Friday, January 1, 2010

Oh, blasted procrastination!

Since I've taken this new job, I've been through a roller coaster of events and emotions that I didn't expect... both personally and professionally.

I'm still very excited about all the new opportunities, but admittedly a bit overwhelmed by the neverending to do list. For the first time in my professional career, I'm behind. Way behind. I have deadlines running into deadlines running into new iniatives and new deadlines.

The thing is, I just need to get this one major project pushed out. It's undeniably boring, and I've had to learn a completely new system from scratch and write training manuals and develop online courses for it. I made the mistake of thinking I could do it on my own, and truly failed at asking the right questions in the beginning and seeking help from the true subject-matter experts. Realization: I'm no longer an SME. I've always been an SME! Now it's my job to crack information from others and create training materials from it. And of course, there's a million other tasks I'm responsible for, but I get those done with no problem. I know how to do them, I'm confident about it, and breeze through those duties.

But this. This project is weighing on me like a ton of bricks. The really bad thing is that this project is my new boss's pet project. It's the one big thing I am actually doing "for her" versus all the other projects where I work with my old boss and others throughout the company. I feel guilty and ashamed about it. Yet I know I can do it. I just can't get excited about this one.

The joy of it all... it's now Friday night. I have to have 6 modules (think chapters of a training book) and 6 online tutorials ready by Monday. I have 3 modules and some ideas. And I got tickets to the Magic vs. Bulls here in Chicago for tomorrow night, so most of the day tomorrow is gone for that.

Time to get crackin... I need a miracle.

2 comments:

The Lynchs said...

If anyone can whip out a project at lightening speed, it's most definitely you! I have full confidence that you'll make your miracle happen - and it won't just be good...it will be excellent!

Kim said...

Thanks, Kris. I didn't meet the deadline I needed, but we didn't have to push back the project. I just had to "publish" everything without any SMEs reviewing it, and they all had to trust that I knew what the heck I was talking about. We'll see if I did when the feedback starts pouring in!

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