A quiet week, getting settled into my new post.

Finally bought myself a new mobile phone, my sister has been teasing me on the current brick for some time. It has started to make odd chirrups for no real reason, so I felt that it was probably about time to upgrade. Also took the opportunity to change from a monthly contract - on which I have been getting a rebate, to a pay as you go phone. I generally use the mobile through clenched teeth, with an austerity that keeps my calls down to half an hour a month.

So the delights of phoning call centres, visiting mobile phone shops and speaking to bored looking assistants, and negotiating PAC codes. I know that me buying a cheap pay as you go phone is hardly going to get them breaking out the champagne, but seeing as the whole high street seems to be full of mobile phone shops these days, you might have thought that a bit of old fashioned service would not have gone amiss. Anyways, I seem to have got it all sorted out after a few phone calls and a couple of visits to shops. For interest I have switched from O2 to Orange, as Orange seemed the perkier of the two.

My new phone is the usual fairly standard model, but does come with a camera and one of those round buttons that let you drill down the menus. Anything that relies on ingenious key combinations generally seems to me to be the invention of the devil, brings on the stupid red mist, and I instantly become completely incapable. I am pretty good with computers, but I must confess to being a complete phone luddite. So I did want one with pretty colours and icons, on the basis that I might be able to figure out how to phone someone from the phone book, which I must confess I never really figured out on my old phone, despite having any number of phone numbers in the phone book. Like many folk, I just relied on replying to people in my call history.

I also got the extra RAM for my desktop that I'd ordered from Crucial, and this morning, spread out a couple of towels, and placed the desktop computer face down, and then opened up the bottom and firmly/gently took out the now redundant ram stick, and put in the new pair of sticks bringing it upto a more respectable two gig of ram. I must say that it does seem a lot quicker and more responsive than before, so that seems to be thirty quid well spent. It should also future proof the computer for a bit longer, making sure that it remains usable for that bit longer, it usually seems to be a lack of Ram that renders my computers redundant eventually.

I've ordered more Ram for the laptop, which promises to be a little more tricky to install.

Nothing much else to report, it is exceeding cold, I've got the bouncy kwix menus fixed on my website, with a little help from Isaiah at YourHead.

Morning is broken - where did the sun go

After a very positive first week at my new job, the second week has been less successful. As the work area is awaiting an accomodation reorganisation, I have simply been hotdesking, finding an empty desk to work at. However where initially there was a desk handy for my colleagues that was available for three days a week, this is now no longer available, so I moved to a more remote desk, but that too will become unavailable on Monday, so I've no idea where I'll be sitting from then on.

There is also the issue of a couple of boxes, of the usual personal tat, that you lug about with you, which is not really an issue when you have a desk, but becomes an issue when you are deskless.

All in all, my choice of Christmas reading "Detox your Desk" now seems somewhat ironic.

Of course these things have a tendancy to turn on a sixpence, falling into place unexpectedly, but it is always a mistake to rely on providence.

My gut feeling at the moment, is just to let the powers that be know that I am finding this hotdesking a nuisance, and start looking at other posts. I don't really want to just go for any post, this current post would be a tough one to beat, but you cannot really strip out the hotdesking aspect. In theory things should sort out in March, but I don't get the impression that folk are talking about March, like they really believe it will be March.

At least flagging up the issue now has the benefits of clarity and straightforwardness. Being realistic offering someone a post and then expecting them to just work from whatever empty desk they can find, really is a pretty big ask. By tolerating the situation I run the risk of making it seem acceptable.

Not much else to report - still very dark all the time, which is a bit nightmarish - leave home in the dark, get home in the dark - I've seen the movies, nothing good ever happens at night.

I think I might try and work up a systematic list of migraine triggers to keep an eye on.

I have been playing around with dot mac, though I must confess that I am still struggling to get my head round what exactly it does. Granted it offers email, but then you can get that from google for nothing, the galleries and webpage just seem a bit tricksy. I remember coding stuff by hand, so I'm a bit resistant to any gee whizzery, if I don't know where the files are stored and the like. The backup is useful, but I'm not really sure how it works, or how I would actually use it if I needed to. I back up to external hard drives anyway, so it is not essential.

Anyway I suspect that I will keep the contract, simply for the sanity factor that it will synchonise my calendar and diary across my desktop and laptop computer. However I am quite sure that Apple could have built in such bluetooth synchonising functionality into a Mac without the need for dot mac, but chose not to, so they could charge for it. There are plentiful options to do a bluetooth synchronisation to a PDA device, so I cannot see the logic of not providing the functionality to actually synchronise to a computer.

The functionality available for Leopard and Tiger interfacing with dot mac differ slightly, making me slightly more befuddled, I might upgrade to Tiger for the desktop, but then again maybe not. All the peripherals work fine connected to the desktop, so probably best to let sleeping dogs lie. More ram would be useful though, when I feel brave about poking about the innards of my computers.

Still there is a long list of IT upgrades and purchases to look forward to. My Christmas spending spree was only just the beginning.

I've also bought a couple of the Clifford Fonts off of FontShop. Now I'm no Font purist, so I'll doubtless confuse fonts and faces. Anyway the whole world of fonts has apparently moved on since they came on sheets from Letraset, and even since they came on CDs, where you got all different sizes and styles for the same font.

The Clifford face is designed by Akira Kobayashi, and is a serif font, which has a nicely handcrafted, almost calligraphic quality. It does however confusingly come with various different variations. I first bought one of the three small caps versions, which has big capitals and little capitals, and is a pleasant variation on using bold all the time. Then I bought a matching normal font face. However you cannot simply bold these faces, as you normally can with electronic fonts. I'm not sure if this requires another font face.

Another confusing thing is that there are special characters like two F, basically a more attractive version of ff that respects the aesthetics of the two letters appearing together.

However I really don't know how you would make this special character appear when required, without going through the text and doing it manually.

I suspect that I am getting into high end typographic niceties here.

Suffice to say, they are exceptionally attractive fonts, though clearly not an essential item. I like just displaying them in large font sizes, just to admire the precise cut of the letters.

I'm not too sure how to organise this blog,

I have tended to just aggregate stuff together, running through whatever I have been upto in the week, with the odd stand-alone item.

I did start using the tags and categories, but I've rather given up on that as I don't particularly like how I was originally tagging and catagorising, but I might go back over the blogs, because I can see that using them properly does make a mass of blogs vastly more useful.

Anyway, running through the usual virtual standing items

IT
In my folly, I thought that getting an extra computer would make life simpler. It has in that I can now use the laptop as my personal computer, and get on it when I like. However version control, and all that is starting to be a major pain. I'm well covered for backing up, both computers are backed up to external hard drives, the desktop running tiger - using SuperDuper, and the laptop using leopard - using TimeMachine.

I think that I need to do some creative thinking on how to tackle this. I asked a friend who is pretty techie, and he suggested looking at it on an application basis, which seems pretty practical. Asking what folk did on a Forum, suggested that .mac be used to synchronise the usual addresses, and calendar stuff, with one computer simply being designated the main one, and stuff living there.

There seems to be a lot to be said for this approach, I've long taken the view that running parallel systems is just asking for trouble.

Accordingly, I have taken out a free trial of .mac, and I'll see how that goes. I suspect that I will simply treat my laptop as a slimmed down typing machine, and maybe use iDisk to share a few key documents. Though ideally each application will have a lead computer, that it is used on.

With applications like DevonthinkPro, there is scope to aggregate information together into a single database, rather than trying to mirror file structures.

Anyway, a little thinking required, but I think I am working out what the problems are, and possible solutions.

Work Personal
I have deliberately tagged this section as work/personal, because in a way they overlap. As I only talk about work in the most general of senses, it is more about me than anything else.

Anyway, new job, a sideways move to a new part of the office. I'm not sure if it is the fact that there are slightly more men than women, or just a different culture, or subject area, but the atmosphere does feel completely different. Not saying anything against where I was before, I liked them a lot, but I get the feeling that I'm going to enjoy where I am now. Folk seem positive and businesslike, just getting on with stuff.

It feels like a good move for me. I suppose I should really decide what I want to do, there is a bit of me that would like to run the entire office, while another part of me, would like to slope off and do other things. Maybe I should think just how ambitious I want to be. As I get more experience, and more work under my belt, the opportunities appear to get on.

Having already tagged this as work/personal, there is also my perennial dabbling, which I enjoy, though I do keep coming back to the thought that if you want something done, you ask a busy man. I'm certainly busy, though I do wonder that I'm over-stretching myself sometimes. Some interesting meetings coming up, and some useful work in hand.

LifeHack
I did make a concerted start on Detox Your Desk a few weeks back, and while it went splendidly as I was trying to clear my desk for my old job, on arriving at my new job, I've been hotdesking, so

Creative
One of the benefits of having the laptop, is that I can now spend more time typing and writing. I use a little policeman's notebook to capture ideas, and generally I seem to be coming up with ideas quicker than I am transcribing them to the computer, and transcribing them, quicker than I can work them up fully. However these things are like the tide going in and out, liable to shift. So I'll push on jotting down ideas, and typing them up and seeing where it all goes to.

A week of two halves.

At work all is a bit weird. I did not take any Christmas leave, so I am one of the forgotten few that is still traveling into work each week, getting a lunch and then traveling back. Well the train company certainly seems to have forgotten about us, this time of year it is still dark when I catch the train, so add in a howling gale, and late trains get to be a major annoyance. Twenty minutes late on Thursday and ten minutes late on Friday, which may not seem long, but when you are huddling there stamping your feet to keep warm, you do realise why retirement is just so appealing.

Similarly the office canteen seems to have forgotten that some of us are still in.

In terms of work, it is that odd time of year, when the email stops, the phone stops, and I rather suspect that when you take the stress out of the job, you realise just how dull much of it actually is. Anyway catching up with stuff, and being pretty productive. I've just got Detox Your Desk, hoping that it will teach me how to tame my intray, and bully my emails into submission. Probably not a bad time to think about such things. If it seems sensible I will try and implement when I get back to work, on the basis that things are working okay at the moment, but it is all a bit exhausting, and I suspect that a lot of that is down to my attitude rather than anything else.

I've also started eating a couple of pieces of fruit each day at work, which I'm enjoying.

I'll see how far into the new year I can get with my new improved habits.

At home, a bit of a high tech christmas, as pretty much all the presents I bought seemed to come from the Apple Store. Nonetheless they all seem to have gone down well. I could write a lot here, but often less is more, so I'll just mention one thing.

On Christmas day, I found myself sitting on the sofa, looking round my family, as they read, listened to an iPod, and played on the computer, and thought how lucky I was to share my life with them. Really in terms of the big things I have a great deal to be grateful for, and my family are right at the heart of that.

I have come to realise that defining much of what I actually do as Chaff is useful.

What is chaff?
Chaff is the stuff that you just sort of end up doing. It is generally not stuff that you really intend to do. You don't generally wake up in the morning wanting to do chaff.

Where does chaff come from?
Chaff in comes via all sorts of ways. It might just be little jobs around the house that need doing, mail that comes through the door, paperwork, or unexpected phone calls. But right now, most of all, chaff seems to come through the email.

Who wants you to spend time on chaff?
Well sometimes you want to do chaff, just to keep things ticking over, you need to get more paper for the printer, or answer the door for the postman. Often chaff is something that someone else wants you to do, it might be part of their grand masterplan, but generally it is not part of yours.

Is chaff unimportant then?
Well not really, it includes routine maintenance sort of stuff that you know needs done, and helping out other folk, and even just being a sociable person. Bump into someone and have a ten minute conversation you were not expecting, then that was chaff.

What is the problem with chaff then?
The problem is that unless you are careful, you easily end up spending all your time on chaff. You are bogged down with chaff before you leave home, commute in, chaff again, spend half the morning on endless emails, get interrupted and lose the plot, attend a meeting that seems pointless, commute home, big pile of spam and TV programmes that you end up watching every week but don't know why. All your day has been caught up with chaff, and then there is no time for what you deep down feel you ought to be doing.

So chaff is evil and we should avoid it?
No one can avoid chaff, it is a fact of life. You might be able to delegate it. If you did not do any chaff, then you would end up a jobless, unthinking robot with no friends.

How do you deal with chaff?
You need to find your own ways of dealing with chaff. For example by devoting fixed amounts of time to chaff, for example only check your email periodically and then only for a set amount of time. Knowing that it is time limited, encourages you to get through them quickly. Tackle a pile of chaff at the same time, rather than letting it interrupt you all the time. Don't be afraid to try different approaches to constraining your time spent on chaff.

One thing that I find works well for me, is when I draw up my task list for the day, I divide it into two columns, chaff, and everything else. So all the stuff that is chaff goes into the chaff column, and the rest goes into the other column. When doing work, I then try and alternate the different columns, so that a chaff task, is followed by something from the 'productive' column, and then back to the chaff. That way nothing completely grinds to a half.

Do you get extra time then?
You probably won't end up with extra time, but you will at least be taking control of the time that you do have. For example if you can ring fence time in your diary for something and are prepared to stick to it, then you can have that half day to read that important report you always meant to.

Why not skip chaff altogether?
You need to work with other people, if you simply ignore anything that does not fit in with your masterplan, you will end up starving and alone. However you can avoid chaff taking over your life. The important thing to realise is that how well you tackle chaff says very little about you, it is how you tackle the big issues that says something about you. Find ways of getting chaff out of the way as quickly as possible to let you devote your time and energy to the big stuff, rather than simply leaving the leftover time and energy to the big stuff, if you are lucky.

So remember chaff is not your friend, chaff makes you feel busy without being productive.

Bully chaff, treat it badly, take back control of your life.

Work -
And another week. It has been an odd sort of week, rather than trying to grab things by the scruff of the neck to sort them out, I have been trying to focus on tidying up my current post, ready for taking on a new post in the New Year. So less meetings and appointments, and plenty of tidying up emails and filing the important ones. Also trying to step aside and let other people lead on things that normally I would have, really not something that comes naturally to me.

Went along to what might well be my last meeting for a favourite project. It is good to be able to tell people in person that I will be moving on, it seems a lot more straightforward than just bouncing their emails later. Someone I had been working with, suggested that maybe I was one of the new breed of civil servants, which is quite flattering. I rather suspect that I tend to do things the way that I think that they should be done, and if that happens to accord with current thinking, then it is just lucky. Anyway it is great project, that I'm delighted to have played a part in, and it should be on a firm footing for the future, which is all you can really hope for.

Friday- a day long presentation of research findings, which was marred by being held in one of the most depressing facilities I've ever seen. It had obviously had a fair bit of money spent on it, all glass, and stainless steel. Which sounds grand, and it certainly did have a certain wow factor, but glass sliding doors always scare the bejeezus out of me, casually close one, and you get a great grinding and crunching of glass, as it closes unpleasantly. The accoustics were also pretty dismal. It was the usual 9.30 for 10.00 but for once it was absolutely packed when I got there at 9.30, and it got busier from then on.

All in all pretty interesting, I liked the social research stuff more than the more quantitative stuff like the economics.

Well? -
Still full of the cold, like death warmed up on Tuesday, though I don't think anyone noticed! Quite a few interesting emails on my personal account, from different pies that I have had my finger in. It is intriguing how a little effort here and there, builds up over the years.

IT Geek -
Now that I have diagnosed that it was a problem with the external hard drive, getting the new laptop set up, and backing it up, is really pretty straightforward. It has been running on Tiger for a week or two, so now I have installed Leopard. I've got a new external hard drive, and put four partitions onto it, one big one, and three small ones. I'll use the big partition for TimeMachine and back up to the others using SuperDuper once it is Leopard compliant. Clearly the learning lesson for me here, is that small baby steps, one thing at a time, making sure everything is working fine before trying anything else, is the way to proceed with IT.

In fairness - now that the moody external hard drive is out of the equation - leopard seems to be running just fine, TimeMachine is trouble free, and I'll need to reacquaint myself with the various new features that Leopard brings.

Also in fairness - the tech support for my hard drive seems fine, they got back to me a couple of times and I'm just waiting for details on how to return the hard drive to get a replacement.

It is tremendous fun doing a real Victor Meldrew routine bemoaning the failings of the modern world, with comic gravity, but I would prefer honesty to comic splendour.

With luck my family tech support role should now diminish. I tend to take the view that IT is a means to an end, though recently it seems to be taking up hours, and I'm not getting much beyond doing family IT geek stuff each weekend.

Writing -
Someone suggested that I should be writing more, currently feeling a bit beseiged, a myriad of small tasks on one side, and on the other a desire to create something of such jaw dropping perfection, that I never seem to get anything done.

There is probably a benefit to just jotting down a blog full of mince, in that it at least gets you writing something.

I've done plenty of short blogs posts this week, so I won't bother doing a full diary style round up of what I've been doing, instead letting the "thing" based postings speak for themselves.

However worth noting that I was over at my 'allotment' at my mother-in-law's, and did my harvesting, lifting the garlic and carrots that I had planted.

Also second week in my new office, same job, new boss.

I still reckon that I have an extra hour a day now, that I commute less, and I am determined to use this well. Been spending time in my garden in the evening, which is very therapeutic. Getting through stuff at work, but I'll probably need to get my head down and really get through all the various backlogs of work, that have piled up.

I've noticed that google and apple refer to their main sites as campuses.

Not offices, not factories, but campuses. The implication that these are places devoted to learning, and teaching, understanding and knowledge, rather than the arcane marshalling of information and making of profit.

Maybe the government should start to run its own campuses, rather than dull worthy offices.

Maybe there is scope for additional rebranding of places, to try and state some subtler truth.


As an aside I really love university towns. There is just a certain buzz about a place, with fresh young people trying to balance who they want to be with who they used to be. People talking excitedly about ideas, when everything really matters that much more.

some useful descriptors for SMART I came across recently
simple specific
measurable motivating
agreed achievable
relevant realistic
timebased targeted

and while I am at it,
SWOT = strengths weaknesses opportunities threats

but I'm sure I came across an alternative version with barriers ?

Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Barriers?

my limited research on google did suggest

SOAR
http://www.ncrcrd.iastate.edu/newsletter/Vol28No3-2006/SWOT-SOAR.htm

strengths opportunities aspirations results

All in all a very eventful week.

1 first week at my new office
2 share price volatility
3 lots less travel time
4 held a leaving do for my old colleagues
5 miscellaneous, I want a new computer

1 first week at my new office
I have now gone back to my old office, a few minutes from the railway station, so I no longer need to add a tedious bus journey onto my daily commute. On checking wikipedia, I find that my new office has Art Deco influences, and was completed in 1939, as well as being Category A listed! It is somewhat like being in an episode of Poirot sometimes, although for much of the accommodation, it is rather timeless, - office type accommodation, being as office type accommodation is. Getting used to my new location, and new colleagues, though I had worked with them to some extent in the past.

A little apprehensive to begin with, but now hugely impressed with the move, office, colleagues, work etc. Apart from the commute, I really liked where I was before.

2 share price volatility
the shares of the world seem to have dropped through the floor, with the FTSE even going below 6,000 for a while. I think that this demonstrates why you need a steady head to invest successfully. I took a print off of my share portfolio and the whole portfolio was down 11%, mainly shares I have held for a year, with every single share showing a loss.

Accordingly if I had sold everything the week before, and then bought them again, I could have made a tidy profit. Demonstrating why the shrewd investor always has a time machine. Somewhat galling too, was that I had recently sold off half my stock of a building society and bought shares in 3i, if I had held off the purchase I could have bought much better.

However on reading some articles, and checking my portfolio again, I'm now showing a more modest loss, and 3i, is once again showing a profit. Clearly for the long term switching from a building society to 3i has been a good move.

My most problematic stock has been British Energy, which I have been buying opportunistically when the price has gone down, but to be honest the price is down more than it is up recently, so I am wary of increasing my exposure. It is by any measures a high risk stock, it is not inconceivable that they could fail again, leaving the stock worthless. However they provide a fifth of the UK's electricity, and it is difficult to foresee the UK without nuclear energy for the foreseeable future. I would not buy shares that I felt were unethical, and I do have a green tinge, but I feel that realistically nuclear energy is here for the next thirty years.

3 lots less travel time
as per my new office, I now find myself in the happy position with at least an extra hour to myself each day. I have always told people that I spent three hours a day traveling, but was less sure on the precise split. So I knew that moving to a more central office would make a difference, but was not too sure how much. Based on the past week, I reckon that it must be easily an hour per day that I am saving now. Now I simply get off the train, and arrive at the office ten minutes later, though if I ran it would be quicker. Similarly for coming back, I just leave the office ten minutes before my train leaves, rather than leaving forty minutes before the train leaves, and still missing it sometimes.

Basically I have now lost the bus journey that I used to make, and the connection time and faff, involved. So, for once I seem to be back building up flexi time, have some spare time at lunch, and have a whole extra hour in the evenings. I seem to have more time and energy everywhere. I even managed to spend a couple of hours in the garden during the weekday evenings, something I've not been able to do in years.

Lately, the gardening has been a chore that I have had to squeeze into the weekends, with long grass to cut, and overgrown borders to weed. Being an overdue chore has sucked the pleasure out of it, while being able to simply spend an hour pottering, is much more pleasureable. Being an hour, offers scope for doing something that is a bit of a chore, and something else that seems more fun. That way, neither particularly seems a chore. And to be honest, the evening is much the best time to potter, as it avoids the day time heat.

So this week, I have managed to give my main lawn a much needed mow over, thankfully I have a flymo, so it will cope with grass upto "gosh that needs a cut". Also tidied out my cold frame and started pulling onions and laying them out in the cold frame to dry. Not yet complete with the onion pulling yet, but if the weather is upto it, having some time in the evenings will make a vast difference. Often the problem with jobs is not that you don't like them, it is just that you have too many the same. Accordingly it is nice to spend some time in the garden after a day in the office, or even spend half a day doing the garden, and the balance doing something on the computer.

However now the heavens have opened and rain has stopped play. Yesterday the burns were all swollen, I would not be surprised if there was flooding. Many of the developments round here have been built with sustainable urban drainage systems, which means that a lowered area will fill up with water during periods of prolonged rain, and gradually drain over the following days. I suspect that our heavy clay is part of how this works, clearly it would not work on a light sandy soil. In any event it is quite nice to be plugged into what is happening, to see these ponds created, fill up, and then drain away, as the weather changes.

4 held a leaving do for my old colleagues
in order to catch a few more people, we postponed our leaving do by a week, so we had actually left, but came back with some bottles of wine, to be presented with the usual card and gifts.

I must say that I have been hugely impressed by my old colleagues, I did give the customary speech, which probably included most of what I wanted to say. Of course being introduced by the Unit head, as possessed of a fabulous dry wit, with lots of competing free stand up comedy available at the Fringe, I was under no pressure at all!

I suspect that my management style is Management By Worrying About, and the leaving do was one of those things that I worried about, but on the day it all went well, and it was wonderful to be able to say how much I had enjoyed working with these people. They are friends now, rather than colleagues.


5 miscellaneous, I want a new computer
last week we set up a new desk, with bed above, in my daughters' room. They are still working on tidying the room, it currently being at the "oh my god, this is even worse" stage, which I am advised comes before, the "see it is perfect now" stage.

Megan starts at high school next week, and she was worried about having somewhere to do her homework, so hopefully this desk space will help. I am minded to buy a new computer, that way I could put my current computer up to the girls' room for them to use. Current intention is that although they have a computer in their room, they will not have internet access, they will need to use the computer in the living room to access the internet, something that seems to work better than software based parental controls.

But with Tiger coming out in October, there seems to be very little incentive to buy an iMac before then. Also, I have still not seen a new one in the flesh yet. John Lewis apparently won't get any for another three weeks.

If I was an apple reseller, I would be mighty pee-ed off that you could buy a new iMac at the Apple store now, but were not even getting to see one in the flesh yet. It is after all having stores like John Lewis being willing to sell Apple Macintoshes on the high street, that is helping drive the brand.

I currently have a 17" screen, and would sensibly like to move upto 20", though being immature, the 24" really is very big!

Of course I would also like to be sensible and boost my share portfolio, buy a whizzy digital camera, scanner, etc etc.

I am perpetually in a state of getting into some sort of routine, and then changing it. I will continue with the habit of putting a list of topics at the head of my blog, and then writing them up.

I have however stopped updating my desktop pictures weekly. My home computer is stuck on one of the photos of some japanese bowls, as is my home screen saver. At work I simply pull a fresh image off my website.

1 developments at work - moving around versus staying, and end to acting up
2 developments at home - more jam making
3 working on my website
4 comments on rapidweaver and forum based support
5 anything else that comes to mind, while typing up the above stuff

1 developments at work - moving around versus staying, and end to acting up - chatting to my current line manager about the benefits of staying in post for a while as opposed to moving around. Traditionally high flyers tended to move a lot, and this meant that other people tended to copy them, if they were ambitious. However people outwith the organisation hate this. It is difficult enough to network anyway, without all your contacts moving every five minutes, and then needing to get the new people upto speed on everything, all over again. In addition, if you only expect to be in post for a year or two at most, you approach it in a much different way, from if you expect to still be there to sort out any corner cutting or burnt bridges at the end of the day. You also realise that the contact you have are essential, and whatever you think of them personally, you need to make the relationships work, rather than just cherry picking the ones you think are most productive.

I have been in the same post for three years, but it has been subject to a lot of change, and although I have been working with the same people, largely, the processes involved have changed a lot. So I have probably had the best of both worlds, the benefits of staying in post, and getting a deeper and better understanding, as well as better links to key people, combined with continuing to learn new skills. I think that this is actually a much better model for development, than simply encouraging frenetic movement all over the place.

It also looks like my short period of running the section might be coming to an end, mixed feelings on that. However, my effective line management is so senior at the moment, that it is difficult to get them to sign off on stuff, so getting someone in who is only slightly more senior than me, and more focussed, should help move things along more briskly, which is the thing that keeps me awake at night (metaphorically speaking). As ever, I'll need to see how things pan out.


2 developments at home - more jam making - the house has been a little jam factory again this week. My wife has been working on jams and preserves, including red onion marmalade! Unfortunately I did not plant any red onions this year, so my wife had to buy them, but she has been able to make use of various fruits from my garden in small quantities, rhubarb and loganberry are relatively plentiful, as as gooseberries. For a garden, the best things to grow, are those that are

very forgiving with when you pick them
redcurrents, rhubarb, gooseberries, blackcurrents
or keep incredibly well
potatoes, apples, onions
or are just so damn nice
strawberries

However with time, it is easy enough to just fill your garden with a bit of everything, giving yourself a big always fresh outdoor larder.

3 Working on my website - I have really been enjoying getting back into working on my website, so although there was doubtless lots else to do yesterday, I spent a fair bit of time working on the website, in so far as I spent time doing anything much. Working on the website could easily become a full time activity, not that it is all that time consuming, but the principle of shearing layers applies, you can easily tackle the work in layers, as you add more, fresh issues and complexities present themselves. I was keen to add a search facility to the website, as it is easy enough for me to search material on my own computer, it would be useful to ensure that there was similar functionality on the website itself. Thinking about it, it was clear that adding the code for google to do a site search, was technically straightforward, albeit beyond my ken. Sure enough google supplies the appropriate tools to generate some snippets of code for insertion on your website, which I duly did. I did need to do a couple of amendments
- to shorten the length of the search box, now at 22 - if you want to check the code for the relevant amendment
- to ensure that the search results opened in a new window - basically "target" - check the code for the relevant amendment too

After a bit of trawling about, I found answers on the support forums to both these questions.

Of course at present, google is working off an out of date index of my site, so the search will not actually turn up anything useful, but that will fix itself soon enough. Things like this make you realise that despite appearances, google is not actually omniscient.

I also took some photos of the coatstand I made a while back, and added some details about it to my website.

As I mentioned above, the work comes in layers, my research yesterday on the support forums, also suggests that I should ensure that all my pages are actually given meaningful names, and I really do need to update names and alt tags everywhere, I have been pretty lazy with them.

I also need to update my iPhoto stuff, as some pages, are simply taking images from my main iPhoto library, so anything new, automatically gets uploaded, whether I want it to or not. Simply a case of putting stuff in folders, and amending a couple of links.

4 comments on rapidweaver and forum based support - I really like rapidweaver. My previous website work has been based on text editors, or simply something like mozilla to do the basic coding. I have always been open to getting web software, and have on occasion reviewed the various options. However Dreamweaver is vastly to expensive for what I could actually justify. This is basically a hobby site, it is not a business. I did get Freeway some time ago, and did one page using it, but I just hated the results. I found that notwithstanding the time it took, basically I preferred the results from coding a page by hand.

However, I just love rapidweaver. It is pretty intuitive, and comes out of the box, with some pretty amazing default themes, and set ups. Basically it is easy and pleasant to use, and the finished results are very impressive.

Having said all this, is rapidweaver for everyone? For someone like myself, who is used to doing pretty basic web coding by hand, it is a delight to use. Since getting broadband, I have also taken an interest in recent developments on the web, so that I can find my way round pod-casts, technorati, support forums, and look up html tags when I need to. The other week, when I could not get rapidweaver to upload, I checked out the support forums, and tried out some stuff, before using an ftp application - cyberduck - and finding out that I have filled up my file allocation with my webprovider, and as soon as I deleted some files, everything worked okay again.

If you really don't want to get your hands dirty with code, then rapidweaver is not the magic answer. It is not as simple as just posting onto livejournal etc, you do need to understand the basics.

After all I was not born knowing the basics of web publishing, I did an hnc option years ago, and I have been dabbling ever since. If someone is keen, then I would thoroughly recommend doing some proper training, it was some of the most enjoyable and creative training I have ever done. In tandem with some training, rapidweaver is excellent.

Initially my thinking was that support forums were probably better than a manual. Certainly manuals, are forever getting printed out, then languishing unloved and unread somewhere. However while a support forum is a fine place to hang out, and is pretty good at gradually expanding your knowledge base, often in unexpected ways, they are not a particularly quick way to find an answer to a question. Doubtless the answer is out there, or in there, but finding it is not easy. Often doing a search is impossible, because your key words, are so common, they do not narrow down the possible responses, and the titles of entries seldom indicate what they contain. The titles are written before any answers are posted.

Like many things, the answer is probably better meta data, either by way of tagging, or by bringing together stuff into a wiki, so that like stuff sits together better. In terms of usability, I find that something with a degree of thoughtful editing, often suits the user best, while something with enthusiasm will contain the answer, it will be buried deep, and something unduly constrained by editing, will inevitably be very hit or miss, and less fun to browse.

Of these rough categories,
thoughtful editing - wikipedia, and various commercial, semi commercial sites
enthusiasm - rapidweaver
unduly constrained - apple support forums

There is also a slight element of fanatical zeal on the rapidweaver forums. While I love the software, I do not hang out on the support forums for hours every week, like some people do. If rapidweaver is to appeal to those with less web experience, then it needs to be presented as an easy learning curve, and that really does require a good manual, a tightly edited wiki style support, and additional technical support. Intrinsically there is no reason why the software could not support this market.

Also worth adding that the vodcasts really are excellent, and should be an essential component of technical support.

5 anything else that comes to mind, while typing up the above stuff

I really fancy getting more computer geek tee shirts, well because, basically, I guess, sort of, that is who I am. Jamfactory tee shirts (rapidweaver) links, and O'Reilly currently appeal, but all very silly and frivolous, lets be honest

I am swithering setting up additional blogs, but really not sure whether it is best to have one blog, with everything in, or separate ones, with relevant stuff in them. The functionality of a blog is pretty appealing, but there is no point in creating something too unwieldy. To be honest, this blog is vastly bigger and more rambling, than any other blog that I have read, which makes me think, that making it even bigger and more rambling, is probably a bad idea.

It is tempting to have a huge rant about all the changes at work, but although everything seems very different and uncertain at the moment, as well as being personally quite inconvenient, I'm sure that things will fall into place eventually.

I think that traditionally jobs were about bashing out widgets as quickly and as cheaply as you could.

Nowadays a lot of that bashing out widgets work has been automated, so that clever people are not bashing out the same widgets for a whole career, instead they are figuring out how to bash out new widgets, or how to bash out old widgets in a new factory, or what sort of widgets we should really be bashing out.

Although there is a certain amount of routine process work in my job, there is a policy element, where I should be doing something new, thinking about new things, pushing forward new solutions.

I think that a lot of our organisation is about doing new stuff, relatively speaking we are not a large organisation, but like many businesses that deal with information and knowledge, we concentrate resources into the bits that deal with change and 'new-ness'. And correspondingly take resources out of an area once it has been 'fixed'.

With a new government in place there is a lot that is new, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld
As we know, There are familiar old things. There are things we know we know. We also know There are familiar new things. That is to say We know there are some things That are new. But there are also unfamiliar new things, The ones we don't know and haven't planned for.

My job is supposed to be about dealing with change, and now that there is a bit more change than I am used to, I should just get on with it, demonstrating an ability to cope well with change should be a good thing. BUT IT IS WEARYING.

Other slightly more random [my daughter's favourite word, apparently it is like 'cool' when I was young, the shorthand for all that is good, for the people your age, as clearly anyone older is hopelessly 'uncool' or 'unrandom'] notes.

Last weekend I had a few extra days appended to my weekend. Had a trip over to my mother-in-law's to tend the patch of ground over there that I am using as an allotment. It is laid out so that it can run okay with a few short trips each year, whereas my own garden is a lot closer, so it gets more regular attention. A quick morning blitz, spent digging up and digging in winter field beans/green manure which I will certainly try again, and generally weeding the plot. All going well I will have a crop of garlic and carrots and for decoration I am growing some dill from seed down the centre of the plot.

While getting some crops is welcome, I am also keen to improve the soil, currently very light, and quite poor, hence the green manure. I am also starting to understand why traditional farming patterns often involved small plots in various locations, rather than the modern practice of huge plots. By having a variety of plots, in different areas with different soils, you can plant far more appropriately, and are far less likely to face catastrophic losses. Traditional farming had to be much more sensitive to what nature would allow, as there was less scope to use brute force such as nitrogen rich fertilisers. In general nature uses evolution and good solutions, rather than brute force, and the appliance of energy intensive solutions. Smarter enzymes rather than more power.

Also did some work on my own garden, mainly digging out a small patch and putting in a cranberry pit, basically just a small area with old manure bags dug in round it, and backfilled with ericaceous compost, topped off with pine needles and pine forest mulch, with a few cranberry plants. With luck, and good acid soil, they should thrive. The composts are awful loose, might need to dribble in some clay to give it some body.

This will bring the total number of fruits in my garden upto, "I've lost count, plus one". Clearly a substantial increase!

I did keep a notebook recording what I was doing in the garden, but I'm switching onto Voodoopad, for those notes now, and it is just so great. For example noting down all the different types of greenmanures that I am using, and how I get on with them. I had been noting down some garden stuff in a notebook, other stuff on loose pieces of paper, and it just never worked in any sort of useful way. Also my handwriting is illegible.

It is really fun putting together a page on voodoopad about how I have planted up cranberrys, what the various books said about them, posting in a few pictures, some interesting facts from wikipedia.

The more I use voodoopad, the more impressed I get with it, and the more useful it gets.

Final piece of random jotting. My ipod Nano went phut yesterday, my iMac refused to recognise that it was attached. Tried a few things, updated the iTunes software, restarted, swapped round cables, reset my factory settings on the iPod itself. Then worked through the five R's that you are supposed to try, and the second recommendation, the hard reset, press the menu and select at the same time, till the apple appears, did the trick.

Reading through the support material on the Apple site was not much help, they really need to update it, for example iTunes 7.2 rather than iTunes 7.1 and the iPod software updater no longer seems to exist as a standalone piece of software, but trawling round the endless look that is the support articles, who knows? Maybe that is why the need to employ geniuses as tech support.

As a mea culpa, the iPod battery was well run down, I was asking the ipod to sync more stuff than it had room for, and there was a new version of iTunes to install, so some ipod moodiness was not altogether unexpected.

=============================

As a PS I note that wikipedia is to launch a new search engine, one of my pet gripes lately has been that google has jumped the shark as a search engine. I am repeatedly finding it dificult or impossible to find anything useful using google. To be honest, most of the time I do find something useful it is simply a link to a wikipedia page, and I hardly need google to tell me that I could look in wikipedia. The problems with google are

there is so much stuff on the web now
advertised stuff is bumped up to the top, but is not often much use
the sorting for most useful does not seem to help much

I really rather miss the old yahoo where they had stuff sorted into relevant topics, and there was a degree of authorial authority. I'm all for Wikinomics and the wisdom of crowds, but there does need to be some sort of rethinking of how google works if it is to continue to be useful. Maybe a wikigoogle is the way to go.

PS today's image is a wikipedia image of a cranberry harvest,

This blog will be a bit ragged.

On the one hand, I think it is useful to be fairly straightforward, but equally no point in being too candid, when a quick search on technorati and anyone can find all the unkind words you posted about them in nineteen oatcake.

Overall the blog entries that I enjoy reading are about what people think, and are reasonably candid, so I will try and stick to that style.

Having posted my idea of a self-sorting blog on the forum for Omni-Outliner, a Macintosh outliner application, no interest. I see the idea as vastly powerful and useful, though not necessarily easy to implement. Imagine all your entries, sortable and browsable in the way that iTunes or Amazon is, you liked this post, other readers also liked this one, similar posts include, ...

One thing I have found with software, it is hugely difficult to sell a concept, people like to see something tangible.

I will probably use Omni-Outliner myself, for when it comes to capturing the random stuff in my small notebook. The process of capturing seemingly random stuff is useful, as very often two not so good ideas can combine, or some opportunity simply arises to do something off your wish list.

I now have a few business ideas, that I would like to hawk round, and if someone offers me a couple of hundred pounds for a few minutes work, then that is good money.

I have also got some ideas for 2000AD scripts, that I can write up and submit when I have a bit more time. I did have a script published years ago, and although it never seems to impress anyone else, it remains something that I am hugely proud of. I could probably work on conveying a more professional image, but at my age, I am ill inclined to jump through hoops for someone else.

I am still trying to work out which hard drive to buy for backing up. Having done a fair bit of research, and then some more, I think I am narrowing down the issues. It is amazing just how long it takes to research and work up ideas. The temptation is always to be doing stuff, and think that thinking time is wasted time, but I am increasingly realising the thinking time is well worth the time spent. A proper way of backing up my computer is essential, especially now that I am starting to buy music from iTunes. Even more crucially, my daughters are buying music from iTunes and saving it to their accounts. If this music gets lost, then I will have some hot cross bunnies for sure!

For sake of being trivial, my iTunes purchases to date are
Laurie Anderson Oh superman
The Phenomenauts Re-entry - album
Holly Gollightly and the Brokeoffs
you can’t buy a gun when you are crying - album
The Mooney Suzuki
people get ready - album
Four Fifty One socks and shoes
the Fratellis flathead
the Red Guitars good technology

I would also suggest, If your breasts, by Ivor Cutler, which is only eight seconds long, so you can hear it in its entirety simply by previewing it. This makes me laugh soo much, but people might find it puerile.

Finally things are all a bit up in the air at work. My old boss is leaving on early retirement in the coming week. We have worked together for the past couple of years, and although some other people have come and gone, for a lot of the time it has been the pair of us getting through an awful lot of stuff between us. I have constantly been told that our branch was too small, and we had far too much work to do, but by and large we have done it, and done it very well too. Working well together does mean that you have to compliment each others skills, and specialities, and we have. By nature I am methodical and organised, more delivery focussed, whereas my boss is probably more thoughtful and considered, as well as vastly more knowledgeable. So it has worked well, I worry about delivery, she figures out what we will deliver. You get very used to simply leaving the other person to cover their area, and concentrating on your own area.

But all good things come to an end, she is off on early retirement, and I am still at my desk.

Obviously this presents quite a few issues, I’ll need to start working to a new boss, I’ll need to cover all the work of the branch until we can fill vacancies, and it can take months to fill a vacancy, although there are always temporary staff.

Factor in that I simply worked through Christmas, and seriously feel like I would just like to take off and veg out for a month.

Also I am not sure whether I want to stay in my current post, I would hate to leave the branch with no-one there, equally I don’t want to commit to another three years there. I don’t want to simply mark time, if it is just spinning plates, then I would prefer to do something new.

In usual fashion, I’ve been fairly vocal on all this, and had a very useful meeting with my new boss on Friday. I suppose I could really make an effort to seem a bit less flaky, and a bit more professional, but I really do feel pretty maxed out, so no point in pretending that I am Mr SuperWonderful, when I feel like, Little Mr OnTheVergeOfANervousBreakdown.

At the end of the day, my health comes before the job, you cannot simply grab at every opportunity, some you just need to let go by.

Anyway back to my “very useful meeting” with my new boss. We set out our respective positions, and agreed a way forward. I am now pretty confident that the situation is not quite as bad as I had anticipated, the workload should be less unrealistic than I had anticipated for the next few months, and we should get some new staff in post quicker than I had thought might be the case. Also I am to take on the lead for the branch, not just because I am the only one here, but so that we can get moving on some important pieces of work. Clearly we cannot really get motoring until the branch is fully staffed, which would be three staff. However, equally, we need to get some things moving now, or we are losing valuable ground.

I’ve agreed a plan of attack, and I’ll have weekly meetings with my new boss, so we should be able to figure out pretty quickly whether we are actually making any progress, and figure out a new plan of attack as necessary.

On the basis that I am spinning a few plates, but concentrating on putting the major work in motion, it sounds like interesting work for a few months. I did apply for a couple of other posts, for fear of just being swamped where I was, but I’m now considering cancelling those applications, and seeing how things pan out where I am.

Decisions, decisions.

There is a vast difference between the approaches required at the different job bands. At a more junior level, you have clear and finite objectives, and are expected to deliver them to the best possible standard. That was certainly the approach in my original department. However at a more senior level, you have a more general work area, and you are expected to make meaningful progress across it. However it is far more difficult to agree specific and meaningful objectives at the outset. Even if you can, these are easily set aside if something else comes up.

I suppose that this could simply be a rationale for not planning, but equally I suppose, if you have a bunch of staff working to you, it will soon become apparent what meaningful progress does look like, and what running about like a headless chicken all the time looks like. The higher up you get, the more of a judgement you have to make on how good to actually do something. Are you spending too much time on something that is simply not that important in the scheme of things.

I do feel a bit conflicted trying to be a whole branch of three people in myself. However if I am working to the clear remit of delivering stuff, rather than spinning plates, then I can be more proactive in my decision making, rather than being reactive, and worrying too much about what I am not doing. To be honest I am now quite excited about getting things moving, the feedback from my outgoing boss, was that often it is important to make decisions, even if they are wrong, rather than simply failing to make decisions. Whereas at a junior grade the work is more finite and quantitative, and a wrong decision is pretty obvious, at a more senior level, the work is infinite, and qualitative.

I always take the view that good people can make bad systems work, and bad people can make good systems fail. I suppose that what this is saying is that there is a vital interpersonal side, the getting the folk right element, that you cannot neglect. But it is all a bit voodoo, and subjective, so it is easy to neglect.

Edward de Bono has a theory of different hats, for different ways of thinking. What I am talking about is something similar.

One skill set is methodical and organised against well defined and finite objectives. At this level there are relatively few other resources to call on, because basically this is grunt work that takes hours to do. You co-operate so that you can offer mutual assistance and advice, but there can be equally productive ways of working without a lot of networking or mutual assistance.

The other skills set is creative and proactive working with an imperfect understanding and higher level objectives. At this level there are plenty of resources to call upon because this is where the right contacts, experience or ideas, can ensure progress very quickly and with little real effort. How effective your networks are is crucial at this work level.

If you are moving from one type of job to another, it is not simply a case of getting better and doing more, you really do need to do things differently, or it is not going to work.

Equally if you are working in one way, looking at someone working in the other style, they seem impossibly flaky, or unduly mechanistic. It is very difficult to perceive someone’s effectiveness if you are on the other side of this particular divide. Also it is very difficult to perform, unless you know what style is expected of you. Many posts are actually transitional, they require substantial elements of each approach. Very few posts are so senior that there are no mechanistic elements to them.

[I have worked to the principle that this blog is about me, so readers can form whatever opinions they like about me, but it is not about anyone else, so it is inappropriate to write about anyone else. This is not because I am not interested, or don’t think anyone else is, but simply because it seems inherently unfair. This means I don’t really say anything bad about anyone, but also, don’t say positive things about people when I could/should. At this point it would be wrong not to say how much I have enjoyed working for my old boss, she has been a tremendously easy and supportive person to work for. Not only that, she is one of the nicest people I have ever met, vastly nicer than I am. Also vastly cleverer than I am. It is inspiring to work with someone who is that nice, but who has managed to rise to a very senior position. Clearly you do not have to be a ruthless so and so to do well.

I have also been lucky enough to work with some other tremendous people over the past year, we had a secondee from a stakeholder organisation, and she was incredible, like a kid in a sweetshop, all excited at the possibilities, and undettered by how incredibly difficult everything seems to be. I also had a new member of staff, and really enjoyed training them up, and getting them to realise that they already had a lot of the key skills for the work, and encouraging them to think about the real point of what we are actually doing. There have also been countless other folk drafted in, or loosely attached to the project, and without exception they have all been positive and unstinting in their efforts, and a huge pleasure to work with. Had a single person been difficult, our seemingly impossible task really would have been impossible. My main regret is that I did not get a chance to work more with all these people. Heartfelt best wishes to anyone that recognises themselves in the above.]

Back at work -

I have been back at work for a week, which now gives me the chance to reflect on various new things!

The previous high volume of ideas that I was noting down, seems to have dropped quite a bit, probably as I now have more structure to my time, I have less scope to pursue whatever particular intellectual windmill I might happen to be tilting at. However the volume of ideas that I am generating still comfortably exceeds the time that I have available to pursue them.

I have found the continued application of Getting Things Done useful at work. Even although my first day back did not seem like a good application of the theory, as the week unfolded, the ranking of tasks into do immediately, do today, schedule for this week, put onto wishlist, was very successful in keeping an unmanageable workload organised and less worrisome. I feel that I have changed the way that I work for the better. Truth be told this was a week where I came in with a week’s work sitting on my desk, but got little interruptions during the week, and by the end of the week, I still had most of the work I started with still sitting on my desk. Accordingly the major difference was in that I felt more in control, rather than that I magically managed to do everything.

I am also trying to be more realistic about what I can and cannot do, so that I am putting my energies into things that are achievable, rather than disipating them worrying about things.


On Friday I was out of the office, making a presentation. I always like to take up any invitations to do presentations, it is a key skill. I am not a natural presenter, and initially I hated it, but I am gradually building up confidence, so that now I only hate it some of the time. Because I don’t do it that often, and I am keen to find and develop my own style, I put a lot of effort into preparation and like to consider what went well and what did not, so that I can do better.

The presentation on Friday was not too bad, though certainly some lessons learnt. The bit that I was unhappy about was the question and answer session afterwards. If you are speaking to someone on a one to one basis there is a different way of responding, you make more responses, but shorter responses. In a question and answer session you need to make one considered response, which is a very different approach. The nature of these sessions is that people will often have personal stories or strong views that they want to get across. I am not in a position where I can fix these problems, or implement these suggestions, I can certainly listen, and whether I happen to agree or disagree personally is imaterial, I am simply there to explain our organisational policy.

Having taken up the invitation, you should always behave with courtesy and respect, something which the audience may or may not choose to do themselves, but equally you should not simply roll over and agree with everything, or run away without speaking to anyone.

I tend to have quite a light informal approach, jokey and self deprecating, but this runs the risk of appearing disrespectful.

One possible result of the question and answer session would be for me to fully convince them all that our organisational view was correct, or was fully consistent with what they were saying. However in most cases this would be impractical, and the size of the gap in views, would make any attempt insensitive. Another technique is to say that “I hear what you say” which I always take to mean “I hear what you say, but don’t agree with a word of it” so it is an option that I tend to find insulting. There is no point in promising to do stuff if you clearly have no intention of doing it either.

The whole point of the exercise in going out of the office to speak to people, is that they will listen to what I have to say, and that I will listen to what they have to say. Often these people have very little contact with people that they deem to be in authority, but they would like more contact, but are unsure about how to do it. Often the formats where they do have such contact, are organised in a very confrontational format, and they then want to maximise the opportunities they have by “winning the argument” and getting their point across. This means that these sessions become pretty bruising, with a series of people aggresively getting their points across, harrowing personal stories, attacks on the effectiveness and integrity of pretty much anyone, including yourself. Because of the artificiality of the situation, people feel empowered to behave in a way that they never would to someone’s face in a one to one conversation.

I have to find a way of responding that is both respectful of their views, that is supportive of the views of my organisation, and that I personally feel comfortable with. Also to be sustainable it has to be possible to feel reasonably comfortable with these sessions, if they are too bruising, you simply stop accepting the invitations.

One possible approach would be to set out ground rules at the start of the question and answer session, a rough list off the top of my head

It is probably helpful for me to say a few words before this session, I’ve been in the audience far more often than I’ve been standing here, but wherever you are sitting these sessions can be frustrating.

I do not have the power to change the entire policy of my organisation

I do not have the power to give anyone substantial funds on the spot

I am delighted that you gave me the opportunity to speak to you, but that is only half my reason for being here, I also want to hear what you have to say

I realise that not everyone feels comfortable speaking at these events, so I am not rushing away after this event is finished, I am delighted to speak to people afterwards, or you can get my contact details from myself or the organisers

Although this session is called a question and answer session, in my experience there are various types of questions

factual questions that I can answer immediately
factual questions or requests for action that I can take away with me
experiences or views that you want to share

you have done me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say, I am happy to do the same, for ease I would simply propose,

answering what questions I can,

I’ll promise to take away anything I think that I can do for you,

but while it is valuable to listen to our each others views and share our experiences, I did not come here to get into a shouting match with any of you, but I will offer what factual information I can.

Therefore, I’ll probably not respond to every question, but be assured I will listen to them all, lodge away what you say, try and influence others, or act where I can to deal with any issues that you might raise.

I certainly don’t think that everything is perfect, and unfortunately I cannot go back to the office and sort out everything you raise,

but I firmly believe that by talking, listening, trying to understand, trying to think about issues, we will make things better.

I have been using this week to try and implement the Getting Things Done methodology of David Allen.

I am not implementing it slavishly, if I can tweak it to suit myself better, then I have done so. The main message that I am taking from the methodology is that it is okay to be like you are, we are inherently lazy and disorganised, but by setting up appropriate systems we can make life easier for ourselves. The two main benefits are

1 that by having an effective system in place, you do not constantly feel that you have a huge burden of worries hanging over you with an avalanche warning, waiting to launch themselves down the hillside at you. You know that you have noted down all the things to do, you will review them regularly, so you are effectively doing what you need to be doing at any one time,

2 you can capture the ideas that you have, I am certainly finding that I am generating vastly more ideas for things to do than I currently have time to implement. However I don’t always feel that I am using my time well. This way, I can capture my more creative or inspired ideas, and park them till I have time to do them. Also by using a notebook as a collation of my thoughts against various ideas, the ideas can and do cross fertilise, to produce even better ideas, combining various tasks, personal goals and outcomes.

One final point, I am starting to feel better about this being a process, I don’t need to get things right first time, adequate is fine, I can work up the important stuff when I need to. Not all ideas lead to productive avenues of further development, some do. The productive stuff gets better resourced.

Useful rules,

* two minute rule = if it takes less than two minutes, just do it, when you see it
* 50/80 rule = often for the first fifty percent of effort you get 80 per cent of the benefits, stop after the first 50 percent.
* don’t leave things hanging, a job half done, is more stress than one not started, so only do stuff you can complete realistically
* fight to reduce your stress levels, and demotivating factors, depressing intrays, half done jobs, do them, or shift them
* keep your work on hand to a realistic level for you, I usually have a couple of books on the go at a time, works for me, more than that does not, know what is a realistic amount of ongoing stuff, and if you have too much trim it back
* if I stack up more than three things in my head to do, it seems infinite and stresses me out, I need to write a list after three items
* make sure the first time you do something is not too rough, I always write to a reasonable first draft standard, my hand-written notes are adequate not gorgeous - I need to write them up fairly quick before I forget the details, both standards are adequate
* date everything, head it up in block capitals, so if I note down a voicemail in my working jotter, I note VOICEMAIL and date, in the margin, when it is dealt with, I score through it. A week later I could still find that phone number I jotted down, thinking I would never need it again
* avoid post its and scrawled notes, they can clutter up the place like unwanted snow and are more depressing than a neat list of work to do
* daily working list, I create a freeform daily list of things I will conceivably do, this is backed up by the neater more extensive task list. My Getting Things Done Jotter is neatly labelled by project/strand, my daily Jotter simply has daily brainstormed worklists. Always review work list after lunch and reorder appropriately.
* I look at the jobs list after lunch, and check the headlines if I have time, therefore I don’t need a tasklist entry for these, and it eases me back to work.
* I break up long dull tasks, with short fun ones,
* do the dullest job first, everything looks best after that
* the job you dreaded most is the most satisfying once done
* if it is never going to get done, just bin it,
* it is okay to be tired, or ill sometimes, don’t beat yourself up about it
* simply having a more strategic view of your personal priorities, and vision, is the first step to achieving them.
* if simple works, simple is good, it takes real brains to make things simple, leaving them complicated is the easy/lazy thing to do
* you don’t think in straight lines, sometimes something just simmers, and a solution pops up when you least expect it, proper systems let things simmer, and let you capture the ideas
* office procedures work at home too, does you work at home stall when you the ink cartridge runs out, do like you would in the office, order a pile of them, and reorder when they run low
* whiteboard, meetings, brainstorming, can work in the office, can work at home
* I generate vastly more ideas than I can use, find places to dump then, often ideas will combine, so one task uses quite a few of them
* find balance, my work is not very creative, I am, so I try and find ways to be more creative at home
* having children or staff is very nurturing, but often not very output orientated, my work can be, so this gives me balance, which my wife might lack if she were at home with the children all day
* it is okay to eat stuff that is not your favourite food sometimes, if I like ice cream I do not eat it all the time, but if I like writing reports, I might be end up writing them all the time, simply not wanting to do something all the time, does not mean you don’t like it, it simply means that you need more balance
* actively seek balance in your life, allow yourself to seek balance in your life
* lack of balance will make you unhappy
* you are a sailing boat, not a motor boat, though you can be sometimes.
* a sailing boat works with the tides, and the winds, it makes best use of them to get where it wants to go, it might take some time, and ingenuity, and you don’t know how long it will take.
* a motor boat is quick, and reliable, but you cannot work like a motor boat for much of the time, save the motor boat approach for emergencies, don’t run it all the time, or you will run out of juice.
* understand how you like to work, what motivates you, how you need to break up your day, adapt to that
* if no one is having fun, things are unsustainable and won’t last for much longer
* sometimes ask - what would make this more fun for everyone? and then surprise everyone with it!
* work is an art, not a science. Your mind does not work in straight lines.
* it is not a sign of weakness not instantly knowing the answer, as long as you have processes to decide the answer. You don’t get to be boss because you know all the answers, but because you have mastered processes to arrive at good answers.
* capture all your ideas, in a notebook, or whatever works, they are your stock in trade, and what will differentiate you from other people
* be pragmatic about technology, if keeping your project list on a computer means that you can only access it after a fifteen minute boot up, just keep them in a Jotter you can access anytime.
* if a PDA is a pain to use, you won’t use it
* you learnt 99 percent of what you know by playing as a child, it worked then, it works now, let yourself play around with your computer programmes, it is more fun than reading the manuals, and quicker
* treat yourself, if you like a vellum notepad for noting your ideas, just buy one, a crappy pad from WallMart is depressing and will put you off using it
* what demotivates you, deal with it
* we lived with an out of focus television for years, it cost fifty quid to get the aerial tuned, the best fifty quid we ever spent!
* have the work you will deal with just now on your desk, find somewhere else for the remainder
* a big pile of work you are not doing is depressing, it is worth taking some overtime to blitz it, or failing that, put it in a cupboard somewhere
* travel time is good for reading, also good for looking out the window and coming up with ideas
* Sorry Goldilocks - there is no magic that says you will get enough work, but not too much work to do each week
* good staff will generate ideas and work, work will come to them, the best staff are the busiest, they can do most,
* you got hired because you were bright, you are expected to prioritise your workload and it is bound to include stuff you will never do, make pragmatic decisions on what to do with the excess, even if that is just flagging it to your boss
* no one else knows how much you do, they do form a judgement on the quality of your work, and your reliability.
* you can get away with very poor quality work if you do it really quickly. You send me an email, I email back immediately with - great tanks.
* after a while, even the Sistene Chapel ceiling is not good enough, leave work long enough, and no possible response is good enough to justify the delay.
* be very wary of taking on inappropriate work, just because you seem to be the only one who can do it. If your boss cannot operate their email, that is their problem, it does not become your job. If there are no support staff, don’t end up doing everyone’s filing for them. It is someone else’s problem, don’t become their solution.
* if you cannot make the decision, influence the decision
* you don’t get thanked or recognised for doing peripheral crap, do the peripheral crap you enjoy doing, ditch the rest.
* ask for overtime to do the peripheral crap, you will soon find out just important it is to management. I’ll come in at the weekend to tidy the stationery cupboard, and it will cost you fifty quid.
* be really nice to new starts, they appreciate and need it the most
* if folk remember you, it is useful. Consider wearing period costume to interviews where there will be a lot of candidates. It will make you stand out.
* everything is true. Accept everything as potentially true, you are smart enough to focus on what is useful to you.
* allow things to niggle you, sometimes you don’t have a solution to hand, but if you leave it to niggle, you might come up with the right idea.
* evolve your processes to suit you, I like reading, but my eyes get tired, now I listen to a lot of podcasts on my iPod.
* no one does wrong stuff because they are lazy and stupid. Just because some person or section seems ineffective, don’t just assume they are lazy and stupid. Assuming people are lazy and stupid generates no useful solutions. Understanding the problem does.
* ditto evil - assuming ideas or people are evil, is unlikely to help you work with them effectively.
* everyone is a rational human being.
* all decisions are rational, in the terms of the people making them. For them, at that time, with the information and resources they had, that was the easiest best decision they could make.
* you might need to change the resources or information/understanding to let them make what you see as better decisions.
* doing nothing is a decision of sorts, and very seldom the worst decision
* there is no user manual for your brain. You are the world authority on getting it to work most productively, but it may take a lifetime to figure it out.
* time out is seldom wasted, if it lets you clear your head a little.
* you need to develop your own vision of what is right for you, once again you are the world authority on this subject, but you might need to do a lot of thinking on it
* it is okay to take time for organising and thinking. Thinking and organising takes time to do properly, but it is worth it.
* you need to create the space to do what you need to do. Creative thinking hates interruptions, my family have all woken up and come down to the living room, so I’ll wrap up now and post this to my blog.