Saturday, November 13, 2010

Trying to Do Someone Else's Job Isn't Helping Them

So, something came up on Friday at work and I've thought it more (after sleeping on it). I was annoyed (big surprise) when I was trying to solve a problem that a customer was having. On solving it, I needed to direct some other people in other teams and departments on the exact nature of the problem, and what to do to fix it.
The annoyance came from the unsolicited help I was getting from someone I was asking for only information: what's the problem, when, where, who, etc.
This person wanted to troubleshoot. I explained I wasn't looking for speculation (since he couldn't see the whole picture) and just needed the information. Not suggestions about the solution.
Then I've realized that there's a deeper problem that I'm not going to be able to solve. So now, I need to just pass the information & specifics to Development...and not to do their job for them by telling them what to do.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Barely Enough Time Is Still Enough

So with my fall semester at Kennesaw State for my eMBA program coming to a close, I'm finding that the last "rush" of assignments left me feeling like I had barely enough time in my days. Getting married during this semester compounded the time management issues. My new bride and I managed to pull that planning and event off flawlessly. So, we clearly had "enough" time to get it done and done right.
I find that instead of worrying about how much time I have left before a deadline, or how much time on each task to allot per day, a different approach has been working better for me.
I'm starting sooner. The opposite of procrastination. Even if I don't do much, I try to get started on whatever it is right away. For me, for whatever reason, that's working out much better. I could pontificate on why this is, and how it can work for you, but instead, I'm going to go get back to work.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Awesome new phone

So, I got the new Droid phone for my Verizon account. It had a $100 rebate, too. This is a really cool phone. I love being able to talk to it and have it pull up maps and directory info from Google. And the painless sync'ing of my Google calendar was a thrill to see. Such a cool phone, too. I need the clickety key qwerty keyboard, you know?