Potential

vCole

I feel as of late, I have not been working up to my potential. Although I am finally overcoming personal issues as of late. (Severe depression & Anxiety) I've been kinda slacking off as of late, and I feel terrible. Although now that my meds. are starting to kick in and I'm starting to remove some of the "bad" parts/people in my life.

I feel as though as my boss looks at me like a slacker. Should I try speaking to him about recent events? I really want to be immersed in my job. I really like what I do and want to learn all I can.


Thanks for the advice in advance.


-Fade

undomiel

Depends upon your personal relationship with him but generally in my experience bosses view such things as excuses and they just want solutions. Focus on being proactive. Ask for more projects, volunteer ideas, and generally just look busy. That goes over well with bosses I've noticed. Especially if it involves saving money.

unicityd

I think your best bet is to show your boss that you're willing and able to work harder. I don't think explaining your personal problems is likely to win you many points. On the other hand, your boss is likely to notice and appreciate a positive change in your work.

Regards.

blargoe

+1 for both responses.

dynamik

You're over thinking all of this. Just load up perfmon with a bunch of counters and leave it running at all times. Now you're swamped with high-tech analysis responsibilities.

I agree with undomiel. There's no need to bring any of that up unless you feel there's a specific reason to. Do whatever you can to make yourself appear like a dedicated employee. Show up on time, dress nice, don't slouch, greet everyone with a smile, etc. You probably already do those things; I'm just speaking generally. All I'm saying is that you don't have to do anything major. Improving in a few small ways can drastically change someone's perception of you. Just try to get involved whenever you can, and go out of you way to help out. Anything you do that shows you're putting in a little extra effort will pay off.

HeroPsycho

Agree with all the suggestions above.

Most bosses don't have a lot of time. In fact, time to them is their most precious resource. Don't use their time when you don't need them to fix the problem. The only thing you need to involve him with in this case is perhaps asking for more projects, etc. They will appreciate anything you can do to free up more time for them. Proactively addressing problems frees up their time!

In this case, you seem to know that you need to change to fix the problem you're experiencing.

I completely agree with Dynamik, that's an excellent idea to bring something to the table now. Most organizations rarely if ever baseline or monitor performance until there's an issue. My only suggestion is make absolutely sure you address a business issue once you begin doing this. That gives what you're doing a purpose, and you're not making stuff up to do in the boss's eyes. Make sure you identify issues that need to be addressed, document them and tell the risks of not addressing them, and present an action plan. If there are minor things you can fix that have no risk by fixing them (free up disk space on filled drives, etc.), document that you did that.

Also, volunteer to help others fix things. Do anything that gets you more involved especially with other people's projects who need help and are receptive. Sometimes bosses take notice when your co-workers point out to them you're going above and beyond the call of duty.

If you're a Microsoft admin, go get the various best practice analyzers for products you use (Exchange, SQL, ISA, OCS Best Practice Analyzers), and run them if no one else is. Gives you a great list of optimizations you can do, with links to show you how to do them. Run MBSA and check patch levels and other common security misconfigurations. Use the MBSA Visio plugin and make a nice report of your findings. Keep a copy of the original scans and a new scan after you address the risks to show the difference you've made to management!

Just don't get too gungho. If you're making key configuration changes, get them approved by management, regression test the changes, have a rollback plan, etc. Doing these things also makes your efforts more visible, too.