26 Miles

Joy In Work

// March 15th, 2010 // Life

Finding joy in my work has been hard to come by lately and I think I figured out why — I’ve been delegating too much!

We’ve gone from a staff of 4 developers on the product side to just 2 (myself included) which has forced me to take on more of the day to day software development and problem solving duties, and I’m having a lot more fun!

I never enjoyed the ‘project manager’ role and have always been in the thick of the action for most of my career but with my latest venture I somehow felt to be the most effective I needed to assume more of a strategic management role and do less of the actual software development. I’m finding that wasn’t the best recipe.

Lately I’ve been adjusting my workload so I can personally tackle some of the things I’ve wanted us to get to for a while and with it has come a sense of ‘getting things done’ that I haven’t felt in a while.

So, lesson learned. Fully enjoying my work is directly tied to solving tactical challenges we face every day, and not just the managing the long-term strategic vision. Balance is key, and I’ve been sacrificing one too greatly at the expense of the other.