Shortform #94 Boundary Setting at work is suddenly much easier after attending Retreat
Prior to attending the organizer’s retreat, I would let people send me tasks that fell outside of my primary responsibilities, even if they were mundane and not good learning opportunities and/or even if the individual in question actually had time to do the task. After the retreat, I noticed today, I haven’t been doing that and have been saying no much more often, or enforcing better boundaries generally about work tasks.
I’m not sure what changed. My current job admittedly isn’t more than 50-60% aligned with what sparks joy for me and brings about the most professional growth for me. But also, perhaps seeing how much the virtue of consistency was reinforced at retreat and talked about combined with my work mentor strongly emphasizing that too helped me integrate that virtue more deeply. I want to be consistently great at fulfilling my primary responsibilities at work, and doing so requires eliminating distractions or extraneous / not germane tasks & time sinks. Most of what colleagues try to pass off to me doesn’t fall within my primary responsibilities, so perhaps I am now feeling that distinction between primary & secondary or tangential responsibilities more intensely?
Another item heavily emphasized at retreat was time management and how much a person is committing to certain activities or responsibilities: being deliberate about such things matters! I knew logically before that that matters, but perhaps had not emotionally or unconsciously integrated that to a significant enough effect.
Hmm...another factor: I feel much more acutely the limits of “hours in a day” and total healthy life hours in a life that one can use for work now than I did prior to the retreat. That is likely part of the equation.
Yet another factor (why so many?): I felt motivated to find ways to apply what I learned at the retreat to my job, e.g. the workshop on how to recruit a guest speaker to your meetup felt eerily applicable to the process of contacting other teams at work for assistance. I also deliberately chose not to frame returning home as “returning to normalcy, or the mundane world” as I feel that framing is harmful. I wanted there to be no serious distinctions between “the world” as I experienced “the world” at the retreat vs how I experienced “the world” at home and at my job. It’s the same world, the same reality, just with different responsibilities, people, commitments, etc. Instead, I felt and still feel that I would rather work to optimize and improve local situations so that I could generate similar levels of fun, excitement, learning, and growth at home & at work as I did while at the retreat. That was such a distinctly different way of framing returning home than the “mundane” framing that I’ve felt somewhat like a substantially different person because now I’m operating with a better perspective & framing in my home & work lives, local life, etc. I feel optimistic about the local future, eager to learn, eager to grow, and a relentless drive to improve everything around me & my life.
I now believe that frameworks or perspectives of mundanity to be harmful & trigger spirals of bad things. Each moment experienced is different than every other moment if you look at the world with fresh or beginner’s eyes. My priors for the state of affairs around me no longer are warped by the mentally colonizing framework of mundanity.
Shortform #94 Boundary Setting at work is suddenly much easier after attending Retreat
Prior to attending the organizer’s retreat, I would let people send me tasks that fell outside of my primary responsibilities, even if they were mundane and not good learning opportunities and/or even if the individual in question actually had time to do the task. After the retreat, I noticed today, I haven’t been doing that and have been saying no much more often, or enforcing better boundaries generally about work tasks.
I’m not sure what changed. My current job admittedly isn’t more than 50-60% aligned with what sparks joy for me and brings about the most professional growth for me. But also, perhaps seeing how much the virtue of consistency was reinforced at retreat and talked about combined with my work mentor strongly emphasizing that too helped me integrate that virtue more deeply. I want to be consistently great at fulfilling my primary responsibilities at work, and doing so requires eliminating distractions or extraneous / not germane tasks & time sinks. Most of what colleagues try to pass off to me doesn’t fall within my primary responsibilities, so perhaps I am now feeling that distinction between primary & secondary or tangential responsibilities more intensely?
Another item heavily emphasized at retreat was time management and how much a person is committing to certain activities or responsibilities: being deliberate about such things matters! I knew logically before that that matters, but perhaps had not emotionally or unconsciously integrated that to a significant enough effect.
Hmm...another factor: I feel much more acutely the limits of “hours in a day” and total healthy life hours in a life that one can use for work now than I did prior to the retreat. That is likely part of the equation.
Yet another factor (why so many?): I felt motivated to find ways to apply what I learned at the retreat to my job, e.g. the workshop on how to recruit a guest speaker to your meetup felt eerily applicable to the process of contacting other teams at work for assistance. I also deliberately chose not to frame returning home as “returning to normalcy, or the mundane world” as I feel that framing is harmful. I wanted there to be no serious distinctions between “the world” as I experienced “the world” at the retreat vs how I experienced “the world” at home and at my job. It’s the same world, the same reality, just with different responsibilities, people, commitments, etc. Instead, I felt and still feel that I would rather work to optimize and improve local situations so that I could generate similar levels of fun, excitement, learning, and growth at home & at work as I did while at the retreat. That was such a distinctly different way of framing returning home than the “mundane” framing that I’ve felt somewhat like a substantially different person because now I’m operating with a better perspective & framing in my home & work lives, local life, etc. I feel optimistic about the local future, eager to learn, eager to grow, and a relentless drive to improve everything around me & my life.
I now believe that frameworks or perspectives of mundanity to be harmful & trigger spirals of bad things. Each moment experienced is different than every other moment if you look at the world with fresh or beginner’s eyes. My priors for the state of affairs around me no longer are warped by the mentally colonizing framework of mundanity.