A Day in the Life - 9/13/2022

In the workplace, cases are what we call "tickets", or concerns raised by our customers.

I started today's shift and saw 4 cases which were all about one critical issue that customers were facing. This was surprising because we normally don't get that many cases. There are even days where we don't get any at all. There were only 3 of us in the team that get assigned to that kind of issue, and the 2 would only come in 2 hours from then. I grabbed all four.

I started looking into one and asked around about the issue. It turned out, there had already been an ongoing discussion. I knew the next steps were clear: inform the rest, wait for a "defect record" to be filed, then attach the cases to the defect record. I did not wait for anyone to tell me what to do.

It's time we stop asking what we should do; it's time we start asking the right questions.

A few minutes later, the defect was filed. I informed the rest and checked the error logs of each of the cases, one by one. As I was working on the 4 cases I had already grabbed, 6 more cases came in (a few were not related to the issue). Just like that, from a bucket of 0 cases, an instant 10. This is not to mention the 2 that came in later that day.

Someone from another team that was also experiencing the flood asked, "Just to confirm, should we still be distributing cases?" I knew if I were in his position, I'd just do it anyway. I realized that it's questions like these that turn people into cogs. I guess a better approach would have been, "I'm distributing the cases. Let me know if you have questions or objections." It's time we stop asking what we should do; it's time we start asking the right questions.

A linchpin produces more value than the rest in terms of both quantity and quality.

The flooding had stopped, right before my other team mates came in, and I had to deal with my bucket. It is easy to dismiss cases with the same error message as belonging to that same issue. But since I started viewing my work as "art", I had become more conscientious of my work. Because I could, I focused on ensuring quality work, rather than getting everything done as quick as possible. This turned out to be a good thing because I later found out, that I had avoided a mistake I could have otherwise overlooked. By looking at the error logs for each case, I discovered that one of the cases was not even related to the issue, amid having the same error in the front-end. I transferred the unrelated case to the appropriate team.

I'm not saying quality is always more important than quantity. It only appears to be the case when what we produce is not a commodity. A linchpin produces more value than the rest in terms of both quantity and quality. If you're in a job that requires you to produce a commodity, can you still be an artist or linchpin? The answer is yes! You can do this by getting creative in the way you work. I've worked in tech for quite some time and over the years, I've developed macros to help me with tasks I could consider commodities. The macros helped me and others that used it work twice as fast. If that's not value, I don't know what is. As for those not in tech, here are a few ideas:

The issue finally got resolved and I started closing my cases. When I finally got the chance to breathe, I did not stop there. As I would normally do when there are no pending tasks on my end, I looked at the cases of another colleague I've been helping. In the recent past, he got up to 13 cases, and I helped him get his case count down to 5 right before today, which was a considerable deal of effort. As I looked at his bucket, I saw he had gone up to 14 cases in the span of 4 hours!

Make work an outlet for your passion.

I challenged him to not get discouraged with having a lot of tasks or cases, even when it seems like no one else in the team is helping out. Remember my linchpin origin story? Some managers outright told me, and everyone in the meeting that they would not help out. Part two of that story will be about the new plan I made so we could deal with all the tasks at hand. To me, it was my chance to create a new process.

So flip the switch. When overwhelmed with a seemingly insurmountable number of tasks, take each task as an opportunity to make your art. Make work an outlet for your passion. Whether it's in creating a new process, inventing a tool, connecting better with customers, uplifting, or even helping others out, make your art. And if you keep treating work as an opportunity to make art, eventually, the tasks become easier to deal with. You get more excited to work. You will always have the energy, and even insist, to give something that may be valuable to others. This is the attitude that will separate you from the rest. This is the attitude that creates winners.