Returning to work

The holiday season is over, and so is the time off. Sometimes I want to take more days off, but I remember that I have obligations (work) to fulfill.

When I sign in and go online to work, I see a ton of messages, meeting invitations, and noisy notifications in my Outlook mailbox. I go into Slack and see another ton of messages and threads. (One of my dreads is seeing that I’ve been added to a channel called #war-room, which is synonymous with urgency).

When I finish catching up, the meetings begin, including the well-known stand-up meeting, and the million-dollar question: what did I do last?. If you have a good memory and avoid that question, you can respond promptly; but, in my situation, I take some time to respond, and the only thing I can say is an endless: aaaaaah, until I remember something coherent.

Meetings have concluded and I can get back to my regular activities. Android Studio is running, and I begin to read code, but my face express concern: I can’t remember what I did last, and I’m not sure if the code solves something or is part of a new feature. I spend a few hours understanding my most recent code changes (and another few hours updating the git branch and resolving some conflicts in the repository).

It seems to be part of a nightmare, doesn’t it? Nonetheless, this time it won’t happen hehe; I learned from my mistakes. Something like soft-boarding should exist to help people catch up and return to work in a peaceful way.

Have you had a similar experience?