?? ignore the noise

Honestly: ignore the noise.

time is precious.

Do not evaluate yourself by others' opinions. We are all different.

I am focused and I am detailed. And I do a fucking good job that I am proud of.

AND AT THE SAME TIME, yes, I do have bad days where I can not get any significant amount of work done. And that is ok because I am showing up, handling all that life throws at us, and being committed as any other day.

The lesson here?

I can certainly get better, and that is something that I welcome daily. But beware of the trap of becoming someone else.

DO NOT DO IT.

My recipe for success

I communicate with all my stakeholders with honesty.

I OVER COMMUNICATE using long-form documents and medium-length content. I am certain that being detailed is a good practice, not a bad one.

There are certain situations that require the elevator pitch: once you are inside an elevator. Other than that, 30s reports are total trash.

Again, we sync with interested parties over video calls any time they need to get details (usually once a week for 30 min).

But because I write long-form, if there is a fresh new question, I jump to learn from it and document what is the intention and outcome. If the question already was answered and documented, I can easily just point it out and avoid having an unproductive 30-min session.

Something that I do as needed: I escalate e-v-e-r-y time I feel like something is not feeling right and need guidance. A lot of insecure folks get offended by that. ??♂?

I work in a remote environment. That has been normal for me for the last several years. I have a clear sense that the image I pass over voice and video and text is what makes me REAL to my other human colleagues.

I record 5 min videos every other day with examples and quick demos of the progress I am making.

I know people learn with repetition.

And no one else knows more about the project I lead more than myself.

I DEFINITELY have the most context on it.

And I enjoy sharing it with others, so we can land in a better place together. That way I guarantee I am not the single source of truth and single point of failure.

Do your job

Despite having a reasonable past experience as a project manager, I am not working as such. Senior software engineers wear many hats. We do. But we cannot wear it all.

Managers must do their jobs.

PM should do their jobs.

Cleaners do their jobs.

I am doing mine.