Sunday, January 4, 2015

Keeping the Small Problems Small



I just read a great blog post by Stacy Oliver called "Tuesday was a Bad Day." It was a post that brought forward the idea of thinking more critically about how we talk about the bad days we have. We all have bad says. Even the most optimistic and talented professionals have crappy days - it happens and it's okay that it happens.

We tend to gloss over the bad stuff and talk about the positive stuff. Might be a defense mechanism, might be fear of letting negativity overwhelm us, might be a by-product of how social media has turned us into highlight-reel monsters. Whatever it is, I think Stacy had some great points and it made me think more about how I handle disappointment in my job.

Stacy talked about some very tragic, life-altering bad things that made life tough. It made me think about my own work but on a much different level... I have a terrible habit of small things ruining my day at work.


Maybe a student is incredibly disrespectful. Maybe a tough immediate budget decision means a program or event will not be as great as you thought it would. Maybe someone in another department doesn't want to hear or understand the rationale behind a relatively minor decision. These little things at work pile up and I let them affect my performance as a professional.


These kinds of things happen all the time and I let them take control of my day. I get anxious, frustrated and agitated and it starts to negatively influence other interactions and decisions. I like to think it's not simply about being right or being in control - that it's more a matter of principle than anything - and I often let it ruin part of a day before I realize it's not worth it.

Richard Carlson's Don't Sweat the Small Stuff was a stress management/self-help book in the late 1990s and the classic title has become sort of a catch-phrase when talking to someone about being stressed. But Carlson had some great ideas and some suggestions about how to understand the scope of problems and how to work through them without letting them pile up. He talks about letting problems be potential teachers (aka "failing forward"), about trusting intuition and taking care of one thing at time. It's helpful advice that I rarely make happen.

I was also reminded of a very helpful metaphor that one of my grad school faculty members told us once. While talking about the doctoral process, she put aside the "just spend 20 minutes a day working on it" approach and instead focused on helping us reframe all the tedious tasks along the path to completing the program.

She held up a big piece of rock and had us describe it. Bulky, opaque, clunky, a burden, etc. Then she held up a glass jar full of clear plastic beads and had us describe it. Light, transparent, manageable, etc. The lesson was that the rock was how we likely imagine problems, but the glass beads were how we should view problems. Focus on confidently handling the small problems - the tedious tasks, the minor setbacks - because they are the easiest to handle if we take it piece by piece. I find this incredibly helpful in thinking about my own daily work - now only if I'd remember it more frequently. I had hoped the more experience I had the more I'd be able to compartmentalize - to minimize the effect that small stuff had on me - but I'm resigned to the fact that I'll always have thin skin.

Stacy reminds us that "It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to be tired, to be sad, to be frustrated by the limits of our ability to help, to be challenged... it’s okay to talk about in a way that helps other professionals to learn and not feel isolated when the bad days happen to them."
 
She's right. We don't talk about it enough. We may process with colleagues, but we run the risk of seeming whiny or unprofessional. Or we run the risk of sounding like we're complaining or that we don't measure up to others if we share the tough stuff on social media, which is often our first place to express emotion these days.

Stacy asked: How do you talk about the bad days with your colleagues, peers, or staff?  

How do you talk about it? And not just the big events or major setbacks, but how do you talk about tough days when the little things pile up? Talk about the small stuff. Maybe by doing so, you can keep the small problems small. And maybe by doing so we make the big things easier to talk about...