Small Tweaks

As someone who works in what could be considered a Support role, making changes that affect users of the systems that I maintain, it can be quite hard to know whether you're making a difference.

I don't mean this in an existential way but rather, when the quality of life you experience has improved, it often quickly becomes the new baseline where it's hard to imagine that life was ever any different.

Like most things, you can find yourself in an arms race where all of the low hanging fruit disappears and you continually think that each improvement has to be larger than the last to be notable.

About a month ago, one of the street crossings at a busy intersection was faulty making it extremely hard to tell when to cross as the green signal was extremely dim.

Myself and quite a few people would hesitate to cross because aside from audio signals, it was only obvious when the crossing would flash red.

It took me a long time to get around to filing a council repair form because I'd write it down in my notes app only to never check or I'd get distracted as soon as I arrived at the office.

About 2 weeks ago, I found myself approaching the crossing from a distance and was lucky enough to see ~20 people confidently cross the street with the now-repaired crossing light.

Just the other day, I saw an entire school year¹ crossing the street. Mind you, they were going in the opposite direction but I have no idea if they returned later that day and experienced the benefits of a functional traffic light.

In some ways, I feel like that brief 5 minute form submission has probably been one of the most impactful things I've ever done but then I say this just because it's a tangible change that I was lucky enough to see the outcome of.

¶ Footnotes

1. There was about 8 groups of kids led by teachers so presumably an entire school year was doing a city trip ↩