{"id":8612,"date":"2022-02-02T23:15:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T23:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/?p=8612"},"modified":"2022-02-03T10:30:40","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T10:30:40","slug":"resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2022\/02\/02\/resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"Resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"
At work we recently had a guided workshop on the topic of resilience. We were asked about what resilience means to us. It brought to mind a few things that have stuck with me over the years.<\/p>\n

Four lightbulbs<\/h2>\n

Hello Internet<\/a> is a wonderful podcast hosted by YouTuber CGP Grey<\/a> and video-journalist\/filmmaker Brady Haran<\/a>. Episode 3<\/a> introduces us to Grey\u2019s metaphor that each of us has four 100 watt lightbulbs, each one representing an aspect of our life:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The catch is that we only have 100 watts to distribute across the four bulbs. So what do you do? Do you keep each of them glowing at a relatively dim 25 watts each, or do you divide your time up so that you are sending most of your watts to one bulb for a period before switching to another one?<\/p>\n

In 2019 I was managing a programme of IT change work with a high-stakes, bet-your-job deadline of 1 July. Our programme had no<\/strong> budget. So to get around this problem, we spent money we didn\u2019t have at the start of the year in order to meet our deadline. If we made it, we could switch off a raft of expensive SLAs and effectively cover what we spent in the first half of the year through the savings we made in the second half. If we didn\u2019t make it, we would have gone over budget by millions of dollars. Over Christmas 2018 I had told my family that for those first six months I would have to sacrifice as much of my time as I could in order to meet my deadline. I worked evenings and almost every weekend. Nearly all of my watts went into the \u2018work\u2019 lightbulb and it glowed while the others were barely visible. We made it. The programme was a massive success<\/a>, but it came at significant personal cost, with the latter part of 2019 being a time of reflection and recuperation whilst trying to keep the next set of milestones on track.<\/p>\n

The lightbulbs are an imperfect analogy, but the concept is useful. Burning the work lightbulb really tested my resilience. The whole podcast episode<\/a> on the topic is worth a listen, but the good stuff starts about 12m40s in.<\/p>\n

Learning, and keeping resilient through failure<\/h2>\n

Back in the early days of Twitter, when it used to be a fun little community and not the rage-inducing doomscroll-fest of today, I often found myself chatting with JP Rangaswami<\/a>. He had worked as a CIO in the same industry as me. His tweets and blog posts explored the new social media world<\/a>, the need for a good information diet<\/a> as well as his love of music<\/a>. I even found out that he used to drink in the London pub owned by my grandparents<\/a> many years ago.<\/p>\n

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Just been talking to my nan about a man I met on the Internet (@jobsworth<\/a>) and about how he used to drink in her pub moons ago! Small world.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Andrew Doran (@adoran2) December 27, 2011<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n