Category: Work

So after trying to track my life / work, I’ve now put Toggl on pause.  It was more of a chore to keep track of things than just inputting my time usage on a text file at the end of the work day and I felt that I wasn’t getting any useful data out of it.

Now this might be a “me thing not a you thing”.  It may be highlighting the fact that I am jumping back and forth between my projects too quickly in an inefficient way.  Or maybe my task categorizations are not properly set up, which is why I’m not getting useful data.

In any case, it’s now on pause and I need to rethink my toggl strategy before getting back into it.

This was a concept I originally learned about the office environment.  There are people in a company that have authority via the official titles, but the firm often has informal lines of power where things really get done.  As a participant in the office environment, the key is to navigate both terrains simultaneously. 

Now that I’ve been on client side for about four months, I still think about the concept quite a bit.  Due to my job title, I have quite a bit of authority.  It’s nice to know that I can drop the hammer when necessary, but I don’t ever want to do that.  I want to empower my consultants so they enjoy working with our agency and will keep coming back to work with us.

Beyond getting the job done, and getting it done well, our goal is to do it in such a way that all participants come out of it believing that they have been enriched for having gone through the process

I once had a buddy who got stiffed a hundred bucks on a freelance gig for a guy who was starting up his own firm.  Not a huge deal, my buddy grumbled about it, and kept on scrapping his way through the recession.  A decade later, I just found out the dude who stiffed my friend is now in a lawsuit with some former partners at that firm he founded.

It can feel quite unfair to hold someone against their worst moments, especially if its over small things, but it may be prudent to stay wary.

Earlier this month, I was tasked with programming one of the larger buildings in our inventory.  As such, we met with decision makers in  twenty three departments of our state.

Needless to say, it was quite a revelation for a noobie in government.  What I saw were a lot of people who were working hard to get their work done with the limited resources that was allotted to them.  That should be obvious after a moment’s thought, but given decades of anti-government propaganda, its not the first thing you think about when you hear “government worker”.

Furthermore, a significant subset of those folks served directly under the elected official in charge of their department.  As such, many of them were uncertain whether they would even be at their job in the coming year.  Even so, they took on this extra task on top of their already packed agenda and helped collect the detailed information we needed for a project which will come to fruition in five or six years.

It took me several years in architecture school to have the blindingly obvious epiphany that every single object we have around us was designed and crafted by a human being.  This exercise similarly revealed that every single thing that is done in government (for better or worse) was designed and is currently executed by a person, a full person with all the strains and stresses that comes being human.

So I wish all the best those who are polishing up the customary letters of resignation this morning at the end of an election season, especially for those who know their letters will be will be accepted.  Being caught among the detritus of a government transition is part of the game when you play at those higher levels, but I doubt it makes it any easier.

A couple weeks ago, I developed a new system for my daily things to do.  I’m not sure if it will hold long term, but I’m pretty intrigued by it so I thought I’d share.  Its based off of the Pomodoro system, but without the pomodoros.

It’s a simple mix of analog and digital.  In the morning, I very quickly skim the emails to make sure I don’t have any new calendar invites for the day and then print out the daily calendar from outlook.  This calendar page then gives me a sheet of paper to take notes from voicemails.  After voicemails I skim the emails more carefully to make sure there isn’t anything that needs to be immediately addressed.

Once that is completed, I then pull up Microsoft OneNote which holds my god-list list with all the tasks that need to be done for all my projects.  I scan the list and pull off the items I want to work on for the day.  The god list idea came from following the various lists that Mark Foster has played with over the years.   Unlike Mark Foster who does a simple undifferentiated list, this list is categorized by project, furthermore every item on the list is highlighted with a responsible party, so I can keep track of major items and the project status.  The daily printout and selection concept comes from the Pomodoro Technique, even though I don’t currently execute the 25 minute pomodoro routine at this time.

Once I have this daily list written down, I take a deep breath, prioritize the items, take another deep breath, and start on the first one.  I am generally pretty good at estimating time, and will end up knocking most of the items on the list, with a couple less urgent items left uncompleted at the end of the day, which is fine by me. 

The god list and the daily sheet play together hand in hand.  The daily sheet ensures that I don’t miss any appointments for the day and keeps me focused on that tasks that need to be accomplished immediately.  It also gives me context for the day, and I know that if I need to chase something that comes up out of the blue, something else on that daily list won’t get done.  If that trade is acceptable, I go ahead and address it.  For everything else, the god list is that it is my release valve.  If there is a task that I need to address but is not immediately urgent, I write it on the god list, highlight it showing that it is my responsibility, and then forget about it.  With several projects burning at once, it is important to have each day in context as well as a simple list that gives me an immediate snapshot of all of my responsibilities.

The one bit of occasional maintenance that would not be obvious from the notes above is that I aspire to be an inbox zero guy.  I will quickly scan the emails in the morning, and then about once a week when things get out of hand I purge through my inbox and sent folders.  I try to file or delete all emails.  If an email points out a task that needs to be done, I add an entry in my OneNote god-list and then file the email in its project folder.  For the rare important unresolved emails, I’ve played with the idea of filing a copy of the email in a separate OneNote page with the project and task as the title, but that seems too unwieldy so I still just leave those it in the inbox.  So I’m not a true zero guy, since I usually end up with a couple emails in my inbox.

The biggest issue I need to work on is making sure I carve out time to do the One thing, aka the important but non-urgent items Q2 items in Stephen Covey’s matrix.  Part of the problem is that I’m still relatively new at the job, so a lot of things are coming at me fast.  Hopefully with time discernment will come.  As I write, it seems that I need to prioritize training more than I have previously….once I take care of my biggest batch of fires that will push me through the month.

I was thinking of one of my favorite clients and the brain went to the question “why?”  What made her such a good client?

I think it was her mix of enthusiasm and experience.  There is the heated enthusiasm of novices, which is cute but ultimately frustrating when the team ends up constantly reinventing the wheel.  There is also jaded experience where one’s joy has been sucked out over the cruel passage of time.

But when one finds a good mix, it makes for a great working relationship.  A consultant is hired by the client to help them help themselves.  And the consultant can best accomplish that when the client starts with a strong concept of the destination, even if they aren’t sure how to get there (after all that’s why the consultant was needed).

While it is important to have a client who grasps the basics, it’s also a joy to work with someone who is still open to new and different ideas.  A good client is interested enough in the project to realize they aren’t the only person with the answers.  You want to work for someone who wants you for more than the final physical deliverables.

There is a balancing act with enthusiasm and experience, and when you’ve come across who’s got it, cherish it while it lasts.

Twice in my career, my compensation has jumped by about half twice.  Not surprisingly, both jobs came via referral from a friend who worked at the new firm.  More importantly, both of these guys had been unemployed for some time.

While it certainly can’t hurt to hang with people who already have juicy jobs, there is something counterintuitively opportunistic about picking up the check for with someone without a gig.  This guy isn’t just open to opportunities, he is actively looking for openings in a way you aren’t.  His full time job is to find one.

If a place is hiring, there’s a chance it’s not just one single position that needs to be filled.  So aside from being a good person and treating your buddy to lunch, there might be a crass benefit on the other side.

I woke up this morning thinking about a project we were just released to start a last week.  This is the first project where I didn’t take over mid-stream, so it has been a bit of an adventure figuring out how to set it up within the state’s system.  Fortunately, I am working with an architect who was familiar with the process and the agency that requested the project.

It’s only the beginning, so there are plenty of ways for things to go sideways.  I certainly learned that difficult lesson working on my own never ending house remodel.  However, the bigger lesson from that remodel is that every job is a transaction.  In this case, I am purchasing expertise and the contractual deliverables.  Yes, I own the project and the money, so it looks like I have the power, but ultimately we’re equals in this trade.

On Facebook, someone posted about a conundrum where he was given too much work to do, informed his boss of the problem, told to just get it done, and then chastised for not getting everything done in a day.  This was my response.

“You’re a tough situation. What I have done differently in your scenario above to make sure there is a clear gameplan before your boss walks away.

“It is appropriate to give your boss the initiative in setting priorities. If he doesn’t, then you need to propose a specific work plan. Such as “In the 11 hours we are allowed to work, I think I can get ABC done, which means that DEF may be pushed back till tomorrow, does that sound good?” Don’t let him leave without forcing him to give you a clear idea of your priorities.

“And I agree with the previous responder, it is also a really good thing to send your boss an email at the end of the day, “as discussed today, I did ABC, and started on D, unless you need something different, I should get D and E tomorrow. Here are the issues we are dealing with…” Such an email will preemptively deal with his question of “why?” and help him start prioritizing your tasks first thing tomorrow morning when he’s checking correspondence.

“You may also need to have a brutally frank conversation of this nature: “Ok, for me to complete ABCDEF all today, I need to cut corners. Are you ok with executing this work at below our typical company standards to get them all out the door?”  Obviously there are some things you can’t fuck with (such as life safety) but most things can go Chevy vs Cadillac. And again, if there is flexible in quality, then that is a decision for your boss to make, so help him out by highlighting the available options to him.

“Ultimately it’s our job to give honest assessments of work progress to the guys upstairs, so they have the best info for doing their job in allocating team resources.  And if they refuse to listen to reality, there is the final answer, dust off your resume.