Archives for the month of: October, 2015
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Work and Time

October 30, 2015 //
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Of all the laws and sayings that govern the world of work and play, I think it’s Parkinson’s Law that resonates the most with me.

‘Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,’ or words to that effect. It occurs to me that it also contracts to fit the time available for completion as well.

I was reminded of this recently when a project that had been running for months and had a deadline of 11:59pm on a Friday used up literally all its available time, and a few minutes the other side of the watershed too. We were in good shape mid-week, then a few extra review rounds got wedged in, and before you knew it we were under the gun.

The key thing is this: nothing’s perfect, ever. You can always find another tweak, something that constitutes a micro-improvement. This is especially true of a long, detailed document. The possibilities for a typo, a punctuation error or a stylistic inconsistency are limitless.

Which is why we have deadlines, why we impose limits.

You always have to do your best work, nor settle for mediocre. But, you gotta stop at some point.

 

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Categories General, Planning, Strategy

The Double Edged Sword of Holidays

October 28, 2015 //
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Holidays are great. There’s the chance to unwind, spend some quality time with family and generally not think too much about work.

These days, however, we often can’t rely on somebody to cover for us while we’re on holiday and do the work that we would do if we were not on holiday. So what we sometimes find ourselves doing is working ourselves to a frazzle in order to clear the desk for the holiday, and then returning, somewhat refreshed, to face a backlog and the mountain of work to be done simply to get back up to speed.

When you add the fact that it sometimes takes two or three days to unwind, and two or three days to gear ourselves up for the return to work, it sometimes feels like a week’s holiday is simply not worth the time or investment. Perhaps you’re one of these people who can instantly slip out of work mode and leave all your troubles behind you. If so, you are a lucky person indeed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for work hard and play hard. I need to work harder, however, to enjoy my holidays and make sure that the seams between the work hard and play hard periods are shorter so that they almost end up being seamless.

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Categories Customers, General

Take a Blog Post Miss Dilger

October 26, 2015 //
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Do you remember, back in the days before computers and any kind of automation, managers used to say to their secretaries ‘take a letter Miss Dilger’?

How times have changed. Now we do our own letters and our secretaries are personal assistants helping us with our own productivity.

I was reminded of this recently when I downloaded the latest Macintosh operating system for my laptop. Usually, I ignore these downloads and proceed with my daily work in the normal way. They don’t affect me. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when the latest release of the operating system downloaded some dictation software for my machine. I had to have a play immediately.

As you probably know, dictation software has been around for quite some time, but it has been notoriously unreliable. Either it completely misunderstood the dictated words or needed a vast amounts of corrections afterwards. Well, I have to say that the current dictation software which I am using to create this blog post is nothing short of a revelation. It is unbelievably accurate, easy to use and time saving. It has probably saved me half the time it normally takes to create a blog post. A couple of changes are all I need to make before I publish the post. In fact, the only mistake it really made was to spell my surname Dillinger and that really is no bad thing.

It is a strange feeling when the creative process becomes one of dictating verbally rather than imagining in your head and then typing in your computer. It reminds me of the differences between spoken language and written language. That said, however, to say that this is a somewhat seismic day for me as a writer and blogger is possibly the understatement of the year. Full stop.

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Categories Communication, Technology

Escaping the Blackness

October 23, 2015 //
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About once a year – and I know I’m really lucky and grateful it’s only once a year – I have one of those dark days when I’m really down in the dumps, as we Brits would say, upset even. The feeling of blackness when you’re staring into the abyss. Note that I’m not talking about the phenomenon known as the booze blues here, where you feel a bit paranoid and / or sorry for yourself, through no fault of anyone’s except your own.

Note that I’m not talking about manic depressive psychosis or bipolar disorder here, proper illnesses where the crushing depression, feelings of hopelessness and inner demons must be unimaginably unbearable.

On these days I find it really hard to struggle through a working day. What I try to do on these days is attempt to do a sideways reality shift, in order to escape the blackness. I have a word with myself and I consider how lucky I am and compare my current situation to another that could be a lot worse. I have my health, a roof over my head, and my family are healthy. So how bad is my current situation, really? What’s the worst that could happen to me because of this mindset I have allowed myself to slip into?

This forced comparison of perspective is generally all that’s needed to get me out of that funk. The issue is how long I’m down in the dumps for before I can remember to have a word myself.

I find from both a personal and corporate social responsibility standpoint that a day like this is enough to remind me of the charitable efforts I should be making to those who suffer these feeling or circumstances much, much more often than I do.

 

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Categories General

Music While You Work

October 21, 2015 //
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When I was a school and college student, I never had music to accompany me when I was working. I preferred complete silence so that I could concentrate. As I’ve got older, I occasionally let music intrude, but it’s still pretty rare and it depends on the kind of work I’m doing.

If I have to concentrate really hard on something, maybe a tricky spreadsheet or comparing red-lined documents, no music for me, silence is better. I realise of course that there are many people who couldn’t imagine working – even the concentration-heavy stuff – without music. The contrary works pretty well for them.

There’s the good and bad of music. On the good side, it lifts the spirits and provides diversion from manual or repetitive jobs – or when you’re plain ticked off. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to pick up an accent when someone sings? It’s always fascinated me how that works, something to do with the vocal chords resonating in a different, unifying way when we sing, perhaps.

Time flies when you listen to music, and sometimes that’s a good thing.

On the negative side, music can provide too much of a distraction, damage productivity and sometimes – when you hear a song that calls to mind a certain period or event – can make you plain cross or upset. It’s unbelievably evocative, and that’s its charm and its menace.

Music while you work – good or bad? It depends, of course.

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Categories General

The Baseball Natural that Never Was

October 19, 2015 //
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The unwritten human history is littered with people who would have been truly great at something, except that either they never knew or they never got the chance. It’s the 3-way accident of birth, time and place.

This is my theory with me and America’s pastime, otherwise known as baseball. Born and raised in Europe, I was schooled in my early childhood in rounders and into my teens in cricket, soccer and rugby. I wasn’t great at any of them, but I wasn’t horrendous.

I lived in the US a couple of times but never tried baseball. I played softball a few times in Dublin, and I was in a hitting pen once, but that’s it. A number of things, though, tell me that I coulda been somebody on or around the diamond. First, I’m small, and size seems less of a barrier in this sport compared with the way many other sports have gone. Second, I have good hand-eye co-ordination from a lifetime of racket sports, golf and cricket. Third, I have a big throwing arm (I’m right-handed). Fourthly, and perhaps most bizarrely, I can’t close my left eye.

What I mean by this is the following. I can close both of my eyes at the same time – in other words do the sleepy thing – and I can close my right eye, but I can’t close my left eye, otherwise known as winking. This has led me to be particularly left-eye dominant, which means that I catch really, really well with my left hand. It makes me rubbish at shooting right-handed, which is another useful by-product.

Good right arm, hand-eye co-ordination, speed round the bases, great catching arm. OK, so the US colleges may not hand out 4-year scholarships on that evidence alone, but I think it’s compelling, or would have been if I was born in a baseball-playing country. It’s the sheer serendipity of life, the glorious what might have been.

The moral of this story is this: always be looking for something else, something new to try, because until you’ve found something you’re truly great at, you have to keep looking. You won’t know til you’ve found it. The same goes with your kids and getting them to try different things.

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Categories General

How I Write a Blog Post

October 16, 2015 //
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If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that my blog posts are Monday, Wednesday, Friday things, relatively short and designed to be read in a couple of minutes.

I thought it would be useful to let you know how I write them. I use WordPress as my blog engine by the way.

First, the idea. I either come up with a series of posts based around an involved topic or I get a specific thought which prompts a standalone post. Then I pen the title and scribble some notes in the body. Then I click save draft. About 1 per cent of the time, I click publish by mistake, and since the default time is set to publish immediately, this results in a largely blank post being sent through social media and emailed to be subscribers :-(. Then I have to remove it. But let’s stay with the 99%.

My next task is to schedule the publication for a time in the future. I always set my time window between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning Irish time, since for Irish and UK readers that’s a good time for them to be checking their social media. I then set the categories for the blog post and think about the tags that are relevant for this post. Then I click save draft.

Now I’m ready to write the post. I compose the post, staying on topic so I don’t mismanage the expectations of the reader and for SEO purposes, though I don’t use sub-headings since my posts are so short. I click save periodically, especially if I’m on the move and my wifi is flaky. I also insert outside links and links to other posts where I think they enhance the post, never for their own sake.

When I’m finished writing, I save the draft, then re-read the post carefully for spelling mistakes, typos, sentences that don’t make sense or that could be improved. I iterate, clicking save draft which each iteration. Then I click Schedule, before reviewing how the post will look to you the reader. I might further refine the post and then follow the same process.

Then I’m done! For a post that runs smoothly, it’s 15 to 20 minutes from start to finish. For a longer post or one that doesn’t flow as it might, it could be an hour. But that’s not an onerous responsibility for 3 times a week, at least in my view.

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Categories Communication, Customers

Writing a Book

October 14, 2015 //
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I’ve decided that writing a book is hard, really hard.

I’ve been working on one for a good while. For a couple of months when I didn’t have too many commitments I made some excellent progress and got at least half of it done. Then I took on more work and also significantly expanded my portfolio of voluntary activities and the book started to gather the electronic equivalent of dust.

It’s not a question of discipline or commitment. I take a disciplined approach to my blogging, but it comes easy because I write about what I see and a lot of it is stream of consciousness. I’m committed to almost everything I do, otherwise there seems little point doing it. With a book, though, you need a plan and you need to write to that plan, and that takes more time. Time to research, time to create.

Time is what I don’t have. Certainly, I could spend less time with the family, I could do without some of the 8 hours sleep I know my body needs on a regular basis, or I could drop some of the other things I’m doing. But I don’t want to do that, because I’m naturally drawn to the portfolio career and a diversity of activities.

Writing a book is essentially a selfish, specialist activity in order to get it done. You need to put yourself first, and sacrifice things that are important to other people, things that they’re relying on you to help with. Generalists find this tough.

That’s why writing is book is hard, really hard.

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Categories Communication, General, Planning

Time Flees

October 12, 2015 //
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Those of you who follow or stumble upon this blog from time to time – future pun intended – will know that I’m often going on about what a precious resource time is. The most precious resource there is in my opinion. Here is a previous post on the subject.

Even two thousand years ago when the pace of life must have been a little slower, despite the drastically shorter life expectancy, those Romans knew a thing or two when they said ‘tempus fugit.’ We generally translate this as ‘time flies’.

Except that the truer translation is actually ‘time flees’, which gives a much better sense of how the resource disappears. It escapes, it runs away from us. It can’t get away fast enough.

That’s why we must work hard to make the most of it, not to waste it. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy some free time. Far from it in fact. Ever noticed how much faster time seems to pass when you’re having fun? Do you want to be miserable so it goes slower?

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Categories General

The Benefit Corporation

October 9, 2015 //
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Did you know that the crowd-funding site Kickstarter is now a benefit corporation? I didn’t either, until I got an email explaining what one was and why they decided to become one.

You see, Kickstarter found that being a for-profit corporation went against the ethos of what they were trying to do, namely be a force for social change. They go on to say:

“Companies that believe there are more important goals than maximizing shareholder value have been at odds with the expectation that for-profit companies must exist ultimately for profit above all.

“Benefit Corporations are different. Benefit Corporations are for-profit companies that are obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders. Radically, positive impact on society becomes part of a Benefit Corporation’s legally defined goals.”

What a fantastic concept, and an equally noble one at that. Sadly, only 0.01% of US organisations are currently benefit corporations, a statistic I feel will rapidly change.

If you’d like to read more, here’s Kickstarter’s benefit corporation charter. Fair play to them, as the Irish would say.

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Categories Customers, Strategy
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