Friday, October 27, 2023

Home Office? Start your day with your calendar




Self-employment requires a high level of discipline. Working for someone else in the age of “work from home” requires the same level of discipline.

When working in an office environment, it’s less likely that you will stray to Facebook or peruse your Gmail for anything but a fleeting moment. At your remote location, however, there’s no co-worker passing by or turning around to see what’s on your computer screen. So, the lingering on the non-work website can go on too long. That’s not good for you or your employer.

Here's a tip for maintaining a work focus and maximizing it.

Look at your calendar.

When you hit your office, look at your calendar. Mentally map out the day. I take this a step further and use Clockify, a time tracking software. I log appointments and meetings from that day’s calendar and Clockify adds up those hours. As the day passes, I fill in the blanks and at the end of the week, I can see if I’ve given it my full forty (it’s usually more than forty hours), and I can see how my time was invested: meetings, research, proposal building, client calls.

Is it double work? Maybe,

But I need to connect with my calendar, really look at it, before starting the day, because experience has taught without that habit I miss meetings, or I’m late to them, and forget that most important thing I needed to complete. I’m blissfully unaware of what’s lurking just moments away that I might miss when the calendar pop up occurs when all of a sudden I decide I need to eat something or head for that second cup of coffee. 

Photo by Ben Mysc on Unsplash

Friday, August 20, 2021

What a man does at work, and how women decode it

Early one Monday morning, Carol noticed a male co-worker exhibiting odd behavior - not really working, not really typing, sort of resting. Maybe communicating with a distant star? 

At that moment the team was supposed to be updating their sales progress in Salesforce, the company's customer relationship management (CRM) software.

She used an office messaging app and alerted a teammate to share the head-shaking experience.

He looked something like the cupped chin picture, except imagine a man, not even a hint of a smile.

Here's the private, text conversation.

8:54 AM
Carol: Chin in one hand, the other hand resting on his keyboard or typing with his little finger -- what is he doing???

8:54 AM
Samantha:  HAHAHAHA
i have no idea...................not salesforce

8:55 AM
Carol: I'm going to get a look at his screen - watch this misdirect . . . 

He's STARING at salesforce -- it's communicating with him telepathetically (sic)

9:04 AM
Samantha: omg
no way
it cant 

(pause)

that would mean that his mind works faster than it does

Monday, March 22, 2021

Think about it later, right?



I left the grocery store with enough bags threaded on my arm that I should have kept the grocery cart, but I didn’t want the indecision of leaving the cart next to the car or being a good citizen and pushing it back to the store.

I managed to wrestle the key in my pocket to open the trunk and set the bags inside, realizing that the clerk had inserted a refrigerated item in each plastic bag, so I’d have to unload everything once I got home, instead of leaving a few things for later.

Leaving a few things for later seemed to be my current status. I’d left a lot of things for later including keeping a tidy house. I was usually messy but now there was dirt in the corners and the wood floor could stand a good sweeping and mopping.

Housework made me think of Aunt Cheyenne. She had a system I could not follow but made perfect sense to her and must have made sense to her home because it was always tidy. She did a lot of things right. She used to brag that she’d never been late to work a day in her life. I was usually not on time. We had different stresses though. She had worked in a dry cleaner mending clothes with small, neat stitches, and running the ironing machine to place precise, clean seams. I, on the other hand, worked in high tech and it wasn’t so much getting to work on time that was the issue, as much as leaving at a decent hour. Work life now flowed into home life and never ebbed.

I slammed the trunk close and slung into the driver’s seat, careful to look for someone behind me who might be backing out at the same time. I only had to make that mistake once. I eased out of the parking space and nosed the car toward home. The car did a little jig that told me I would have to get it into the shop soon, that like other things had been delegated to “things for later” status. Might be surprised when the debt collector for “things for later” came to call.

Why did I always think things could wait?

At the house, I unloaded the car with only a quick glance at the carefully manicured lawn and flower beds. After stuffing things away, and on a whim, I plopped on the floor cross legged and stared at my space.

What was it that I needed to go from here to there, from where I was to where I wanted to be? To go from the past – where I seemed to be stuck, to the present. I crinkled my brow. 

My mind wandered.

I picked myself up and thought, “I’ll ponder that later.”

Sunday, August 2, 2020

What voice in your head usually wins?



I have a friend on the East Coast who does the video for his church's services. He posts them on Facebook when they’re live. I've surfed in. It’s pretty boring. 

I watched the worship video from my home church, and had multiple thoughts. Here's the first.

In my regular life, I work in the world of communications – business storytelling, advertising, public relations, and about six minutes in to this video appears a great storyteller, Nancy Gaston. She is fantastic, but her story is stuck six minutes into a boring video (from the eyes of a kid).

If the church is trying to reach kids, they're missing the mark.

Kids aren't going to sit through six minutes of boring to get to the good stuff. And no kid is going to surf into a video titled “Worship - August 2, 2020.” (The titles of church videos should be either the scripture, a title with keywords from the sermon, or anything but the date. Facebook already includes the date, and no one is searching Facebook for "August 2, 2020.")

Here’s what I'd recommend.

Pull out just the children’s message, post it as standalone video under a playlist on Youtube with a title like “news brief for kids” or “how to have more fun being a kid,” and the title of the video should NOT be the date, but something that corresponds with the message in the video, something that sounds interesting to kids, i.e., not a finger wagging from adults. For instance, use the title “Have you ever wrestled?” This might pull in a few curious adults as well. 

In the video info section of YouTube write: “Wrestling with tough choices? What voice in your head usually wins?” Use some key words from Nancy’s talk so someone searching might find this video.

Next, share the link of the video with the church’s preschool, Noah’s Ark Preschool to post on their Facebook page, email to their families.

And, email the link of the video to the parents of kids in the church, with a message, “Here is a five minute activity you can do with your kids: 3-4 minute video plus a question: “What do you think about what Nancy said?” (It doesn't have to be complicated).

What voice usually wins in your head?

Carol