Work

Posted on 2012/08/25 17:51:51 (August 2012).

[Thursday 16th August 2012]
I hadn't slept very well the night before, and had been kept awake thinking about work. Although we'd had the big launch back in May, it hadn't (yet!) set the world on fire, and I had started to be filled with self doubt. This had been made worse this week by one particularly negative person in the New York office (whenever I get annoyed at work, it almost always originates in New York) who had made some probably throw away comments recently, but which had really played on my sense of impostor syndrome. Everyone has this to some degree in tech companies, apparently.

I think this was also compounded by the thought of the impending arrival of the baby, which somehow strengthened the pressure I felt to have at least one really big runaway success during my career. I'm not really sure I fully understand the logic of that - whether it's because I want the baby to be proud of me (in which case I probably have a few more years before I really need to worry about that - I don't think newborn babies are particularly discerning about online services), or whether it's more the concern over having a new and very big focus in my life before I feel like I've got where I want to be with the existing one (work). Or maybe it's just a pressure to suddenly make a vast sum of money so we can buy that big family home with a garden. In Belgravia.

I've definitely experienced this sense before, following a project launch, and the few months afterwards can be a frustrating time, where you start to doubt whether what you did was really good enough, and wonder if you shouldn't have gone in a completely different direction altogether. Sometimes there's then a kind of sense of paralysis where you can't come to a consensus on which direction to head in next, and end up floundering and getting very little done.

I think the key thing I've learnt from the past is not to be too hasty to throw it all away and go in some completely different direction, or to make very grand plans for a next big thing which will take months. Often it's worth looking at what you've got and seeing where a bunch of small incremental changes could potentially make a big difference.

So that's what I lay awake thinking about last night, and I came up with a neat little idea which I then hurried enthusiastically into the office to start working on this morning.

It's only going to be a small feature, but it is something none of our competitors are doing, and I was very pleased with the way I could bash out a working prototype within a single day. Moreover, I was pleased with the way I'd been able to turn that self doubt (and irksome negativity from New York) into something positive and constructive.

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