Sometimes, little things make all the difference. And, in the busy-ness of this past week, the small joys kept me trudging along.

Looking back, I can see why, at one point during the weekend, I fell really behind on all my tasks. Work at my job was piling up (scope creep!), as well as schoolwork and family matters. All normal circumstances, really. But then, in the midst of all these tasks, I made the bad decision to focus on a task that, in the big picture, contributes little to my overall progress. It was a decision made under duress and one where I didn’t take that very important moment to stop and think, and prioritize accordingly.

The rest of the weekend and beginning of the week were spent hustling my way through my work, while trying to maintain a moderately-high level of quality. I made good headway, but felt pretty burnt out through it all.

Thankfully, there were moments of little joys that, spread out through the haze of constant work, kept me from completely face-planting into my soup during dinner. These moments energized me and kept me going, like little endorphin kicks. And I think these same types of experiences will help me out in the future:

• The Little Win: These are moments that were little achievements or milestones for me, such as finishing a homework and having the automatic grader pass all my submissions. At work, one example is when I present what I’ve been working on to stakeholders and receive positive responses. At home, little wins are when my kids and I can have some time everyday to connect, snuggle, and (somedays) eat a home cooked meal.

• The I’m-part-of-the-club feeling: As a computer science student working on different projects across different areas, I very often have a bad case of imposter syndrome. This is especially true when I haven’t done the same run-of-the-mill tasks that more experienced software engineers regularly do, or am unfamiliar with a tool, or don’t know about a design pattern… When I finally do a programmer-y-type thing for the first time, it makes me feel like I’m part of the (software developer?) club. This week, this little joy came when I finally made my first pull request as a part of a dev team. It felt great!
  
• Connecting with the why of my work: So often, I get lost in the actual tasks themselves that I forget why I was drawn to a project in the first place. Why did I want to do this particular senior capstone project? I love houseplants! This past week, in the midst of some backend work, I started thinking about creating mock user accounts with plants for sale. I thought it’d be nice to use pictures of all the indoor and outdoor houseplants that I could find, either in my home or in my neighborhood. While I only have a few pictures so far, just taking the time to appreciate different plants, and pause and have fun taking pictures, reconnected me back to the why of this project instead of the what. My neighbors have some pretty nice outdoor succulents and cacti planted. I’m going to take some surreptitious pictures! Here’re some of my houseplants:

While I am lucky enough to be able to choose projects that are interesting to me, it’s so easy to get lost in the weeds of the work. Taking time to appreciate all the small wins, new experiences, and small aspects of the work that I enjoy, makes the work worthwhile and meaningful!