snorkeling in the salt mines

A long time ago in a universe far far away, I was once in the middle of a Convergence event and I had no fewer than four people run up to me to ask for help with two more visibly approaching on the horizon. In a stroke of divine inspiration, I pointed at each person in turn and said, "OK, you're number one, you're number two..." until everybody had been assigned a number, then went back to the first person and said, "OK, go." Every new person who showed up got a number before I went back to helping the person in front of me.

It worked beautifully. Everybody knew I was going to get to them so they waited patiently, and everybody knew who's turn it was.

I bring this up because I have had to resuscitate this practice at work. We have a whole team of new people in my department who started at the same time, and we've been gradually teaching them new things and assigning each of them with specific tasks to take over. It's great, because they have already taken a huge load off my plate, but they always all seem to run into problems at the exact same time. "OK, T is number one, M, you're number two..."

So now jobbing is still busy but it's the normal kind of busy now that means I have a lot to do and not oh God everything is on fire. After two years of flat-out gallop, it makes for a nice change.