Lockdown Friction

Incredibly lucky as I am, I don’t really think that I’ve had much what you might call lockdown friction to my work through this whole period. Now that I’ve changed roles it’s the first time that I’ve identified times during the day when it would have been good to be in an office with my (new) colleagues. The little questions that don’t rate the planning of meetings, the serendipitous encounters that help you connect things and the variety of change of scenery brings.

I’ve used the phrase ‘a change is as good as a rest’ a few times when people have asked how it’s going, and it applies. I’ve been introduced to new processes and successfully navigated them without too many dull questions. Small wins like that are fun and good to get the instant gratification that is so often absent from long term knowledge management work.

The other end of that spectrum is the chasing work that seems to a big part of modern work. You ask someone for something (conscious of the extra load you’re adding, as you experience it when someone asks something of you) and wait.

You might be lucky enough to get a full and complete response – assuming that you’ve fulfilled your end of the deal by being clear. More usually, you wait. In my ‘system’ I can see I have a load of tasks in progress and the cognitive load they take up weighs heavy sometimes. Maybe I can be more active in setting my expectations of how long I’m happy to wait for a response. That might help.

God knows what to do with the straight up ignorers. I’m baffled by that approach. I try to assume good intent, but it can be hard.

In summary a decent week of ongoing data cleansing, reactive wins and dogged persistence.