropriate. Now when I think about it I was wrong all a long, and it actually brought a work realisation a long the way.

Let me explain.

In all my previous jobs my main task was solving small issues. Constantly – and I mean constantly. Up to 30-40 issues a day. People would come to me or phone me with a problem and I would provide a solution. If not right there and then, within next 24hrs everything was sorted.
I had occasional bigger projects but those happened on occasion and rarely had proper time frame, and my on the spot problem solving never really interfered with long term outcome of bigger projects.

Until I changed jobs.

Now I’m in charge of two huge projects and I need to admit I’m struggling.
I was trying to figure it out for quite few weeks now why I constantly keep running out of time, my tasks and to do list keeps constantly growing and rarely shrinking to les than 15 items. I simply wasn’t able to keep up.

And than it hit me – actually my wife did 🙂

We were out having ice cream. My job kept calling 3 time within one ice cream eating time resulting in my ice cream melting. I kept apologising to my wife each time I answered but on the third time and half of the ice cream melted later she snapped:

“Why you just won’t tell them: “If it’s not important I’ll deal with it later!!!!!” and there it was…….
Bright like a sun!!!! This is my issue.

After we finished arguing we spoke and analysed way I work.
It seems that every time something new comes up I automatically put it on top of the list for solving it right away. Exactly the same as I was doing it in the past 4 years – Wrong.

New job is different – every task is almost like a small project and need to be treated as such. Often needing analysis, delegating and multiple tasks along the way before completion.

I didn’t adapt properly to the new environment and work requirements resulting in near failure and lots and lots of unnecessary stress.

Worse thing is that I just couldn’t see it until my ice cream melted and my wife pointed it out to me.

Bottom line – it’s good to have second opinion. Even if it seems that opinion is completely irrelevant to your job, your views and your experiance.
You can still consider it and look for something to adapt to your current situation.

So from now on we have a new rule, me and wife that is.

when I answer work call when at home or during private time she will ask me later – was this important? what was it about?

I will not get frustrated and instead I will summarise the call to which she will give me her view and opinion if in her eyes this was important enough to spend 10-20 min on a call. or it could have been postponed for later.
I’m hoping that having her opinion on those things will help me re-organize my priorities.

Consider this – 20 min it’s a lot of time If I do something similar like above mentioned call 10 times a day I’m loosing 2hrs of productive time during the day. this way instead of working 10hrs I am working 12hrs.

That is huge difference.

Any way.

Let’s stop this here.

I’ll try to put it in motion and will see what happens……….