I’m now 3 weeks out from retirement. My last post was about the immediate silence in communication that happened for me overnight. This is also about silence and cessation but in a different way.
At Amazon there was in my role an unrelenting incessant sense of something always being the next priority. Something that always next needing to be done. And almost always more than one thing at a time. The next QBR, or a 3 year plan or OP1 or Q4 prep or a deep dive into why CountryX isn’t growing in segmentZ or reviewing the write up for a Jassy escalation or figuring out what to cut from the roadmap due to attrition. On and on and on, a continuously swirling set of #1 priorities. And in my role I had to keep track of and make sure to push forward these priorities with the team. This sense of “most important” occupies a huge area of the front part of your brain. I would consistently check in and review what’s important and think about it and mentally noodle and attempt to solve or gestate ideas about these things.