Flexibility at Work

 If I have learnt anything over the last year, it is how to be flexible.  This has been evident in my work, at home, and my Kung Fu training.  I have blogged about my great work team before. Without a great team, my job would be so much harder to do.  I work in healthcare IT and I can tell you the last 15 years have been anything but boring or mundane.  The last 4 years have been the most exciting with a constant whirlwind of activity.  Previously my job was to lead the local team who support the laboratory applications.  Over two years ago, I took over the provincial transfusion application IT team and this summer it expanded to Transfusion, Transplant and Cellular Therapy.  Currently we have deployed the new Transfusion application to 40 hospitals and "only" have 71 more hospitals to go.  This is on top of my old applications that are still hanging around for awhile at least.  

Then change came Covid.  We continue to have delays as our hospital systems cope with the increasing stress of the ill.  Even in IT, there are many additional hours due to Covid.  Adding new ICU or overflow beds (even new treatment facilities) into the systems so patients can have lab work, testing platforms  constantly change requiring new test set ups, reporting of results, the addition of convalescent plasma, and the list goes on.  Flexibility to keep up with the changing times.

And on top of all this is the upgrade/changes that we are doing this week.  Tonight night we have a one hour outage and then tomorrow we have a 7.5 hour outage starting at 21:00.  I will be there with my staff, helping to coordinate, freeing them up to do their jobs, removing their roadblocks.  Never a dull moment!

But the biggest flexibility lesson I have learnt this last year is the balance of work life with home.  I use to be so involved in my work that the stress literally made me sick.  My family suffered, my health suffered.  It took me being hospitalized just before our first roll out to really sink in that I am not indispensable.  I am not that important.  I reorganized my priorities (I admit that I need to reorganize them frequently, especially at times like this week when it is easy to get caught up in the bustle that is occurring around me) and I am constantly reevaluating them, making my family, my health, and my Kung Fu a higher priority then they were previously.  By focusing on what is good for me, I actually improved my work performance with less time.  This is because the time I give is of higher quality, not only at work but at Kung Fu as well.  By focusing on quality work, priorities, and taking control of the things that I can change, my work and my Kung Fu has excelled this year and I didn't even realize it until I stopped to look back. 

See you on the mats!  (Virtually for tomorrow LOL)