Daft Punk played loudly in my ears as he stood up and started waving his arms to me.
I tried to read his lips:
“Hellooooooooooooooooo!”
I let out a brief sigh, paused the music, and took out my headphones.
“Man, you really go to another world don’t you?” — a rhetorical question, I thought.
“I guess.” — you could hear the frustration in my tone. “What’s up?”
“I just finished a sales letter. Would you mind taking a look?”
So there we were.
James was asking for my help.
Again.
“Sure. Can I have a look tomorrow? I’m in the middle of something.” — an attempt to at least delay his ask. Plus, I wasn’t lying. I was indeed in the middle of something.
“Actually, this is supposed to go live tomorrow so we need to finish it today.”
The use of “we” amused me. This was not my task.
Or was it?
Now that I was in management, I was supposed to help my team perform. I guess everything was my task now.
I reviewed sales letters and campaigns. Helped create dashboards. Looked at new designs and brand guides. Created specs for new features for engineers to work on.
I even did some work for another team, helping draft a plan to sell tickets to a conference.
“What do I know about selling tickets?”, I thought.
But here we were.
Helping my team was consuming all my time — let alone energy. I was jumping from one fire to the next, changing topics every hour.
On top of this, there was the actual management part of it. Meetings. Strategy. Plans. OKRs, Agile, dashboards, 1-on-1s, weekly reports, stand-up meetings.
So much work that looked like non-work to me.
I spent 50% of my time making plans and 50% helping my team, leaving me 100% exhausted.
I was drowning.
And I had no idea how to fix it.
Drowning.
I wasn’t ready.
Something had to change.
Fast.