When faced with a big change, most people take a day or so to adjust and get on with things. If it’s even bigger, they might take a few days, or even a week. Whatever that normal time is, multiply it by at least a week. Then you’ll have the time it takes for a crazy person like me to adjust to changes.
I’m in a new office. It feels weird. There are people behind me, which I’m not crazy about because it’s weird to think someone might be looking at the back of my head. There are people in front of me, which is also weird because they’re always in my line of sight. I have to turn to the right instead of the left when I come out of the elevator. I use a different bathroom. It all just feels weird.
Those are the little things. Those are the things I’ll get used to in a few days.
But then there’s the new work, and the reading, oh WOW, the reading. I talked to my mentor yesterday, to ask him what I need to do to get started in my training as a Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer. Now, I knew that the early stages of this job would involve a lot of reading, and yet…
He pulls out the training guide, and starts to go through the lessons that are required over the course of the training flow. This lesson takes 40 hours to complete. That one takes 20. This one over here takes 2, but there are 20 other lessons just like it. The total number of reading hours starts to climb. 100 hours…200 hours…300 hours…
Visions of being stuck at my desk behind a mound of paper for the next three months start to fill my head. Anxiety builds. It’s like being back in school! I start to freak out a little.
I think about the best place to start. I procrastinate by taking care of something else on my to-do list. I think some more about where I should start. I go get a coke. I talk to someone else about how I just don’t know where to start! I don’t know if my child-of-the-80s short attention span can concentrate for 300+ hours of reading. I get more and more stressed out.
I’ll be certifying for my first flight control position next week (with any luck). When I started training a year ago, I stressed and worried and procrastinated enough about the background reading that I got to the point where I started working sims without having read much at all. But with sims, I could figure things out as I went along; I’m much better when I’ve experienced something than when I’ve just read about it. If I saw a case in a sim that stumped me; I talked it out with my mentor and then read the training manual to get the final nitty gritty information.
That approach, for better or for worse, has worked very well for me. But it’s not going to work this time. There’s too much that I need to know in advance, and too much I need to understand before I can get thrown into a rendezvous sim and actually do anything.
When faced with a seemingly endless stream of things to do, I figure that the best thing to do is to jump in and just get started somewhere, anywhere. But for a planner like me, it’s easier said than done.
Paralysis by analysis.
I’ve just got to jump in.
My favorite was when I realized that I read all 1000 pages of the console handbook… and then went back and had to read it all again. And will probably go one more time. Plus the millions of pages of other workbooks and activities. Its best to take them one day at a time. (Like, “today I won’t leave until I finish…”)
Is there any way to compartmentalize it so you know what needs to be done first? I.e., can you knock the big ones out in a particular order, then in descending order by amount of time it will take, etc. (or vice versa)?
I have to have a whiteboard in front of me with everything listed and the time requirements when I get into situations like that, just so I can cross them out as I go along. Otherwise it seems like I’ll never make any headway.
Kinda like cleaning the house only on a bigger scale!
I find that the time estimations on our lessons are usually arbitrary and often quite overinflated.
I know where you’re coming from, though; I have similar feelings of being very overwhelmed at times.
Does your new group take coke breaks? Is the coke break group *without* you now?!
You think you have it hard? Try having a huge amount of information to learn about a system that’s been in production for about 30 years and NOT having ANY documentation and having to rely on the good will of others on your team to teach you all they know.
Hey, I’m afflicted with that disease as well.
Perhaps we should find Paralysis by “Analysis Anonymous” meeting to start a 12 step program!
Soundslike someone could use a good run… Nothing like a good run to clear the brain.