Overtime and personal time

Overtime and personal time

A major project made me very busy. Coded and recoded the same thing over and over. I scheduled the UAT to be next Friday; my user asked for this Friday. wth?

Being "soft-hearted" and being a day ahead of schedule, I agreed to insert an interim UAT for Monday. I told him the original timetable was already highly optimistic and there was no buffer for mistakes and reworks. He seem to think it's unlikely. We shall see...

So now I have very challenging deadlines, interspersed with personal events I have lined up. I'm not going to skip them! The alternative of course is the dirty word - overtime.

It looks like there'll be days where I clock very late hours, so that I can leave on the dot on other days. I wonder if my colleagues will find this irregular. Once, the days when I do overtime are dependent on my energy level. Now, the days are marked on my calendar.

There never seem to be enough hours in the day to complete the tasks on hand. Some colleagues never seem to need to do overtime at all. At first, I attributed it to the fact that there are more programming requests for my logistics modules. Later, I realised that some of their work were deflected to my side. Some, I learnt, told their users that certain things could not be done. "Manage your users", they say.

Since I'm not likely to change my creed anytime soon, then I shall have to manage my time. I'll put in whatever hours are necessary in those pre-determined days. I won't be working weekends if I could help it - I've been duped enough times. They gave an outrageous deadline and when I complete my task; they sit on it. Or they suddenly decided they don't need it anymore. Ouch.

So I put more time at work, so that I'll get more time to play.
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