Fresh Eyes
Reflection
Today’s writing session began by reading back our comments on starting out with the Open Working course. Looking back on my initial comment:
‘Keen to reflect back on my own working practices and time management with conflicting priorities.’
Thinking about moving to a job share role was part of the motivation for this. Being open about what work I’m doing with the rest of the team and also sharing the ups and downs of working via my Open Working writing.
Looking anew
Our new CEO started this week and in our first one to one we had an open conversation about the different aspects of my role. This also helped me talk through how best to share the role. Last week’s trip away to Stonehaven gave me some time to think about what hours I wanted to reduce and when best for me to work. This chat then added to this and also helped me realise how much I do. Some aspects of my role are maintenance and updating (e.g of volunteer training) that I don’t tend to think about as much but it all adds up. She also made a suggestion of a broad split between social media and all other aspects.
Springboard
This whole conversation sparked off my thought processes around my work as a whole. I have found that the work on the course has helped with my enjoyment of writing for the web — Sophie’s session was particularly good for this. I also took the time to consider the aspects of my work that are predictable, set deadlines, marketing orders and updates to training etc and those aspects that are more responsive, events that need sharing on social media, specific volunteer shoutouts, links to various ‘days’ that our social media can make connections to.
This in turn led to me thinking about what aspect made the most sense for me to do both from the charity’s point of view and for me personally. My new job role is very responsive, unpredictable and can be quite time pressured so this then led me to choose the aspects of my role that are more predictable.
Conclusions
I’m a habitual people pleaser so haven’t been able to completely lose the option of being flexible depending on who takes on the job share role with me. However, I have given a clear indication of my preference for this which is good progress for me!
I am continuing to work on streamlining my work. I did more active planning at the beginning of this role and have fallen into the trap of just keeping it all in my head — which won’t be massively helpful moving to a job share. Good to keep working on this.
