Category: Productivity

Leaning Out Can Be a Form of Leaning In

I just finished Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
While I commend her for an insightful book on the world of women and work, I am not sure that I agree with everything in her book.  I found her viewpoint to be very biased toward the importance of women having a career.  Sheryl’s book is an important manifesto for women in leadership and the role of women in society today.  She champions the cause of women in senior leadership and encourages and empowers women today.  Although I think this is an important cause, it is not the only role for women in society.  I believe that women can have it all and juggle family and career.

I realize that not all women have a choice and many must work; I was fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom for 13 years.  Our family made choices to move to places with lower cost of living and to live a more modest lifestyle.  After my girls reached middle school, I rejoined the workforce.  I believe that different seasons can lead to different choices.  I believe that those years at home with my children were an important contribution to society.  It is my opinion that the shaping of the lives of the next generation and the fabric of family is too important a task to leave to others.  

Although Sheryl might say that I “leaned out,” I would disagree.  I leaned in – to different priorities.  I would not trade those years for anything.  They resulted in close relationships with my daughters who are now confident, happy, and productive young adults. 

Attention Deficit or Attention Surplus?

As a knowledge worker, I am always on the alert for how to maximize my productivity.  As anyone can attest, your mental energy ebbs and flows throughout the day.  I’ve been reading about how to take advantage of those rhythms and how to recognize the optimal structuring of your time and attention.  This article caught my eye, “One of the first keys, … is to recognize that you have a finite attentional window–and structure your workflow to be congruent with that capacity. This speaks to … how work is a series of sprints–and to be our most productive and most creative, we need to unplug throughout our workdays.” The rest of the article can be found here.

So that morning cup of tea and reading an article on creativity and productivity are actually going to boost my productivity.  The down time where we focus on something other than the task at hand often produces new ideas or new approaches that actually move the project along.  Getting up and taking a brisk walk or talking to a colleague are other ways that I take a mental energy break.  So often I find that a bit of fresh air gets those neurons firing again.  I always take Siri along on my walks so I can dictate any brainstorms that come to me. I find that these habits boost my attention.

Technology Old School

I had an interesting experience this morning.  For a presentation to some of my colleagues, we needed to borrow a projector and screen from the Tech center on campus.  My colleague went over to collect the equipment.  The screen would not fit in her car.  So she called another colleague with an SUV.  The students working in the Center watched her make two trips to carry the rolling suitcase and then the unwieldy screen down from the third floor to her car.

When we got the screen to our second floor location (no elevator) in another building, and mind you this is quite heavy and about 7 feet long, it was difficult to figure out how to open the tripod legs.  Then the screen itself, which retracts into the housing, was stuck.  It was evident from the dirt in the end of it, that it had been dropped out of doors and damaged.  We asked a co-worker in a neighboring department if we could borrow his brute strength and significant height (read leverage) advantage to help us open the screen.  Through that strength and improvising with a scissor blade since we had no screwdriver, he was able to open the screen after a bit of prying. 

Then we had to find an extension cord for the projector since it is three prong and not all the outlets in this building are three prong.  We actually had to unplug a computer and printer to do this (luckily this office is not currently in use).  The projector quality was dubious – it significantly changed the colors of the images we were projecting from our computer. 

I asked the Tech center to please come pick up the equipment (they wanted us to bring it back to them).  Apparently this was too much to ask – they don’t have access to a van or a van driver or something!  Clearly we need to look into getting our own equipment!

Habits

I follow a blog that recently had these suggestions about creating new habits successfully:

“In practice, doing habits one month at a time is fast. In one year you could:

  • Wake up earlier

  • Exercise regularly
  • Eat properly
  • Set up a productivity system
  • Establish deliberate practice time for your craft
  • Become more organized
  • Read a book per month
  • Cut out wasteful Internet surfing
  • Keep your e-mail inbox empty
  • Cut down on television
  • Learn a new skill
  • Maintain a journal or diary”

I’ve highlighted the ones in blue that resonated with me.  Early to Rise inspired me to get going in the mornings and use my time to do what is important to me.  So far I’ve succeeded at 2 of these (running and rising early) and made progress in 3 more (journaling, reading, watercolor/drawing).  Where will I be this time next year?  I feel fully alive now and am excited about living intentionally.

You can read the whole blog about developing habits here.

What resonates with you?

    Beginner Drawings

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and post some of my early drawings.  These were both made after about a month of drawing and shading simple shapes and practicing basic exercises.  I still have a long way to go, but in the spirit of “ship something” (a la Seth Godin) and the inspiration of the Early to Rise challenge, I’m going to share these two drawings with the world.  They are by no means ‘good’ or perfect, but I am pleased with how they came out, and more importantly, how much I am learning.

     

    Fully Alive

    I work with a wonderful group of colleagues.  Our newest team member regularly accomplishes the impossible, usually before lunch, and always with a positive attitude.  She is full of enthusiasm and ideas.  Another colleague made a remark to me recently about how she was doing things to grow personally – and she had taken up running and another hobby.  She had just run a 5k and felt great.

    I was impressed and inspired by her desire to grow and stretch herself.  And it challenged me to get serious, to be intentional about some of the things I have been meaning to do.  So, I’ve taken up drawing.  I try to practice for 10-15 minutes per day most days.  I don’t get to it every day, but I have consistently been working at it for about 5 weeks now and am pleased to see that I am learning and improving.  I also decided to get serious about exercise.  I found that I already had an app on my phone which had a program for beginning runners which alternates walking and running, gradually increasing the amount of time spent running.  It takes about 30-35 minutes and I have been doing it 3 times per week for the last four weeks.  It’s still hard, and I’m not great at it – I’m pretty slow.  But I am going to keep at it.

    My next challenge is a book I just ordered called The Early to Rise Experience.  It has 30 days of readings and inspirational messages.  The promo for the book states “Mornings are pregnant with ideas, wisdom and peace. They are an untapped source for a more productive, balanced and joyful life.” Now I obviously know that I can get up earlier without reading a book!  And I am naturally a morning person, but we all need a little kick sometimes to remind us to do what we really want and not sleep in when we could be living life to the full!

    It’s exciting to see how all these proactive strategies are feeding my creative juices and making me more intentional, more thoughtful.  I am full of expectation and fully alive.

    My last job was so not boring

    Here’s a partial list of some of my adventures while working at Adventures In Missions:

    • Edit books
    • Buy $22,000 worth of plane tickets in one morning [a group of 50 people going to 2 continents]
    • compare phone plans for 2 users who average 4-5000 minutes per month
    • interview potential staff and potential mission candidates
    • buy cameras – ranging from point and shoot, to flip video, to $20,000 HD movie camera
    • price equipment like green screens
    • talk to wives of country music sensations and NFL players about missions
    • prepare initial disaster response plans for Haiti [esp mail campaign and publicity]
    • build websites
    • write procedure manuals
    • teaching and training
    • reconcile Am Ex expenses in the thousands and tens of thousands for boss
    • Skype with people all over the globe
    • manage budgets
    • solve travel issues at 2 am via phone for teams in Thailand
    • study traffic on the web for boss stuck in Atlanta trying not to miss a flight
    • host board meetings
    • travel to Tijuana, Matamoros, Lima, Los Angeles, Colorado Springs, and Kensington [Philly]
    • develop infrastructure for 11 month worldwide mission trip
    • design annual report
    • host missionaries
    • plan direct mail campaign that raised tens of thousands
    • review/organize photos and videos for use in documents, calendars, reports, websites, books, blogs
    • manage calendar for executive director
    • order countless books on Amazon
    • manage 100+ emails per day
    • personal travel agent for Exec Director traveling worldwide
    • read books on fundraising and marketing

    This is just a partial list to give you a sense of what a great job it was
    Six years of exhilarating variety!

    The Concept of Failing Forward

    I subscribe to a newsletter from a company called Behance that is geared toward the creative artistic type.   A quote from a recent article by John Caddell caught my eye, “A mistake is a collision between your perception and reality. As such, it’s a terribly valuable asset.”  What we percieve as failure is often the catalyst to move us into new territory.  If something doesn’t work out, you are forced to consider other ideas, to come at something from a new angle.  


    It is really kind of funny that I enjoy reading the articles in Behance since it is really geared for people who are completely different from me in personality.



    The website tagline for Behance is “We empower creative professionals to make ideas happen.”  I first stumbled upon them through the program called Action Method Online.  While it is geared to the right brain type who is not as organized, the concepts can help those of us who are more left brained to stay on top of the multiple projects, whether personal or work related, that clutter our minds and lists.  The software has a free version, that I have used in my job to collaborate and manage projects.  I also love their “Action Notebook” – high quality and nicely laid out for keeping track of projects and notes.