Day in the Life of an Overwhelmed Tech Worker

Courtesy of PhDComics

Woke up, fell out of bed. Damn, it’s already 8am. Only have half an hour to get ready to catch the last bus. Really shouldn’t have been out late last night, but definitely needed to let off some steam after the long day yesterday. Shower, quick bacon and eggs, and I’m out the door. Caught the bus in seconds flat!

Crap, I forgot to drop the rent check off in the landlord’s mailbox. I should have set a reminder! Why doesn’t my phone just tell me at the first of every month anyway?

Ahh, that nice hot cup of Blue Bottle coffee is really helping, glad the company sprang for that. After that, really need to get to work on that end of Q3 report. I still haven’t heard back from Carl about those numbers, I need to ping him on that. Looks down at phone, sigh, I’ve got like 20 new emails. Let me do a quick scan through them…oh hey Suzie, yeah I’ll be right up for the standup.

Alright, I’ve got like an hour till my next meeting, time to work on that report! I wonder if my landlord will let it slide that my check is a little late. He’s a bit of a stickler, but I’ve never been late before. You know what? I should just send him an email. Great, still got like 45 minutes. Let’s go!

Ooh, what’s that on Slack? It’s just Luke again with the donuts. What a nice guy, but really need to watch those calories. Okay, back to work. Emailed Carl about the numbers I need for the report. I’m pretty sure he shared it with me at some point, but for the life of me, I can’t find it. Well, while I’m in Gmail, might as well just skim all these unread emails… Damn, I only have like 15 minutes left! Carl just got back to me with the link, but I’ve gotta run now. I’ll look at it in the afternoon.

Meeting, lunch, meeting, coffee, then back to work. Wait, isn’t it Amanda’s birthday today? She was so pissed last time I forgot. Gotta get some flowers out to her. Alright, we’re back. Got another meeting in an hour, but I can get through this! I just need to find that document about our hiring strategy.

Hmm, it’s not coming up in search. I know that Greg sent me the link to it over Slack, but I can’t find it there either. I just looked through all of Google Docs, and couldn’t find it! Where could it be? Walks over to Greg. Hey, can you send me the link to the hiring strategy doc? Ohhhh, it was in Dropbox! Well, it’s gotta wait now, I’ve got another meeting in 10 minutes to review the project plan for our mobile app launch. I should read up on it though.

Well, that was kind of useless. I really should have gone prepared to that meeting, but noone else was prepared either! Okay, gotta check out these messages on Slack. Suzie wants a recommendation for a restaurant in Hayes Valley. Souvla is great!

Urgh, it’s 5:30 already. I promised Mom I’d meet her for dinner. I guess we can reschedule… I’ve gotta finish this report. Yes Mom, I know it’s the third time I’ve rescheduled and you haven’t seen me in over a month. I really have to finish this though! And that rent check…

This isn’t too far off from how my most overwhelming days are. Do you feel the same? Leave a comment or tweet (or DM) me @samiur1204. Would love to hear your story too.