It is time to prioritize stopping to smell the roses (or "take time to just breath")

At work, I am moving into a position of new responsibilities. As I have moved to Emily’s “Commercial Data Foundation” team, she already had an architect, Krishna. So, as Lead Data Engineer for the eCommerce team, this has been new territory. That is, General Mills has only, over the past year and a half, been experimenting with Lead Engineers vs Architects (the former is more tactical, the latter more strategic), and our team is the first to have both. So, as the eCommerce team integrates with the rest of Emily’s teams, Krishna and I have been trying to understand what our roles are going forward.

Recently, Emily, Krishna and I met with Devan and Sanchit from Data Architecture and Engineering to discuss this and we’ve come up with a high level plan. However, with various people out on holiday and needing time to make announcements to the team, it has taken a few weeks for things to start to take shape.

This week, the changes started to manifest. I’ve set up 1-1s with members of the new teams, and had all of their weekly meetings forwarded to my calendar. But what really made things hit home was yesterday, when I was having a 1-1 with Jill (our Project Manager), she made me give up almost all of my user stories. I am no longer supposed to be “getting into the weeds” in the particular stories. Instead, I am supposed to now be playing at a higher level. This last part really made me step back and evaluate who I am and what my role is (and never mind my constant, nagging “Impostor Syndrome”). What is my role, and what makes me valuable to my team and General Mills?

But also, I took this as a cue that I should step back and take a breath. I need to get out of “firefight mode” and stop and breath.

And this last thought ties into my evaluation of my dream from Tuesday 2023-08-22. In this dream, the main message was that we live with limited time, and I need to be conscious of this and that I need to start taking time to reflect and just enjoy life. That is, I spend so much time focused on trying to become more than I am (and not doing the best job of it) and struggling to reach goals. But I have reached the point where I need to start having fun again, and I need to reflect on the past and understand what is really important.

Don’t get me wrong. Being laser focused on becoming who I am now has had value. It has changed my life, and I am in a much better place now. So, back in the early 2000s, it was very important that I completely absorbed myself in my studies and that I build myself up into the professional that I am now. But now, at this stage of the game, priorities are changing, and it is time again to shift focus. And, it is interesting that, once again, this changed is announced to me in dreams.

But there are parallels with this change in life view and the changes in my work. With work, I have been very caught up in actually trying to solve the problems and get stories completed. Just life my life in general, it is now time to take a step back from that and play at a little different level.