Working on a deadline

The last few days have been the best days of my life because I have not worked on any deadline. No one said to me that we are short of resources and we need your help and no one told me that if we don’t achieve this deadline our performance appraisal is screwed.

During the last few days I have been doing my eight hours of work and going home. This has made me believe that God exists, listens to my prayers and has told Satan to leave me alone. I was working yesterday after lunch that suddenly a senior colleague told to me that she has work for me that I love to do.

I wanted to tell her that if its work then I am the most unromantic person in the world. However she is a senior colleague and giving her an idea that I hate work is equivalent of telling a cop that you are kleptomaniac. I looked at her and asked her what does she think I love to do. She told me there is a deadline and I need to support her to achieve it. I asked what about your team and she said the guy who was supposed to do the work that you are going to do has said he is uncomfortable doing it.

I wanted to tell her that I have my own project and it also has a deadline but then that senior colleague few days later is going to work with me on my project. Also I am sure that my senior colleague attends many more we-can-do-it strategy meetings than me and has a better knowledge of our organization’s priorities than I do. So I asked her when do I need to shift to her project and she said immediately.

I told her to give me the necessary files and went to work. While working on deadline I realized this was not the work that could be done within the time allotted. I thought about telling the senior colleague that the deadline is not tough but impossible to achieve. However, she was busy managing the project like an Indian batsman who knows although the test cannot be saved we can avoid an innings defeat.

Looking at the way she was trying to achieve deadline I decided to do what every Indian bowler tries to do when the batsmen have failed. I decided to support her as much as I can because we were now a team and no one wants to be part of a team that can play but cannot win.

To sum up

The number one thing deadlines teach us is that never give up unless you have couple of job offers in hand.