TOW 578 — After you’ve finished something important
How many times have you been in a situation where you don’t know what to do with yourself after a (big) commitment that drained your time, energy and resources, was very important for you, your team and the whole company/family, and where it was crucial to get a positive outcome?
Some research I read says that in the period that follows, people who had been working on large jobs like this had the following symptoms, among others:
- fatigue / exhaustion
- malaise / depression
- elevated ego
- possible illness
- initiative for more / proactivity.
As you can see, there’s a mix of emotions and internal changes in the body and you must be aware in order to know how to control them.
Here are some tips on what you can do after such a period so you can slowly begin returning to normal:
• clean up ‘loose ends’ — you must have accumulated a crazy amount of unfinished tasks and this is the time to finish them one by one. Make a list of loose ends, make a priority list and start completing them one at a time;
• sort out the work environment — in my case, after a period like that, you don’t want to see my desk and the whole work space. However, the day after the whole thing is done, I clear my desk and put everything back to normal;
• rest — you almost definitely haven’t slept properly for days and it’s time to give your body some time to rest. Sleep more, but don’t oversleep, make the most of weekends for walks in nature, the mountains, next to bodies of water, just to put your body into another dynamic and give it some good energy;
• diet — you most likely ate badly throughout the stressful period and at irregular intervals. Now is the time to change that, regulate your diet and slowly get it back to normal (number of meals per day, the type of meals, healthy diet, etc.);
• help others — now it’s your turn to help those that helped you. Don’t be selfish.
• education — ah, yet more learning… It’s time to read a book, educate yourself a little about your work;
• planning — now’s the time for planning: short-term, medium-term and long-term;
• analysis — I left this for last even though there are a million small things you can do after this period, but analysis is the most important. Analyse:
- Why you allowed yourself to get into such a stressful situation;
- What did you do well and what did you do badly?;
- Who in your team did a good job, and who didn’t;
- The whole process.
Wishing you success with the changes to come,
@kalinbabusku
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