de-personalise

I had my monthly management mentoring meeting today - and I took away an excellent piece of advice: de-personalise.

One of my major problems at work is that I get too emotionally involved in a project. Because I've played a big part in building up most of the products and systems at work, if someone has an issue with something I tend to take it personally. Even if the problem stems from a third party plug in shortcoming like freetextbox. The problems that arise can be any number of things - mainly user initiated, but instead of trying to train users properly or trying to learn how the product works ([sarcasm]my gosh, that would take some effort on their behalf! what a concept that I could even suggest such a thing!!![/sarcasm]), people try to shift blame, ultimately ending back in my side of the court.

So I had a talk to my mentor today about this. I didn't realise this till my mentor said today - all you need to do is de-personalise yourself from it all, don't get so emotionally involved. In the end, it's just a job. By all means though, stay passionate about the job.

Go back to the system, make people use it, keep on doing what your doing.

Hearing this little piece of advice - I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, like I had one of those "moments of clarity", like I had been enlightened.

Such a trivial little thing... you might be reading this and think "big whoopdi doo". But for me - I think I just got the right piece of advice at the right time and I feel much better for everything now. It's nice to get a detached perspective - sometimes I cant see the forest for the trees, and simple advice when your bogged down can just make everything seem so much clearer.