It seems like I only just got back from Egypt, but this is two days into the week already. Monday was mainly taken up with meetings with a colleague from Malta who is over. He had loads of technical questions and Peter and I spent a large part of the day working through them.
Today, we spent it working out ways of reducing our workload. Being technical 'experts' in the eyes of others makes us targets for requests for assistance. Sometimes this is helpful but often we get wildly distracted solving other people's problems. If someone says 'my email is not working' it could be a problem with our system or more often than not its a problem with their computer.
So what we are trying to build is a defence wall around ourselves to allow us to answer the queries that are relevant and bounce back to others the problems that are really theirs. Because we are getting so distracted we are then communicating badly in quality and quantity with those people who we should be. So today was taken up working out what is reasonable for us to do and within what time-frame, and working out methods of improving the quality of the communication with those we should be communicating with.
We will also be introducing a strict rotation of who is on call, rather like a doctor, so that we are not all being pestered with phone calls, emails and instant messages. Tomorrow I am on call!
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