Headless Chicken

I've been officially a Team Lead for a while now but this week it's really started to feel like it. Design was interesting, new to me and provided lots of scary opportunities to stand in front of clients and try to explain myself but it was nothing like this week. Firstly, I was then leading a team of... uh... me. Not so much leadership required, although more than you'd think! Secondly, because I hadn't managed to be involved in that stage of a project before, I was still learning lots and it felt more like a move sideways rather than up. Last week, however, (drum roll please) we started development.

I was really looking forward to this. This was the part of the project where I felt I best understood the team lead role and what I would be expected to do. This is the bit I love - looking at a blank screen and starting to throw stuff onto it, then watching things take shape. And, this time, I'd be running it. I'd get to play with the hard/funky bits, pass on to someone else what I hope I've learnt of how to code well and support them so they could code freely without being caught up with frustrations...

Summary of how it's gone: I'm exhausted.

Admittedly this is partly because there's been other stuff going on this past week which has resulted in some late nights... But I'm still surprised at just how tiring it's been, and how little I've actually got done. Somehow, I'm sure I'm busy all day but I get to the end and my to-do list is longer than when I started! Plus, I only spend about one hour per day working on a use case - if I'm lucky. It's a big shift in thinking and ways of looking at things - I'm finding it hard to plan or estimate anything with the constant interruptions / context shifts (emails, questions, meetings, phone calls...) proving a bit of a challenge. I miss being able to sit down for a couple of hours, fully focus on something and see it done.

Sorry, I didn't mean to complain. It's been fun too - I have got to do some of the background helper-type code I was looking forward to and it's been nice discovering I have some useful knowledge to pass on. I am hoping things will settle down a bit as the project settles in a bit more and there's not so much running around to do. I'm also understanding more and more why the team lead on my previous project starts work really early in the morning!

Anyway, what I've been musing about today is whether there's a better way I could be doing this so I look a little less like a headless chicken. I seem to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I should currently be doing, or what I was doing before I was interrupted, or what someone else needs to do. I have to-do lists (usually more than one, perhaps that's the issue) and post-it notes and a project plan but things still keep slipping through. Then I end up merely reacting to things rather than being in control and that doesn't work. So... ideas anyone?

A manager mentioned last week that it's far more efficient to only check your email a few times a day rather than jumping on messages the moment they arrive. I'd heard the theory before, and it does make sense since you context-switch less often, but so many people send emails expecting instant answers that it's difficult to put into practice. Worth a try? Not sure. I'm certainly considering it as an option - would make for one less type of interruption at least.

I'm also wondering whether I'm trying to cover too much. Letting go of things a bit and delegating more is definitely on the cards for the weeks to come. I don't have a particularly good track record of letting go of anything but we'll see how we go. Just another needful skill to learn. I find it ironic that not so long ago I was bugging my team lead that he needed to learn to delegate...

Beyond that, I'm banking on my brain adjusting to keeping track of many more things at once!