Day 850
I had talked a lot recently about this idea of common knowledge in video games, the kind of knowledge that isnāt and honestly canāt be put into a tutorial. Itās a topic that I have a large amount of fascination with because it bleeds into this thought about other peopleās game experiences.
But I had never applied this idea to everyday life, until it whacked me in the face earlier.
When it comes to my working life, I have, for better or worse, outlasted people who are higher up on the hierarchy than I am. This means that about once every year or two I spend time training other people about what I do so they can help me. Normally itās managers who I would end up turning to for final say in situations where I need a managerās backing, but lately itās been for a professional lead.
Professional leads in departments are people who are supposed to specialize what the people under them do every day. In the case of administrators, they are also supposed to be the person who steps in when we become overburden with work. Taking tasks off so other urgent tasks can be dealt with more quickly, but that requires training with a capital T.
It doesnāt help that with the database change over a year ago, and me just being busy as fuck, the process manuals have not been updated in a long while, which is a problem. Last year I managed to get one of the manuals up to date, and was very proud of it, but recently realized it doesnāt have everything a person needs.
And I donāt know how to put everything, because everything also includes things that are not process based, theyāre knowledge based.
Let me explainā¦
I wrote the process on how to book every single type of appointment in a particular department. Where to contact the vendors, what those vendors do, how long certain appointments are and what to do in certain edge cases. It is a very straightforward, do thing A, but if this happens, do thing B.
This makes sense, if someone tells you to book something, this is how you book it.
But what I never wrote down was, if you got a lot of booking requests, how do you prioritize it? Itās something I know to do, but there is no official process for it, itās just common sense born out of having worked this job for so long. One of my therapists had a bunch of equipment come in and review requestsā¦ all at once. There is only so much time in a day, and thereās still paperwork that has to be done.
I already understood, from years and years of working, that my priority was to get every equipment fitting and dispensing appointment booked first. My next priority was any pieces of equipment meant to be used for a trial appointment, and only after that were the reviews and assessments to be booked. Unless told otherwise by the therapist.
Now I know what youāre thinking, youāre thinking, āYou can just put that in the manual.ā
This is true, I could, and I probably will, but I am also aware this might not be something someone looks up. It is much easier to know when to use the manual when you need to do something specific, than to arrange something vague.
And it is vague, not just when would you know you had to prioritize something like that, but how. I use OneNote for this, itās very easy for me to move names around with the way I have it set up, but not everyone uses OneNote. Most people prefer to work out of their emails so they donāt need a second program. I use OneNote because the ADHD makes parsing information difficult and my email box overwhelming unless managed strictly.
Iāve mentioned in the past, the way I manage my workload is not effective. It takes extra time because Iām also managing the ADHD. Itās why I donāt prescribe how I do things specifically in my manuals because it is extra work that other people might not need.
But it does cause a problem when training someone else. A manual, like a game tutorial, will only take you so far. You need someone else to add to provide that common knowledge.
