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Today I want to take some time to talk about the things that make me happy in my work environment. This is completely free-flow off the cuff, but are things that I do that make me happy, not having them would definitely be a deal breaker for me .
Attitude
A positive work atmosphere goes a long ways. We all have enough negativity going on in our lives that is out of our control accepting any negativity in the workplace is a no go for me. There was a point in which I was suffering a lot of negativity at work. This began to trickle into every part of life, and it became hard to see positivity anywhere. My wife not only noticed this, but put a polite request in for change. It was definitely a low point and she could tell tell that my work life was not helping anything.
Throw out the negativity - courtesy giphy
Bring the positivity to your workplace. It is really difficult for folks to tear you down if you are the one that is always up beat and happy. People will notice. When they do they will bring the good projects your way, Praise you for your hard work, and Ask for and value your advice.
Helping People
Helping people is part of who I am, I cannot change that. I rarely turn someone away who comes to me looking for help. I will give nearly anyone 15 minutes to help them reach thier goals. I dont care if they are in a completely different part of my organization, if they will ever return the favor, or how it will look on my performance review.
Being in the position that I am in I am graced with access to many data sets, that I can query en masse. It's not uncommon that I have someone come to me that has access to get the data they need but will take them 2 days to mine out the information they need one at a time every quarter. I can save them these 2 days, increase their data quality, and increase its refresh rate by writing 10 lines of sql in about 5 minutes. I hear so oftem from people why I do this, It's just part of who I am. The benefits are that everytime I do this I build connections with many folks from a very broad range of backgrounds.
Learning
Learning is one of the things that drive me to get excited to come to work every single day. I am always looking for new techniques to improve my workflow, soft skills, and technical skills. This keeps me confident that if something happens that I need to find another gig I am current with the latest tech and ready to hire in somewhere else. It's also very enjoyable to watch my products improve, and be able to pump them out at faster and faster rates.
Grind
Laser Focus - courtesy giphy
The last thing is that I need is a few hours of undistracted time to grind. After I help some folks, and keep up with the latest skills I need to focus, Laser Focus. I have a lot going on outside of work, so in order for me to keep some sort of balance I need to chrun out some quality hours of progress, otherwise I get behind, stressed, anxious, and start to loose my work-life balance as it is important for me to meet the deadlines that I commit to.