Technology isn't evil: your habits are
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You don't need a better memory. I had a chat with a friend yesterday. We used to work together when I was getting started in QA. Got to meet her new dog, chat about goings-on over the past few months. We've both been craaaazy busy, so this was the first catch-up in a while. Towards the end of the call I felt a little stupid. Why? Well, I was going to just schedule our next chat later that day over text. Out of the blue, she had this simple but brilliant alternative: Why don't we schedule it now? Ha. You'd think that'd occur to just about anybody, right? That's the power of habit. It works for you or against you. My habits clearly had not been serving me. I was all over the place when it came to scheduling my next call with my closest friends. Sometimes we'd go months without talking, or at best, a week longer than I intended. Something about pre-scheduling the next call always scared me. What if I have to cancel? What if I'm overbooking myself? What if I let this person down? Yeah, you can't control any of that. You might have the same kind of anxiety. I'm here to say it felt great to get that next chat on the books. I'm actually looking forward to it. Your feelings will try to play tricks on you. Don't let them. You're not forgetting to keep in touch with your friends, your habits just suck. Change them and you'll change how you feel. And you know how powerful a good mood is. This email had nothing to do with QA, but also everything to do with it. You don't just think about testing when you're at work. You're a person and your life [hopefully] doesn't revolve around your job. And when you don't take care of the other areas of your life, your QA world starts to cave in on itself. Has it been a while since you've caught up with a good friend? Family member? Go book something with them. And use Google Calendar's "Duplicate Event" feature to rebook at the end of the call ✨ Technology can be used to isolate ourselves or connect with others. Which will you use it for? Have a great Thursday 🌻 -Steven |
Steven Boutcher
Helping software testers increase their authority and influence.
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