🪞Knowing how I work is part of the job

I used to think the conditions I work best under were a private matter, like a preference for a window seat. Worth knowing, perhaps, and faintly embarrassing to mention. I now think they are operating data, and that keeping them to myself is a way of doing the job badly.

The questions are simple and I had answered none of them in writing.

• Do I take things in by reading or by listening? Reading. Tell me something important in a corridor and I will nod and lose it. Send me two paragraphs and I will come back with a view.
• When is my judgement good? Mornings. After 16:00 I can execute but should not decide.
• Do I think alone or in company? Alone first, then with one person. Almost never in a room of eight.
• How do I produce? By writing my way in.

None of this is unusual. What matters is that a manager cannot see it. For five years Dov and I worked it out by accident and never said it aloud. Then on 1 July I had a new manager, the accident was gone, and the first month was stiff in ways I put down to character. Some of it was only format. I had prepared the way that suited the last person.

So I said it, at the end of July, in plain terms: this is how to get my best work, and what is the same for you? I meant it as information she needed, and that was how she took it.

It breaks down when it becomes a list of conditions. I am a morning person is useful to know. I cannot do afternoons is a demand, and a job is entitled to some of my worse hours. Self-knowledge also goes out of date, and I have checked almost none of the above this year. It sits beside 💎 Makers need half days and managers need hours, which is one of these answers worked out in full, and 💎 Important problems are chosen and not assigned.