Tempo giusto, eigene Zeit, el tiempo justo
For some years I’ve struggled with an internal conflict which seemed not to have a resolution, sometimes it moved to one edge, sometimes to the other. Like waves changing in the space their size and rhythm when the wind blows softly or strongly… what is the proper pace to do things? That was the main question, my concern during some professional phases. Sometimes I thought the faster and direct, the better, “Every minute matters”, “What do you do while waiting?”. Some other times I thought the deeper and analyzed the better, “Quality takes time”.
None of the paces seemed to work or be correct for all the situations I needed to address. As a women in a male predominant career, I find myself nowadays dealing with two different energies, my more feminine part wanting to create space, open alternatives, trust, conciliate visions, related seemingly opposite feelings and thoughts, and my masculine side wanting to get things done, achieve, conquer tasks, make progress, compete and advance… In technology, tactics, languages, products, techniques are always changing, companies are moving fast, every day there is a new advancement, a new research, lot of apps published, competition is fierce, progress and changes come quickly. You must deal with the feeling of being always behind, that everything is for yesterday. In such a frenetic industry is quite common to be under pressure. To go faster and faster. But at the same time, there is a need for innovation, perfection, excelling, creativity, to stand out to have a unique product. After eleven years of being working in the field, for eight different companies, in five different countries, I have been involved in many team were I was able to see and live in person, both of the two poles. Observing groups dynamic is one of the things I enjoy the most alongside my jobs, from all those changes in work environments I’ve gone through I observed that most of the companies in which speed was the key factor of the business suffered from the same kind of problems: brain scapes, low quality in the product and the process, instability at different levels; while companies that focused on team and personal building in most of the cases, were able to achieve: stable teams, better products, happier employees and healthier environments. These companies were able to find a good balance, a good “own time” to do things. An harmonic balance between analysis and speed, planning and executing, free space and fast pace, quality and throughput. In these companies the base of the relationships between the persons was trust, conflicts were, of course, present but properly addressed on time, with a diligent hand. People were given responsibilities to determine how long things should take and how they should be done. That does not mean they were always done the way the executor wanted, there were always negotiations were other people opinions were taken into the equation, and therefore the decisions were made clear and involving different voices, searching for agreements. And every time something went wrong there was a learning process, instead of a blaming process observed in the other companies, were speed put people generally under pressure and therefore the groups dynamic were intoxicated in different doses and manners.
Every day in our lives, every hour I dare to say, we are conciliating aspects within ourselves and the people around. And I invite you to think about which one is your “Tiempo justo”, how do you make decisions within yourself?, how do you balance conflicting desires, conflicting goals?, how do you manage to have a happy life, with less and less stress?, what can you do to improve this process, how can you make your daily life lighter?. And then when you enter this process of questioning yourself about these topics, then I invite you to think about how others are dealing with the same kind of experiences. And then go a bit further and consider your relationship and see your co-workers as you see yourself, see how you interact together, see if you can do something to improve it. Trust you, trust the others. That will make our work much more productive and a huge amount of our time that we spend there a lot more enjoyable. And if you believe you already made all your best, and you still feel stuck in a situation that does not bring good things to your life. Move on! There are tones of beautiful companies waiting for you.

This work by Barbara Martina Rodeker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A final note
It is the goal of my articles to be able to help and offer a version of the tools, practices, processes, resources, and ideas that have made my life easier, offering my opinions and views based on the observations that arise from my surroundings, education background, international working experience and personal development. None of my articles pretend to be an absolute guide, nor the final truth to nothing, I do not believe that any of that exists. All my articles are financed with my private effort. I thank to all the people who in turn have approached me about these issues and to those that have helped me today to express an interest that has lived within me for many years: how to use technology in our favour. It is wonderful when we are its users, not its slaves, how can people who work in this field have a better quality of life?. How can it be in societies, individually and at the work level, to live our days in harmony? What small changes we can make today to have more freedom?.
