Product Management at Home

Andy has officially been a Product Manager at Skyward for a year now, and it's been a good and interesting transition for him.  His perspective on the part of the company that he's left (the one I'm still in) is a common source of discussion for us--we talk a great deal about the differences in the culture between departments, perceptions of the unnamed "other" in those departments, and how a lot of those components are an interesting kind of different.  New jargon has made its way into daily conversations, too.  I mean, I had heard "User Story" or "Use Case" before, but its frequency in our conversations has increased dramatically.  

When Andy is looking at improving part of the product or if I run into some kind of an issue, we write it up, the first part of which is the user story.  This is where we give context for the situation.  It's not a "X is broken; fix it" or "the way you have to fix this is through these specific steps."  Instead, it's a scenario, the "as a secretary, I need to be able to do X, Y, and Z."  Then, the next step is explaining the hardship, how the situation is affecting you in that hypothetical role.  If there are more angles, relevant history, or important notes about that situation, those details get added in later; if I have an idea for a solution, I put that in subsequent sections, rather than insist it's the only way to fix it.  From there, persons like Andy can take a look at that situation and find a solution that meets the needs of that scenario, keeping in mind the full context of all users and how other parts of a proposed solution may or may not affect other components and asking more questions from users as necessary to get that full picture.  

At work, I have started to think about clients' service calls in this light.  Very often, I ask someone a question about their concern and I get the litany of the whole history of the question, which can start with "well, years ago we used to do our scheduling like this but now we have a completely different way," and I try to find a nice way to say "that's not relevant to what I'm asking you today" and steer the conversation to what is happening right now and where they're stuck.  If the client tells me "the report has to have X number" or "the report has to look Y way," I instead direct the conversation to what the current problem is again, trying to get a grasp on what they're really trying to accomplish, rather than any prejudices on how one thinks it should happen--I might have a completely different feature or report that will meet those goals better or faster.  Now, I break every call down into four questions:  what is showing incorrectly, what should it be showing, how do we know it should be showing that value (state rule, local policy, compared to this other screen, etc), and where is it showing it.  With those answers, I can get any problem moving in the right direction.  If someone cannot tell me one of those answers and/or demonstrate it with screenshots, then we keep digging until we have that sorted out--maybe it's confusion on how X screen actually looks at data or we cannot find anywhere now that actually shows the original concern because someone has already fixed it.  

Another important concept has been what I've labeled as the skateboard approach.  If the client's user story is that they need to be able to get from Point A to Point B, they could be insistent that they need a Cadillac.  Well, another client one swears an old VW Beetle is sufficient, another says a Nissan would be great because it's like their old system, and another still says they need a train.  They all have the common goal of moving a body from Point A to Point B.  It's not worth my time to make a train if a car will do, let alone arguing about the module of car.  No one is moving from Point A to Point B if they're waiting for a car that everyone but one group is going to be disappointed it.  So you start with a skateboard.  Is it where you want to be ultimately?  No, but at least in the meanwhile people start moving.  Then, the skateboard gets revamped to a bike, the bike gets a motor.  It is not the final goal yet, but people are moving and in the meanwhile, we are gathering additional data on what the final design might look like.  The mode of transportation will eventually evolve into the average that meets the most needs.  In short, the point is that a solution gets things started and can be improved upon later, rather than expecting a magic solution to immediately be enacted, complete and perfect.  

Concepts like these have started making their way into how we manage our home.  When Andy and I run into a problem, we'll ask one another some shorthand of "what's the user story?" which is another way to say "what is the actual problem we're solving for?"  The person bringing up the concern has a moment to consider the real root of the problem.  

For example, in our townhouse, Andy and I would trip over each other in the kitchen all the time.  Counterspace was a hot commodity.  We were mutually complaining about this frustration.  The use case broke down into a "we need to be able to move efficiently in the kitchen without impeding the other" with additional notes identifying specifically "we need more counter space."  Then, we started talking about potential solutions--the key difference here, though, was that we did not go in with any expectations that these solutions were going to fix the entire problem.  We made suggestions knowing that these were things we could try and modify as time went by.  This included ensuring that appliances were put away to optimize space, the first skateboard.  We added to it a buffet that had additional drawers and counter space--getting into the bike stage.  We were still tripping over one another, but there were more spaces at least to spread out a bit.  We talked about how to take turns, but that didn't seem feasible when we were only home at lunch for a short time--added feature of the bike was removed.  When we started looking at houses, how much counter space was there was certainly on my mind--this will be a very drastic change to meet the needs of that problem, but it is definitely going to help!

This has worked for emotional situations, too.  I can bring up a concern to which Andy will ask me what I really need in that situation.  I convert it to a user story.  The user story format allows us to continue from a safer vantage point, still addressing very real, emotionally-charged concerns but acknowledging it for what it is, as something that needs to be addressed, and not assigning blame.  Then we can talk more about the background as necessary or what affects other aspects.  Then, as a team we start thinking about skateboards.  We're not expecting it to solve the whole problem, but we're actively trying things to address it, opening the door to discussion and modifications later.

We're going to get a lot more practice yet as we move into our first house at the end of the week!

Reoccuring Dreams

Ah, dreams.  They're always fascinating to the dreamer, but they don't make much sense to anyone hearing the recitation of the dream's events.  I like to wonder whether it's a dream that I should be "listening to," as in whether it is providing me some kind of divine understanding or direction, or whether it's just a confluence of scattered neurons doing their thang, yo.  Some dreams I decidedly want to be the latter, that they're touching on areas that are difficult for whatever reason or are just the wrong kind of weird.  Every now and again, I'll get a stretch of mundane, hyperreal sort of dreams, the kind where for the rest of the week I have to ask for clarification on whether X really happened or if someone said Y or it was actually one of those dreams infiltrating my memory.  

Brains are weird things.  A grouping of mostly fat with some water and electricity thrown in, that has even worked to naming itself and designating itself as the most important thing--which is pretty damn clever, evolutionarily speaking, when you think about it.  

Dreams come and go for me, in the sense that I have swatches of vivid dreams and then swatches of nothing worth remembering in them for a time.  I have yet to sort out the pattern, whether it's the timing of my body, certain events, the phases of the moon, or something else.  Sometimes they're that weird, mundane pattern; sometimes they're just weird; there's a handful of nightmares out there.  However, I have noticed that I have a pattern of some reoccurring dreams.  

One was a series of dreams that had an Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of vibe, where people looked "normal" but were...off somehow.  These were odd in that parts were almost the same as other, previous dreams, or I could remember within the dream that they happened before.  It was a series, I suppose, and it evolved for some time but does not seem to have been renewed for another season.  

Now, though, I have two strongly reoccurring themes, where about once a month I get one or the other: going back to school and being trapped on an inescapable haunted structure of some kind.  The going back to school part is in the vein of being late/showing up in one's underwear, but these tend to be more toward the idea that, for some reason, I'm returning to high school or Knox, but as myself now-ish, where I recognize that both of those periods of my life are complete, so to say, but part of me is intent on reliving them.  It's not about learning new material, but just somehow re-doing classes and how I went through, not to advance with a new degree or some such thing, really.  And I never have a printed copy of my damn schedule, for some reason.  Most of the dream I stay in a heightened since of anxiety, trying to figure out when my classes are and whether I've missed them and where they're at.  I don't have any major regrets from either of these times in my life, with what courses I took and the experience I had there, particularly Knox.  I've retained the experiences and people that I can, so I'm a little confused as to why these dreams keep happening in some ways.  In other ways, though, it makes a bit of sense--I knew the structure of my life at these times and my health hadn't hit that particularly critical point of terrible until post-Knox.  Is this a bizarre longing for simpler times?  If so, what's with the anxiety of trying to get a copy of my schedule (because I definitely wake up heighted from that stress)?  Is this more about fear of the unknown?

The second one has had a few different iterations, but the idea is that I'm stuck in some kind of horror themed ride or experience that is more dangerous or terrifying that it ought to be, with something going wrong with the track to go into dangerous areas or the attraction's premise turning out to be real, that the ghost/monster/demon is actually there.  I spend those dreams either trying to wait out the end of the ride while reassuring myself that I'm almost to the end of the track or urgently trying to find an exit with anticipation of the danger being the main component.  These make a little more immediate sense to me, why I keep getting them--my initial interpretation is that I am a passenger in my own disease process, that Crohn's pulls me through a series of horrors that are more real than I'd like and on a steady, worsening track that I cannot seem to get off of.  I had a particularly nasty one of these a couple weeks ago and some of the visuals stuck with me for a few days.  

Are these just me?  Can I go back to the flying dreams now?  I miss those.  

10% Strategies and Denouement

My last therapy appointment consisted entirely of me running through all of the different things that are going on right now and how I felt my stress level was very much justified.  Not that one needs justification for feeling the way that they feel, but it is a little validating to stand back and say, yes, there is a lot going on, and feeling like my brain just being "wrong" about the situation is at least one less thing to worry about.  

If you missed last Thursday's post, we have at least one element checked off the list, with our new Chevy Volt taking the place of the totaled one.  There are still a couple of loose ends to tie up with insurance, but at least we have our own car again.  Packing is coming along nicely--better than expected, truth be told.  We're making enough of the preemptive phone calls that almost all of the pieces are in motion--I'm leaving Comcast to Andy in exchange for having done all of the electric, water, gas, and new fiber internet.  

One thing that we talked about in therapy, though, was this idea of 10% strategies.  Basically, there might be some stress reduction strategies that help more than others, but those little strategies that maybe decrease your stress by 10% still have merit, particularly if you're doing enough of them.  I have an infinity cube at my desk (lovingly 3-D printed by my buddy Chris) that I will continuously roll over in my hand, channeling the nervous jittery energy out into one place.  This especially helps at work when I might be on camera and thus unable to pace around my cube.  I've been thinking about what kinds of different strategies that I have.  

• Take a nice bath
• Read a chapter of a fun book
• Write
• Create a to-do list instead of juggling an internal one
• Watch a movie
• Do a meditation on my Headspace app
• Comfort eat
• Exercise

Each of those have different weights that vary by the day--watching a movie tends to be more of a 20% for example, but recently anything that "takes too much time" becomes a little more stressful by itself.  I feel in these times that I run on a frantic energy, kinetic energy, that as long as I keep moving I can stay moving, but as soon as I stop I'm doomed to suddenly feel the weight of everything and find myself immediately overwhelmed.  This means that sometimes I end up trying to multitask on my relaxing, which can easily be counterproductive.

But while I was packing, I found these:

So it was time for a bit of YouTube, a bath bomb, and some mystery sponge creatures.  

It's so tempting to start "helping" them

And we end up with a manta ray, a shark/dolphin, a squid, and a marlin.  I remember thinking these were the coolest things growing up.  I remember my brother and I trying to guess what they were going to be, comparing against the back of the package to the possible options.  It's simple; it's silly; but it brings me joy.  

The meditation app has been especially helpful in some of this, because the whole point of the app itself is that in order to be successful at it, I have to stop and be still for ten minutes.  I have to be still and aware of my body for that time, which is completely antithetical to that kinetic energy principle.  I know that I need that.  The kinetic energy principle has served me in the past, but the downside is I don't realize how exhausted I am until something is ready to crack.  It hit me pretty hard at the end of last week, when sitting down to eat dinner (as opposed to bites between packing) turned into a surprise two hour nap.  At least it wasn't a fever this time, which my body has resorted to in the past when I refused to listen.

I'm ready for the denouement, that final act where all of the plot threads that have been lined up suddenly come together, the point where all of this preparation falls into place.  My own kinetic energy is spinning in place sometimes, but it is also the chain that gets the cart to the top of the hill to realize its potential energy so that we can start events rolling down to roller coaster track.  Andy and I are at that precipice, where soon the momentum of events will be out of our hands in a lot of ways.  I'm looking forward to that, to letting certain things just start happening.  I feel a huge relief once we get to that point with my medical decisions--being able to relinquish some of that control into all of the pieces that you have carefully set in place is a huge relief.  

It's almost time to rest.  All of that anticipation is coming into something else, where life will be different afterwards.  I called this the year of the precipice earlier this year, and I can't help but feel the weight of that because I know it's not done yet.  But we're rolling soon enough.

Check that off the List

Well, folks, in short succession, we managed to sort out one of the major stressors that was weighing on us the past two weeks, with all else that was going on.  Andy was persistent in talking to insurance, and we were both researching cars in our price range.  We liked the Volt enough and it met our needs in such a way that we decided to stick with the same.  After some narrowing down, we found one at CarMax and...

We even found one with a bow. ;)

They took great care of us, making the process straightforward and fast.  Especially compared to the fiasco with our last Volt, that took FOUR HOURS at another dealership, we were very relieved to work with some warm, helpful folk and get the paperwork quickly filed and squared away.  We already love hearing the not-roar of our electric motor again.  

And commence happy dance!  

Me celebrating a victory and temporarily ignoring the other tasks

Peterson Family Update #691-E

I don't have a clever title yet again for this one.  This is a statement of being kind of piece today, because I'm genuinely finding it difficult right now to be creative in the midst of all other things.

• We're still plugging along.  We're almost completely packed, weirdly enough.  It's getting to the odd scraggly bits, where there's not enough to comprise a full box of one particular category, so they start to blur a bit, just to get them in a box and out of the way.  By this point, too, we're tired.  That means that our discretion in what we're keeping gets fuzzier and the tetris-ing skills start to slip a bit here and there.  We've managed to purge out a LOT of stuff--if I had to put a number on it, I would say around 20 garbage bags worth of stuff that we've donated, pitched, or sold.  Effectively, that means we've also unpacked that much stuff.  Now we're set up to value more of what we have and organize things in our new house in such a way where everything will have a clear category and home to return to. 
• I am warming more to the excitement as we go--sorting out some of the details makes it more real for me.  By contrast, Andy feels that it's less tangible in some ways because we're hammering out some of the larger ideas and it's out of the dreaming state in some ways.
• We've started listing out a bit what are some of the unexpected benefits of our new place.  For example, we can actually have a dedicated silverware drawer at our new place, instead of retrofitting another space to work in that capacity.  Woo hoo!  I expect this to turn into its own blog post as we work things out.
• If all goes according to plan, we should be pretty much done with packing at the end of this week.  Just in time for Andy and I to hit the road for work.
• Onsites on this particular subject that I will be teaching are always a flavor of interesting, so while I'm looking toward the adventure with some anxiety, I'm also excited for the adventure and for spending some time with Jason and Wendy in Austin, Texas. We were spitballing a couple of ideas the other day, and I'm excited to see how things come together.   If there are any "must sees," feel free to mention them.
• At the same time I'm in Texas, Andy will be in Pennsylvania the first week and then in Wisconsin the next.  He'll at least be coming home for the weekend, but that definitely accelerated our packing agenda.  

We're getting there, though!

• So as we're already tackling many, many details of finalizing the purchase and moving into our new home, we received word that our car is officially totaled.  On the one hand, it was better we find out this way than taking the word of the first assessment only to be screwed over later.  It wasn't the news that we wanted, but at least it was an answer.  
• Now we're hunting for a new car in addition to all else.  Having lost a week with the erroneous first assessment (long story), Andy and I came to the idea that we either wanted to put something together in a week or wait until after the house--there just wouldn't be much that we could do from out of state or otherwise take many phone calls in the middle of presenting.  
• On the whole, anxiety is ebbing and flowing in some interesting ways.  I'm oscillating between feeling like I've actually got a good handle on things and then feeling completely unprepared and inadequate the next.  I trust that everything is going to work out--I really do--but in the same breath, I'm trying to ensure that anything that can be prepared in advance is tended to as best as it could be.  Any preparation that I can do beforehand is, theoretically, less that I will need to do when my energy is limited upon my return on that Friday, where we immediately turn around and start moving some of the things we don't want the movers to move into our new space (and my plane will leave at 6AM, meaning I want to be there by around 4AM).  My energy reserves are expanding, but I know better than to assume they'll still be there.  
• At some point, I'll be able to make that flip, to go from "Prepare ALL THE THINGS" to "Things are what they are now."  Soon, but not yet.  
• Also on my mind is the knowledge that Busy Season at work is coming up in short order.  I do not relish the idea of starting into that already tired.  This means that once the house is squared away, I will only be able to think about a week at a time out.  
• On the plus side, Hawaii is at the end of it in October. 

I could use a little boring for a while.  I'm still not juggling all of the different pieces I feel as well as I should be, but I'm trying to remind myself to show at least a bit of the grace I would show someone else.  

At least Sprinkles is mostly packed

Juggling

I have had a planner as a constant companion since high school.  At some point, it started to become the calendar function on my phone, supplemented with electronic post-its.  When friends asked if we could attend one event or the other, Andy tends to look over to me--I carry the core calendar but compare against his work one verbally with him as the final decision.  I like organizing in certain contexts.  For example, I find in this world that there are people who prefer to pack and those that prefer to unpack--I'm the former, enjoying the satisfaction of tetris-ing a box or suitcase to its best possible scenario.  Organization also helps me feel prepared and in control of different situations, which in turn helps me to feel calmer about those situations.  In other words, sometimes I manage my anxiety by overpreparation, but there is a fuzzy line between useful preparation and obsessive preparation.  As long as I fall on the right side of that line then it's a helpful thing.  With the unpredictability of Crohn's, I try to preempt and prepare for as many possibilities as possible; I've gotten better at recognizing when the preparations are crossing a line, at which point I recognize the need to step back and let the situation be whatever it's going to be at that point.

Usually, I only put the major events in my calendar, such as anything (other than work) that has a specific start time.  But all of the other little things like make sure X bill is paid, check to see if we're out of Y in the fridge, reorder Z prescription before you run out, I tend to keep those on an internal list.  One of those invisible tasks, then, is to continue maintaining the internal checklist.  This works until the list gets rather full, and then a switch seems to be flipped where maintaining the internal checklist has become an impossible task.

Now that keeping the list has become impossible, the balls that I've kept suspended in the air through careful juggling start to get a bit shakier, until I start dropping them altogether.  I forget that I haven't replied to that email  or I realize I haven't paid that bill until the day before it's due or I simply forgot that I had agreed to be a part of one event or another or my gym schedule starts slipping away.  Suddenly, even the events that need to get added to the calendar start getting skipped, too.  That pattern continues until more and bigger balls are dropped and the anxiety builds to a point where I am so focused on maintaining the juggling that I forget to do things like eat.

Before it gets a point where I'm feeling wholly overwhelmed, I open up the electronic version of a post-in note list on my phone.  I make my internal list an external one, and quite suddenly the mental burden feels much, much better.  I put little things on the list like "shower" and "eat breakfast" and "brush your teeth."  Sometimes, when my anxiety and depression are bad enough, these are necessary reminders, but more frequently these are things that I can easily check off of my list, to feel good about what I managed to accomplish that day.

Because those little things are always there.  Those habits are a part of the routine, sure, but I still did them and take a quick moment of recognition and to thank myself for taking care of that task.  Andy and I do this for time to time for each other, where we will take turns listing off something that we've done for the house recently so that the other can recognize it, congratulate/thank, and then list something that they've done, back and forth to meet that need of appreciation.  It can go something like this:

L:  I unloaded the dishwasher.
A:  That's great!  Thank you for doing that.  I started the laundry.
L:  Thank you for taking care of that.  I paid the bills that were on the table.
A:  Thank you for taking care of those.  I did some weeding in the garden.
L:  I'm glad you could knock that out, thank you.  I got more of X because I saw we were running out.
A:  Good thinking, thank you for seeing that and addressing it.  I tidied up the basement.
L:  Thank you, that was starting to bug me.  I appreciate that you took care of that.  I got gas on the way home from the gym.

...and so on.  We have established beforehand that it's not a contest or a mechanism to make the other person feel bad, but it's just a direct request to meet the unmet need for appreciation.  It also becomes a touch-base, where we are more aware of what the other has been contributing to the house and what problems/situations have been on their radar.  Mostly, though, we get some needed recognition for the thankless kinds of tasks that we do for one another and our household.  Sometimes I didn't even realize that I was juggling that particular ball until Andy tells me he's already taken care of it.

We have a lot of large balls that we're juggling right now--purging the house, taking purged materials to the appropriate drop-off, coordinating drop off/pick up with persons that we're selling certain items to online, packing pieces that we're keeping, working through other packing logistics, navigating these through the requirements of our work schedule, our obligations at church, my class requirements, fixing our car (currently in at a mechanic in Indianapolis--long story), other social commitments, and, oh yeah, our physical/mental health.  At this point, even things that I enjoy doing are like getting to the gym--I enjoy my time at the gym, but getting there is always the hard part.

When I start feeling that particular point, that's when I start adding those little reminders of the basic relaxation things outside of the sheer practical "eat" and "shower."  Small elements like "work on the puzzle" to take those mental health breaks.  I'm trying out a meditation app called Headspace that has to be a few minutes I take out of everyday for some deep breathing and introspection.  On our shared lists, Andy adds his own important reminders:  "kisses for Andy" get mysteriously added to the grocery list.  I add in things like reading a chapter of [current fun book I'm reading].  I assess to see what elements can safely (and trying to avoid the shame cycle part) roll over to the next day.  Andy finds that these kinds of lists give him more anxiety in some contexts than they abate, but he's still properly supportive when I show him a fully checked-off monstrosity of my day, broken into chewable bullet points.  

So why if it gives me anxiety to carry that information  internally do I not just keep a list from the start?  Some of that is pride, that I can retain all of those pieces of information; more of it, though, is that I don't realize until I make the list how much I'm actually juggling and carrying around, as though looking up at how many balls are in the air will make them suddenly plummet to the ground.  And yet, when I feel anxious that I cannot get to one point or another from my list, there is a moment of introspection then of "what is the real urgency on this?" that I couldn't actually assess when it was flying from one hand to the other.

This list makes me pause.  I have a moment to be with myself where the balls aren't flying around and actually count how many there are, notice the color, observe the texture, and actually assess what's happening.  What urgency is or isn't there?  Are any of these impossible tasks that I can ask Andy to trade with me?  Where do I need to ask for help?  Inevitably, too, with this assessment, I can compare that to my schedule and find when I'm already in the right area for certain things or can manage to wipe that particular concern out over lunch on a given day or pack something into the car to help facilitate a spontaneous errand later.

At least on the packing we're making some good headway.  Another good couple of rounds, and we'll be close to done, apart from the things necessary for the next twenty-some-odd days.  There seem to be more days there than their really are, since both Andy and I will be traveling for work the two weeks before we move, hence some of the additional panic and urgency.  A box at a time.  A piece at a time.  Eating an elephant a bite at a time. 

The box pile groweth