Churning Mind

Last week was another period of incessant thinking. I cancelled the business continuity test as the stakeholder requested to postpone due to another application going live that week. There was just too much downtime during the week. Stopping work at the warehouse for a few hours may impact sales especially with the promotion that is occurring every month. The fact that the economy is showing signed of being affected by the uncertainty in government.  

Such is the underlying situation with the seemingly confusion and turmoil happening at the highest level is causing businesses and ordinary people like me to have anxiety. There is too much happening from the tariff situation, Ukraine war, trade war, labor decline that some pundits are forecasting some dire times ahead. There is no immediate impact in terms of high prices as inflation is being manged by business by absorbing high tariff cost. 

The consequence is the reduction in staff or the pause in investment until more clarity is provided by the government.Contributing to the turmoil are the court cases saying these activities are illegal; from tariff, deportations and firing of government officials. Such as mess that everyone seem to be taking all these events in stride though their mental health may be suffering in the background. This is the situation I find myself reading these news while having challenges at the office.

I know a vacation is needed or at least time off when I feel agitated, where I get anxious meeting my colleagues in the office where I get paranoid unnecessarily seeing a different meaning behind every comments. My boss in our regular one on one meeting was also critical of the outcome of my project where I had to postpone the implementation despite frequent steering committee meeting. The steering committee is meant to provide guidance and approval so these actions that I made are sanctioned by the committee.

On another project that started this year, the other challenge is the priorities and capacity for the work squads who will work on this project. The squad are overloaded and at full capacity that they frankly don't have time to work on my project. I had reached out to the squad leads and product owners and had several meetings to no avail. It's no one's fault that there is a lot of work and my project unfortunately has the lower priority compared with the other project being worked on.

So I had to take the punches and accept the inevitable outcome which is to postpone or re-schedule my project activities until the team have time or at the right moment when stakeholder are okay with the impact to operations. It's been a challenging year for me that I get 'impostor syndrome' ; that I am not good enough or that I am over the hill and should retire. I sometimes regret not accepting the early-retirement package but I am also anxious of running out of money.

I helped my son moved in the townhouse that I had been renting hoping to put more stability in his life with lower rents and a larger place for him to enjoy. I should have asked him to move earlier and I though it was good to have an experience of making it on his own. I have 4 to 5 year lefts of working in the company and I am planning on my retirement or rather my life after retirement. A time where I start something new and have a new vision of myself that is refreshing and vital and meaningful instead of just being a tired old man.    

     

   

Aging with Grace

Last week, my boss helped me by telling me what to post in a group chat with the director; he often posts his own comments in a three-way conversation where the director thinks he is conversing with 3 people but in fact in most instances with my boss, since some of my comments came from him. I pause when I post, thinking about how I should state things since recently I've been criticised for some of my commentary. I do agree that I post aggressive statements to provoke people I communicate with.

But sometimes I wonder if the way I speak is not appropriate. I notice that I jump to certain conclusions without the proper build-up that would ease the transition to my conclusion, to give the listeners time to understand how I reached that conclusion. I am an instinctive thinker, and I speak from my gut instead of building a logical argument that would explain the reasoning behind my statements. I also speak too fast as if to show that I discovered the 'truth' before anyone. 

I wonder if it's a sign of cognitive defect or the reverse: speed of thought, as my mind is always thinking, looking at all the angles. I do notice that people are slow in thinking, which is a conceit when in fact this is the right tempo to let the group slowly understand the subject being discussed and allow everyone in the group to reach a common realization. Of course, each will have their own reaction and conclusion, but with the same understanding of the facts.

I am working with new people that I've met only a year or so ago, in a new assignment and with different circumstances that before were where I'd work with my former colleagues for several decades in the same department. The newness of the situation kept the mind alert, to understand the new social norms, way of speaking and working, especially with a much younger than me. I have to pay attention to what I say and do, as the young folks don't share the same views as a much older person.

Recently, a former colleague retired, and like me, has been in the company for 3 decades, and I felt sad that she left, as we worked together for several years before I transferred to another department. This move has been very fortunate, and I thank the stars for my luck to come into a new environment and meet new people. It does bring more pressure, but I have been moving around a lot in my career, so I enjoy the journey and have done this transformation many times.

I do have to pay attention to social cues and norms, and Toastmasters has helped me navigate this voyage as well as improve my speaking and leadership skills. I do fret that age will affect my cognition, that the episode with my boss is a sign of some decline. But it is my overthinking that is causing all these instead of just moving forward and just doing it. There will be stumbles and mistakes, but that should be taken as a normal occurrence, and one should be humble and keep one's composure.

New Project Work

 Last week I had a lot of free time to take courses on project management and watch videos of company meetings and read about events in other departments.  I have learned more about the company in these past few weeks than the 3 decades I have spent in my career. So much has happened on the sidelines that I was aware of in the periphery but now have more understanding. This lull period is normal as I recently moved to my new department where I spent time learning new things and taking online courses until a project has finally been assigned to me.

Since then, I have scheduled several meetings with the business team; project leaders, project owners, and the main business sponsor. I also met with the IT teams; domain and platform managers, squad leads, and some engineers. I have been reading the project documentation and attending some seminars on this new area of the company business. This realm is so much different from the area I have been working on for the past decades of my career. It is a new world for me with a different vocabulary, area of focus, business, and IT resources and it feels like I was hired by an entirely new company. I find myself the rookie in the field.

It is a rare chance for me to have a new lease of life in my career; as if I was handed a second act for me to fulfill. I have learned many new things I am obviously a novice in the arena but my experience and skills in leading projects will sustain me in this endeavor. Oftentimes I am the oldest person in the meeting by my biological age as well as the longest-serving employee as most members are less than 20 years in the company. I guess it is this seniority that I get the respect of the team.

I do feel the years in my situation not succumbing to anxiety or excitement being new but instead jaded and calm with the experience I have gained working in Asia and the different projects I worked on worldwide. I am the old man who still has a bag of tricks in his sleeve perhaps like Joe Biden who is running again despite his advanced age. I do feel the bias that most people have toward the so-called elderly despite having spunk left to get things done. The challenge is reframing once usual reactions to a project not as the bright young genius but as a veteran old hand that ensures respect and courtesy.

This is the advantage that I have in these moments; as a senior; to be calm and calculating and strike at the precise target that my experience and intuition would guide me. My initiative to learn new things like AI and keeping abreast of new technology will also give me an advantage not sinking into a situation of being obsolete and behind the times. I think my new boss is starting to see my value. I have always brushed aside my age; trying to be one of the boys but my colleagues are younger than me and have polite deference if I don't perform the way a younger person would.

This may be the root of my debacle when I was overwhelmed due to my age when it was really poor management with the lack of preparation and support from my previous supervisors. My age has slowed me down, causing me to be confused and out of touch when the issue was really management incompetence; the inability to manage seniors and instead shut them away and replace them with younger people to hide their inefficiency. But that is the way of the world and one has to rely on his wits to survive.