You Survived Another Year of Work

Congratulations! You made it through another year! I would say more, but LinkedIn learning courses have taught me the art of delegation. So, congratulate yourself and take a moment, a one-on-one moment if you will, to really appreciate and praise your accomplishments. While it is impressive that you survived another year, the most impressive part is that you did it as part of a team! Too bad they don’t give out Certificates of Completion for enduring another year, amiright?

It doesn’t matter how you did it, it just matters that it’s done. Maybe you survived the year of work through the judicious use of the mute button during meetings. Maybe you had your mouse taped to an oscillating fan to keep your activity status in the green. Maybe you kept your opinions to yourself. Maybe you set your indicator to Do Not Disturb in Microsoft Teams as the default. Maybe you kicked ass and took names this year, which admittedly is a little weird that you would take someone else’s name. Most people have their own, and once you took one, how many more do you really need? Can’t you get more through Confirmation or some less violent ways? Again, it doesn’t matter how you did it, it just matters that you are here, at the end of the year, with the rest of us. It’s all behind you now, like a bad road. The kind of bad, rough road that makes everything in your car rattle to the point where you become hyper aware of the little deficiencies and will forever notice the door or dashboard rattle when you hit a rough patch in the future. This year, like all the previous ones, is an accomplishment to be celebrated.

Now that you’re one year closer to tenure you can…what’s that? Your job doesn’t offer tenure? Ok, now that you are climbing that career ladder you…did you say stepstool? What ladder? Me? No, I didn’t say ladder. We were talking about those amazing performance reviews and your merit increases that occur like clockwork. The celebration of all your accomplishments and the realization of all the goals that were set for you…really, if you keep laughing like that I am never going to get through this speech.

You didn’t do this alone. You did it as part of a collective, a community, a group of people you can call teammates. And you knew this whole year that your teammates had your back. Or were at your back. And they totally weren’t there so that they could stick sharp things in it. You, and me, and your teammates, we did it. We participated in meetings. We attended other meetings. We scheduled meetings to discuss how to conduct our meetings more efficiently. We multi-tasked while on meetings when anyone else was speaking. We asked the speaker to repeat themselves whenever we were called upon for something because we were multi-tasking. We made a difference by implementing processes when someone complained in a vague way about the existing processes. Remember that time when you asked for concrete examples of a process failure? What about time when our other teammate asked about actual metrics for evaluating the efficacy of our new process? Good times. We were in it together, whether it was an actual conference room or just a Teams meeting where people slowly turned off their cameras after the introductions were completed and we all stared at each other’s corporate-approved user images.

Our team, us, collectively came together at least once a quarter to review our work backlogs so that we could help Project Management forecast our overall development effort. And then the very next month we came together to talk about how we might reduce scope or accelerate so that we could meet an arbitrary release date set by senior leadership. Like compressing coal into diamonds, we made something more compact with pressure applied from above. Our team met these challenges head-on, sideways, and sometimes outside of core hours, but we did it. And then we did it again. And once more for good luck. And then that final time, and that final, final time. And we renamed that spreadsheet until it was called “Acceleration_Exercise_V05_Final_Final_Reviewed.xlsx” just before we sent it off in an email two minutes before EOD on a Friday. Then we waited for feedback, together, while attending other meetings. We were together the following month when the feedback came, which was to do it again and make it faster/leaner/sooner/Agiler.

Another year. Look at you now! You are slowly being worn smooth by the turbulent waters as you are pushed ever farther downstream. Your pointed remarks, your sharp enthusiasm, your corners of concern all eroding until you glide along, almost effortlessly, with the tumble of the day-to-day torrent of work. You made another year, and this one seemed to be even faster than the last, and the one before that, and so forth. You should be proud that you didn’t get hung up on something this past year as you had in the past. It’s easy to do when all those jagged bits have worn away. Who needs passion when you are part of a team all being jostled and jounced together do the river of work? You are fulfilled and sustained by the yearly email or video announcement from the CEO that tells you how you truly matter and how you, the workers in the company, are the greatest asset. It is enough. Enough to make you smile before bed knowing that you are contributing to something greater than yourself.

Take a moment to reflect at the end of this year and to revel in the good things to come in the following year, like the new emoticons in Teams. Maybe they’ll even get some new GIFs that management can forbid you from using during meetings. So much to look forward to already. Let’s raise a glass and…are you even listening? Is that Tik Tok? How long have you been on your phone? What do you mean that Gen Z gets offended by thumbs up emojis and periods at the end of sentences? No, I don’t want to see the article. Never mind. Happy New Year. I need to go figure out my password for LinkedIn.