It is sometimes shocking how quickly time passes you by. In my previous blog post in October, I explained my personal story on career transition and why I was doing it, and shared my anxieties and insecurities about moving into the full-time work life after seven years of being a freelancer. You can read that here. Since then I’ve actually spent 2 months working in this company part-time and now officially 2 weeks of working with them FULL-TIME!
The company is EGN Singapore, a business networking organisation, and my job is primarily to help produce their meetings and events, amongst a few other things. Having spent a brief amount of time wading through this new environment (let’s be real, honestly, DROWNING is maybe the more appropriate word choice for my mental state), I decided to take this weekend to really take stock of what I’ve learnt, and really, discover who I am and who I need to be as a person in this role.
There were many smaller takeaways that maybe I’ll share another time, but here are the three main lessons that I’ve taken away from my introspection:
- Pre-planning for the work week ahead is crucial
- Sometimes you fail and that’s ok; you need to pick your battles
- Create or maintain spaces and friendships that DON’T remind you of work
Lesson 1: Pre-Planning For The Week Ahead Is Crucial
I’m beginning with the most practical and tangible lesson of them all because that really was my starting point in this introspection- what needs to be DONE to make my life easier STARTING THIS MONDAY. The reality of my current job scope is that there are 5 million little things to be on top of. None of them are difficult or new to me, but it is the sheer quantity that becomes a mess in my head, and then multiple tasks go wrong. So creating an organisation system that works for me is the number one take-away from it all- Taking a few minutes every Friday evening just to sit and think about what has been accomplished in the week prior, what is yet to be accomplished, and creating a priority list of what needs to get accomplished the following week is crucial.
The important thing is that this priority list needs to be specific. It cannot just be “Accomplish task X, Y and Z”. It needs to be, for example,
- Monday morning: Task Y.
- Immediately after lunch: Task Z.
- Before EOD Monday: Get started on Task X, but finish by Tuesday morning.
- Tuesday Afternoon: Event A
- Wed Morning: post-event paperwork needs to be out by 10am
Obviously this schedule won’t get 100% followed because things will always crop up last minute and I have to be adaptable. However, what this does is that it gives me a planned order of importance to follow. So even if things get pushed back, EVERYTHING doesn’t go to hell in my head, just a couple of things gets reshuffled.
It also allows me to keep track of what I’ve accomplished. This is important for me! Sometimes I get too in my head about whether I’ve done enough, am I good enough, maybe everyone thinks I’m dumb etc. Having a written document or calendar that actively identifies tasks I’ve been successful at helps me keep these struggles at bay. (It also doesn’t hurt that you have documentation of your work flow for your bosses to see 😉)
But I think part of setting up this organisation system and pre-planning is recognising that I am not superhuman and therefore cannot place blame on myself for not being perfect. Which leads us to…
Lesson 2: Sometimes You Fail and That’s Ok; You Need to Pick your Battles
Especially in the world of Events, things go wrong all the time. Some of it won’t be your fault. But other times, it might be. I like the analogy that’s often used of the types of balls that are in the air. We all have multiple things to juggle. Some of these balls that we are juggling are made of glass, others are plastic, and some others are rubber. It is our job to make sure that the ones that are glass are the ones most well-protected, because when those fall, they shatter. There’s no way to put them back together. When the plastic ones fall, they’re lost temporarily but not broken. You can pick them up and try juggling them again. When the rubber ones fall, they bounce back up on their own and therefore fall back into the juggling cycle with incredible ease. Instead of trying to hold all the balls in the air all the time, it is EASIER to protect the glass ones if we actively let some rubber ones, and even some plastic ones fall occasionally.
This is the hardest lesson to learn for me. I always have to take extra effort to convince myself that it was ok to let that plastic ball drop, that it can be handled again later. This is the mental fortitude test- for my own sanity, I need to allow myself to fail on some things on occasion.
Part of this is also about making the right choices- some things are more important to get right and need to be the battles I choose to fight immediately. Other battles can either wait or don’t need to be fought at all. This is particularly important when working with a team- it means I don’t have full control over everything and WILL disagree on what the best methods of work are. Identifying which are the rubber or plastic balls in the working relationship and sacrificing them are key to working harmoniously with the team.
That little voice in my head that seeds doubt of incompetence when losing battles is the biggest demon that needs to be put to rest. Which nicely connects us to our third and final lesson…
3. Create Or Maintain Spaces And Friendships That DON’T Remind You Of Work
Being in a new work environment, its easy to get swallowed by the overwhelming nature of it all and spend all of the time buried in it. I remember the first day that I got access to the company CRM I literally spent 3 hours of my off-time just exploring every single page and every single button available because I was afraid a future task will come up on it and I wouldn’t know how to work it. Honestly, after that 3 hours of exploration, if a task DID come up now, I couldn’t tell you that I would automatically know how to do it. All I got from my exploration was that there are A LOT of dangerous buttons I could accidentally press and ruin things for everyone. So really those 3 hours were worse for my anxiety instead of better.
In contrast, this weekend, I met some good friends for a spontaneous coffee catch-up for 3 hours, where I didn’t think about pending work at all, and just let myself enjoy the moment. I came back home happy, mentally re-energised and ready for the new week of work. During that coffee session I heard about my friends planning things like early morning swimming sessions, going to yoga or dance classes, we discussed really good netflix shows, we talked about planning birthday events for our other friends, we talked about cafes and restaurants we really wanted to go visit together. I realised that all of these were really small things, but they were important moments of sanity check.
They not only take me out of the stressful mindset but remind me that I am not defined by my work. I have friends, hobbies, likes and dislikes, & moments of joy that are all MORE significant identifying markers of who I am than just where I work or what work I produce. Finding the right balance to ensure that those parts of me don’t get dimmed while I try to let my work side shine is an incredibly crucial part of longevity in the workforce, but also longevity in life.
Conclusion
It’s only been two weeks in, so of course there is significantly more coming my way. But I’ve learnt that I need to truly appreciate and enjoy every moment of this ride instead of stressing about it. And I think that mindset is what will make this experience a good one.
Working in this job, I’ve been exposed to HUNDREDS of people who are all SO SMART, incredibly experienced and just amazingly wise. So as always, I am still learning and am happy to take on ANY advice or suggestions from anyone who wants to offer some as I go through this journey. I will continue to share my thoughts and learnings here in the months to come!
Here is a selfie I took at the end of the last in-person event of 2021 that I produced just last week, just before I did the post-event clean up:
The Wisdom Editorial 