Performance Review
In the stress of packing Howard for his latest away-from-home convention, he and I had some cross-communication come to light. Unfortunately due to the packing stress it manifested in unpleasant ways. In some ways it was like accidentally elbowing someone in the gut when you really meant to vent frustration on an inanimate object instead. Everyone was sorry, but recovery still has to occur. As I sorted and settled things in my brain, I started thinking about all the roles I fill and wondering how I would evaluate my performance in them. I figured it was a useful mental exercise, and might even result in some enlightenment on my part.
I sat down and listed all the roles I fill. There were a lot of them. Then I pretended that I was my own boss and rated my performance in each role: Brilliant, Excellent, Good, Adequate, Poor, Bad, Abysmal. Occasionally I made notes like: Could be better at this if I spent more time on it. The most interesting realization I gained from the process was seeing that my personal enjoyment of a process did not directly correlate to how well I did at it. For example I feel like I’m an adequate-to-good layout designer, but a good-to-excellent shipping manager and given my choice I would hand off the shipping work to someone else while keeping the layout work. Other than that, the scores were about what I would expect. Which should not surprise me since I was giving them to myself.