Using What I've Got
Yesterday I wrote a release "playbook" for deployment weekend. The playbook consists of a series of tasks that each tester needs to complete to validate that the appropriate system functions are available and working as expected. It was a chance to use my highly honed technical communication skills, which have been lying fallow for quite some time.
It was so easy! It was such a relief! Instead of struggling through the day, I sailed through it with confidence and optimism. What a contrast with my usual daily experience in this job. Having been thrown into a role for which I am untrained and truly unsuited, I have been feeling (and looking) like a pathetic incompetent. It was so nice to remember that I do have skills that are valuable and valued in other arenas.
It was so easy! It was such a relief! Instead of struggling through the day, I sailed through it with confidence and optimism. What a contrast with my usual daily experience in this job. Having been thrown into a role for which I am untrained and truly unsuited, I have been feeling (and looking) like a pathetic incompetent. It was so nice to remember that I do have skills that are valuable and valued in other arenas.
posted by tinotchka at 7:42 AM
2 Comments:
Being - and feeling - valued, both by others and equally importantly by oneself, is so vital that sometimes it's worth choosing a task simply to regain the self-respect that comes with the valuing.
As it happens, that's what I've been doing too this last couple of days (being also a square peg in a round hole jobwise)- creating some diagrams that present the operation of some rather complex systems. Partly by conscious choice, but I think the reason for choosing that particular task was driven by a deeper survival instinct - a part of self that looks after self.
Andy, you may very well be correct that my soul was searching for my self-efficacy! Although I was overloaded with other deliverables, I volunteered for this particular task. I must have somehow sensed unconsciously that it would feed my self-respect and rebuild my confidence.
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