Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #88
Uncertainty or Possibilities? How About Both?
Hello from the manic pendulum that is unemployment. Where you can have all the anxiety created by getting laid off while also having the excitement of new possibilities, you can feel pressured to find something quickly and not jump into anything too quickly. This is where you can realize how much you’ve allowed work to interfere with other priorities - health, friendships, and community while worrying that without work, you’ll get bored and lonely.
It’s a trip.
It’s also an opportunity to recalibrate. I have a chance to breathe. A chance to view myself not as a product of billable hours or training sessions conducted but as a human being. To decide how much I want to be a trainer, writer, or consultant versus how much I want to be a husband, uncle, and friend.
Truthfully, there’s no comparison, and this pause is helping me see how a pandemic pulled me in the wrong direction on that spectrum. Or rather, that I allowed that to happen. This is an opportunity to correct that. It’s a chance to craft the kind of work life that allows me to explore all the possibilities that life has outside of the 9-5 job.
Don’t nobody love you on that job!
What’s next? I don’t know. I’ve got some ideas, though, including going out on my own, maybe not right now, but eventually. Turning training, writing, and knowledge sharing into a paid service sounds appealing. It takes time to put together a real business plan, though. So we’ll see. Let me know if you’d be interested in a paid subscription to a training newsletter covering eDiscovery with M365 and similar topics. That’s the kind of information I used to provide to my team and the one thing I miss doing now that I’m not there. That might also be the kind of side hustle that I can work on now before I figure out the rest of it.
It feels weird to be considering what I want to do when I grow up, but I genuinely believe it’s never too late to learn new things and reinvent yourself. The hard part is figuring out which version of myself I want to chase. Wish me luck!
Careers and the Workplace
Since this is pretty much top of mind for me right now, and I know plenty of others have recently found themselves in the same situation, let’s start talking about looking for work:
A lot of these companies started working on some really interesting things, hiring very talented people, but then had the marketability of that work fall short because customers didn't have the money to spend. Being laid off in that macroeconomic environment isn't embarrassing. Heck, it might even be a rite of passage. Just about everyone has been laid off at one time or another. This was just your turn.
10 Ways To Reduce Job Search Anxiety
How to Stay Energized When Searching for New Professional Opportunities
8 Networking Tips for Career Advancement
And, from the other side of layoffs:
Personally, I wouldn't use the term lazy. I don't think they are just being lazy, I think parents and managers default to this approach because they don't know any better. They haven't been given clear direction on how to parent or manage, and they've been overwhelmed with the variety and often conflicting information they can get. Without clarity, they've defaulted to the simplest solution - do it yourself.
Training and Development
Linked - The cost of tolerating underperformance — and overlooking your high performers
Perhaps it's because we spend so much time and effort covering for the underperformers, or maybe we take them for granted, but our high performers need attention too. The most engaged and productive people in your workplace also need room to grow and develop. Not offering that to them is inviting them to go elsewhere.
What Does Poor Onboarding Really Do to Your Team? - Hint - it’s a lot of negative stuff.
Teaching Complex Ideas by Arnold Wentzel (Book Summary) - This book summary lays out some detailed ways we should consider how to break down complex ideas in order to teach them. As technical trainers, we have some pretty complex things to teach.
Security, Privacy, and Legal
Sarah Anderson has an important reminder - Don’t Rush During a Cyber Incident
Some more security reading - 2023 State of the External Attack Surface Report
The Future of AI Deepfakes: 3 Real Dangers of This Evolving Technology - We are going to have to deal with fake audio, video, and photos. They exist. We aren’t good enough at seeing them.
Five Great Reads on Cyber, Data, and Legal Discovery for April 2023
Mental Health in the Workplace
Why It's Hard to Relax After Leaving a Corporate Job To Relax - The struggle is real. Our sense of purpose and value is too often tied into our jobs and just taking time to breathe creates stress about that.
That’s all for this week. Here’s hoping all of our possibilities lead us to better places!