Week 20, 2025 - Just say no
Song of the week:
Top of mind
This week two reasonably serendipitously converging conversations occurred for me. One was a mentorship group that I hosted. Hosting does not mean I have all the answers, by the way. It simply means I facilitate, prompt and probe the group to transparently discuss the topic at hand. Which was job satisfaction and action bias.
The second occurrence was a second quarter check-in with my manager.
In the latter, my manager looked at my notes and said that it seems that I'm enjoying 'the work,' which is true, but no one outside of me knows exactly what that means. And specifically, how I am prioritising said work. Now, where she's coming from is abjectly wrong in that she thinks I'm prioritising one fun thing over another definitely-not thing. She just doesn't see the output of the not-fun thing; which is also my own problem to solve (comms).
On the first, in the discussion, folks both landed on saying 'no' as both a wonderful way to drive job satisfaction and to drive action bias where it matters.
It's funny, because I've given this advice to folks for absolutely years but am atrocious at doing it myself. I rarely say no. I always roll the sleeves up. I've always hidden behind imposter syndrome and said I'll just work harder than others to achieve results. But instead of this being a catalyst for change and good, as I get older, more tenured, more senior, it's unravelled a bit into me just being overly relied upon by others to get things done where others could probably do it themselves, or rely on someone far more directly capable or responsible.
So as I wind up this week, I find myself reflecting on how absolutely chaotic and hectic my calendar is. What can I say no to? And what do I need to do to elevate the deep work I need to do, both for myself and for my team ?
Photo of the week
(via my flickr)
Tabs
- Wow@Home
- UN chief uses 'genocide' to describe Gaza
- Bungie artists caught stealing artwork
- Apple CarPlay Ultra
- Bugatti Bolide. Good lord the brakes on that are doing overtime.
- Nature-based solutions for coastal erosion
- Star Wars skeleton crew
- Steam breach that never was
- ICC chief loses access to MS. How the EU thinks backing US companies is nuts.
- Grok goes full weirdo. This wasn't an accident.
- 2024 temperature report. It's not great news.
- SoundCloud changes TOS to avoid AI slop
- AI spending driven by FOMO, not actual ROI
- Poland shifts to green energy. Great use-case as a country that is rooted in manufacturing.
- Linux Mint has a new fan in pewdiepie. But the community is not happy.
- Can you trust the permission pop-up on macOS?. I truly believe Apple is having a Windows Vista era, but it's obfuscated by blisteringly good hardware.
- If AI is so good at coding, where's the FOSS?
- China's boom in green energy
- Do you need a vector search db for AI?
- Giantbomb is 100% indepedent. And I am once-again a subscriber.