Ruminations

I just spent a week working myself into a fury over a work situation. Literally kept me up at night and was on my mind near constantly.

Ruminations. They'll get the best of you if you don't watch out.

I keep finding myself in situations at work when something goes awry, I furiously work to try and solve it, put a lot of time and energy into figuring out the consequences, ruminate (read: worry) for days then, just as frantically, the problem dies out.

For whatever reason this keeps happening. The person who brought up the problem didn't have their facts straight. The accused wasn't asked their side of the story. Key pieces of information somehow got twisted. And ultimately, what appeared to be, really wasn't.

Wasted worry on my part. Time lost all around. Big fat lesson learned. Again.

Maybe I need to go back and read Take a Breath again. The advice I gave to stop and take a breath before doing anything rash. Though I wouldn't consider most of these situations rash.

Really what this comes down to is remembering to respond with patience. When someone comes to you with a problem, listen to them, then stop for a minute.

See, this is usually when I get worked up over what they are telling me, responding to their "facts" with all the sympathy and concern that a manager should and then rush off to solve their problem.

When in fact, I should really just have stopped. Just for a minute and consider that thorough investigation is really what I'm responsible for. So instead, I should go ask a couple questions of other folks, review paperwork a second time, play devil's advocate against the situation, think on it for a few and then, have a go.

Worry isn't worth it. And a lot of times, there was nothing to worry about in the first place. Next time you find yourself frantically trying to solve a work problem, stop for a sec and make sure you've got a problem worth solving in the first place.