It has been awhile since I talked to my mentor. Both of us are busy with our respective careers and since he has a new daughter, he has been busy with daddy duties.
So over Skype and Coffee (that is how busy he is, he can't even meet me outside) we talked about the paths that we have taken. Before he took me under his wing I was this brash, know-it-all who thought that I had all the answers and I was so gungho on achieving a lot of things. I was in particular very keen on impressing management because my view back then was the only measure of success was through the corporate ladder. This is why I was killing myself with 16 hour work periods.
I prided myself that I was one of the first ones in the office and the last one to go home. I continued to heap projects and workloads to my plate even if it was already full to the extent that I was over exerting myself. In a way I thought that I was the go-to-guy when things needed to be done. Well, that was how I thought my bosses saw me.
My mentor then was a new Senior Manager and I was placed under his supervision. The first thing he told me was to chill, that everything has its own pace, He saw the frantic energy that I was exerting in trying to stand out from the rest of the pack but in doing so was alienating myself and putting undue stress on myself.
He asked me when was the last vacation that I had and I couldn't remember. I was so wrapped around work that I was afraid of going on vacations. I worried what would happen when I am not around, I worried that my work would pile up and I was constantly checking my emails.
He asked me how long do I take my lunch and I sheepishly answered I sometimes take my lunch while still working. At the most I would do 15 minutes to grab a quick bite but most of the time I was there in my desk working on something.
He took me aside and told me that being young, hungry for recognition and ambitious is not a bad thing but with the way that I was doing things I was bound to burn out. He has seen it a hundred times before and he even experienced it and so with that he was coming from a place that he knew I was headed.
Of course being arrogant I scoffed this off and said that I could handle things and I know if it is too much. He smiled with those wizened eyes and said he said the same thing when someone told him the same thing before.
He just took more and more things until he reached a tipping point and then Murphy's Law took effect and everything that can go wrong went wrong. His life was at shambles and he hit rock bottom and he wanted to make sure I did not reach that state.
Just like him I did not heed his advice and continued on to the path that I set myself. He could only watch and try to divert some of the work to others if he can but some of the other projects were out of his hands.
I remember him looking at me with sad eyes and always offering his help but I was just too proud to ask for help. I considered it a weakness if you couldn't do things on your own.
Things kept piling up and just like him I reached that point and Murphy's law took hold. I saw projects that I worked for come crashing down. I saw mistakes that I could have avoided if I did not multi task and be on so many projects and doing so many other things. I saw my reputation crash and burn because I ended up a failure in the eyes of a lot of people.
It was hard and my ego was dashed. I was not the golden boy that I was touted to be. I was a frail human who could make mistakes. After that I second guess myself and I felt a lot of times frozen in making a decision.
My usual chipper personality that I have when working on something was replaced by self-doubt and anxiety. I remember that he went to my office and gave me a cup of coffee. He said to drink up and pull myself together, that I cannot wallow on this forever. He was half tempted to tell me "I told you so" but he thought there is no use kicking a man when he is already down.
First order of business was a vacation and no checking of emails or with the team. Hard to imagine a boss doing that to someone as most people I have worked for before were slave drivers who was only interested in the bottomline.
So there I was having a vacation for the first time in years and was enjoying myself. I have not traveled for some time and I seriously missed it. The experience of doing something for the first time, having a bite of something you have never tasted before and best thing was not worrying about unanswered emails.
I came back renewed and with a fresh outlook of life both personally and professionally.
We may now work in different companies and in a different field but from time to time we still have that coffee and just talk.
Do you have a mentor? What has he/she done for you?