OK, these may be some of the last posts before the old email service stops working... Actually, it may already have stopped working. I think I had to stop it, to allow the new service to work.
I'm currently back home from my trip. Something about vacation where I'm just lazing about, puts me in a lazing about mindset, and when I get back and it's time to work, like now, it takes some time to get back into the working mindset. I like the working mindset. It's not about unpleasant work, it's just about getting things done. If I'm doing it right, it's about getting the things done that are important to me. So far I've done some cleaning, tidying, putting stuff away in it's home, finding homes for things, and ordering some essentials. bandaids, air purifier filters, stuff that's been on my list for a while, but I haven't had the time to sit down and plow through. Finally got most of it done now, except for a list of Ikea stuff that I want to get.
Most of the stuff I like getting at Ikea is about space, not stuff. I like nice shelves and containers. I just want things to look tidy and have a tidy home I can put them in. You wouldn't know it, if you looked at my desk, which is plastered in sticky-notes and crumpled papers with chicken-scratch on them. But thats... The papers are there because I look there, and the papers that are there are important. I want them to be seen. If I don't leave them right in the front of my desk, the chance that I glance at them and am reminded of them goes down significantly. If I want to change that I need to be better in my habit at looking at my planner. Which I'm reasonable at... well, ok, kind of bad at, especially the calendar. Just haven't' gotten into the habit of it... but I need a whole separate section, where I just write stuff that would otherwise end up on my desk. One more good idea in need of the time/energy/focus necessary to take it from a seed into a sprout and then a mighty tree. I have many of those good ideas, but only 24 hours in which to allocate my attention water. That being the case, pruning becomes more important than planting. Or thinning the seedlings, to follow the analogy better.
Not the best analogy really, you can broadcast plant seeds and water all of them at the same time, but if you want to water new habits, you can only do that one at a time. Generally speaking, you shouldn't try and adopt more than 3 at a time, max, for best results. Or even just one, if it's a particularly hard one.
School starts up again tomorrow, and I'll be without my mentor teacher, so the class is bound to be a bit more rowdy. My current reading is "Critical Knowledge Transfer." The book that the Harvard Business Review article was based on. I want the details, the specifics of how to do this. It's written for managers, and I'm trying to use it on myself, so not a perfect match, but it's what I should be focusing on now. the next 6 months are a unique opportunity to gain expertise from an expert that I effectively paid for with maybe 2 years of my time, so I'd better make careful and thorough use of the resource I've now got, or I'll be wasting those years.
I think that's enough for one post. I've got to do two to make up for missing this last week (I suppose being on vacation is my excuse?)
See you in a few minutes
-IO
No comments:
Post a Comment