06.03.08
Calm vs. crazy
Monday was such a calm day at work that I was beginning to think I showed up on Saturday by mistake. After a small flurry of emails between me and a vendor and a phone call to another vendor, the rest of the day was relatively quiet. Few people came into my office, the phone didn’t ring much and even email activity quieted down. It was kind of serene– and downright eerie.
Tuesday more than made up for it. I had to come in late, handle multiple problems, phone calls, and visitors, attend a meeting, work with a colleague to try to figure out how to set up new digitization software, and return calls to the director and HR director (which I ran out of time to do). I ended up working until 7:50 pm, because it was finally quiet in my office and in my mind. I was able to really dig into finding solutions to the problems we encountered while setting up the digitization software. I just wish I had time for that kind of stuff during my regular workday, rather than after everyone was gone.
Wednesday promises to be a hectic repeat of Tuesday, with another late arrival, three scheduled meetings, returning phone calls to the director and HR director, and handling whatever crises arises (I’m sure there will be at least one or two). I hope I have time for lunch. That sounds silly, but it’s true. Some days it’s easier to just skip lunch and use that hour to get more work done, rather than take it and have to work an hour over to make up for lost time.
Sometimes I wish everyone else would take a vacation– all in the same week– so I can get some work done without staying so late.
05.12.08
Workload exceeds maximum!
Each time I got a voice mail today, my voice mail system gave me an ominous warning that my inbox was getting so full, it was considering not letting me hear any messages. It told me I had to delete or move emails first in order to free up space. It came down to my basic curiosity– how bad did I want to know who the caller was or what they wanted? Would it be worth it to free up inbox space just to find out I had a new task, project, or problem to handle?
Hmmm… curiosity got the better of me. I decided to squirrel away some unread newsletters that were piling up. I stuffed them into a folder on my hard drive, along with dozens of other unread newsletters from the same sender. Sigh… wish I had time to read them. Maybe someday…. Wait- forget that daydream of getting caught up– the voice mail beckons. After hearing it, I was right. I have a new project to work on and a phone call to return. Guess I’ll have to read those newsletters later, whenever that is…
I’m so far behind on reading my blogs I might as well clear out the aggregator and start over. When I worry about what I may have missed in unread blog posts, I try to tell myself if it were that important, I’d find time to read them every day. Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially when the voice mail and email inboxes are full to bursting.
In addition to emails, voice mails, and newsletters, I tried desperately to keep up with new projects today by writing them down on a pad of paper. It was a great idea– until I remembered I had several pads of paper scattered about my desktop with lots of old projects written on them. Guess it’s time to consolidate them on one large piece of paper and figure out which ones need to be done first.
I’ve tried putting new projects or tasks into Microsoft Outlook’s tasks and assigning due dates, reminders, and priorities. But they only end up annoying me when the reminder pops up and I don’t have time to do the task or project right then, usually because something else has come up. I know I can change the reminder or even dismiss it. I can also ignore it and have the software tell me how many hours, days, or even weeks I’ve been ignoring it. There’s nothing like being reminded you’re really far behind on your to-do list–and like a true packrat, I can accumulate overdue reminders like nobody else.
05.04.08
Overwhelmed!
If anyone was following this blog regularly, you’ve probably wondered what happened to me or maybe even given up reading it. If you were disappointed in my poor performance, you have my sincerest apologies. It’s just that I’ve been super-busy lately. I’ve started at least 5 different posts, but have been unable to perfect and publish any of them. So rather than finish writing even one of them, my solution is to write a new one! What else would a packrat do? If I can’t accumulate unwritten blog posts, then I’m not a true packrat.
One of the things that has overwhelmed me lately is my accumulation of new blog subscriptions. For the longest time, I had a manageable collection of blogs to read– somewhere around 65. But in the course of keeping up with my professional readings, I’ve discovered more blogs and subscribed to them. Being the packrat that I am, the number quickly jumped to 92 (I just added another today http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/). I don’t want the number to rise any higher, so I need to review the list and prune the deadwood. (I also need to learn how to speed read.)
Before I pruned any blogs from my reader, I decided to read through some of them. Of course, I didn’t get very far before finding this post from Steve Rubel about attention crash and managing email, blogs, and everything else our in digital world. He referred to Inbox Zero, which offers tips on keeping your email inbox empty. A colleague of mine already recommended this same link to me, but I’ve failed to spend enough time investigating or implementing it. Maybe it’s because my own inbox is so overwhelmingly stuffed that I feel there’s no hope for ever getting it to zero. Inbox Zero could more accurately refer to my attention span, which is hovering around zero these days.
Steve wrote about investing in search tools, although he didn’t mention a new tool called Twine, which I’ve signed up to beta test. Twine is a semantic web application that’s supposed to tie everything together, meaning you tell it what you’re interested in and it searches the Web for that information. It can make recommendations and even link you up with like-minded people who share the same interests.
Steve’s blog also mentioned the book The 4-hour workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I just got a copy from my library over the weekend, so I have yet to read it. Hopefully I can work it into my piles of nonfiction books awaiting me on my hope chest at home (how appropriate!– they’re hoping to be read). When I figure out Twine and read Tim’s book, I’ll let you know if either of them are useful, whether or not you’re a packrat.
03.28.08
Out of sight, out of mind
The papers I threw into my in-box the other day stayed there the rest of the week, just as I feared they would. I totally forgot about them. Despite having my in-box on top of my desk, it’s outside of my line of sight when I’m facing my computer, which is most of the day. So anything that lands in it is basically ‘out of sight, out of mind’ as far as my AD/HD brain is concerned. I know left-brained people (like my husband) don’t understand this concept. His paper and email in-boxes are always cleaned out, every day. Nothing sits or piles up- ever!
Before leaving for the day, I grabbed those papers out of the in-box and clipped a “To File” note to them. I put them next to my computer, where I’d be forced to look at them Monday morning. That way I can be assured they won’t lie there all next week, slowly being buried by new papers that land on top of them.
Speaking of always emptying an email in-box (oh, not mine, of course)– my husband deletes or prints out his emails every day, so his in-box is squeaky clean. The other day, he was trying to sign up for online banking at our new bank. I told him we already did that when we opened accounts there last fall– didn’t he get the confirmation email like I did? He checked his email and well– of course it wasn’t there. I searched my 1,200+ messages and found it within seconds (thanks to Yahoo’s email search box).
Ha! The Packrat strikes again! I proved that although I keep just about everything, I can usually find something somebody needs. People think I’m organized, but the real secret is that I never throw anything away. The trick is finding it when I need it…
03.26.08
Chaos
I should never leave the office during the week. Chaos inevitably breaks out. Not that it doesn’t break out most days– it’s just that when I’m gone, I’m at a bit of a disadvantage of being in the loop of general information. Even checking email from home keeps me only partially in the loop, since face-to-face communication is impossible and I miss phone calls.
When I’ve been gone from my office, it seems like so many people come in with questions, problems, or just general chit-chat as soon as I return. The backlog of people running in and out of my office makes it near impossible to complete a simple task, like reply to an email of equal importance to the problems being brought to me in person. Some days I fantasize about assigning everyone a number– then they can’t come into my office until I call their number. It works for people returning stuff at Target. Closing the door doesn’t work– I’ve had people open it anyway and others stand outside, waiting to be noticed while I was participating in a teleconference or webinar.
It’s kind of nice when everyone goes home late in the afternoon; the phone stops ringing, the office visits stop and I can finally really concentrate. Unfortunately, it’s hard to dig into something that takes deep concentration when I have 30 minutes left and I’ve already worked almost an hour overtime. My brain is plumb worn out and my family is wondering if I’ll ever come home.
In a fit of desperation at the end of today, I threw a bunch of papers (all of them new problems) into my in-box. I knew it was probably a death-knell for them, since I didn’t file them and they represented a multitude of unresolved problems. But I wanted that clean desktop facing me tomorrow morning, so I’ll be prepared if (or when) more chaos breaks out. If I have a quiet moment during the day, I may pull out one of those papers and see if the problem has magically resolved itself.
03.25.08
Working from home
I’ve been on vacation for the last two days, so it’s anybody’s guess how bad my desk looks. So much for cleaning it off before I left! Oh well, if I look at the bright side, at least it will be obvious what landed there while I was gone. I’m sure it will be mostly problems and reading material that gets routed to me. Hopefully I can deal with that stuff quickly when I go in Wednesday afternoon.
I’ve been keeping up with my email from home, checking it twice a day (and sometimes at night) to keep it under control. When I checked it on Sunday, before my vacation even started, I was already getting a warning email saying I was reaching the maximum allowable size for my in-box. Geez! How’s that for falling behind before I was even gone?
I used to give my brother a hard time for working all the time when he was out of the office. He has a laptop and a Blackberry and is always working, everywhere he goes. In my case, I think being a manager makes me feel like I have a certain level of responsibility for what’s going on in my office, even when I’m not there. Technological improvements have not only allowed me to read my email from outside my office; they have enabled me to dial in to my desktop computer. Now I have access to all of my software and files as though I were sitting at my desk. It’s pretty cool. Okay, so I’m tied to the office with a technological umbilical cord. That’s probably not so cool.
Too late now– I’m hooked and there’s no turning back. It’s a dual-edged sword; I work in more places and for more hours than I could spend in the office, although the payoff is that I’m not as far behind when I return from being out of the office. Technology is both a blessing and a curse.
02.14.08
I need a clone
I need a clone. I think that for each day I’m out of the office, my workload doubles. I have so many trucks of vendor cataloging to review that I’m going to have to pass much of it through without looking at it. I know I’m supposed to be evaluating the quality of their cataloging and processing, but when I have 9 trucks of stuff to check, somethin’s gotta give. It’s either my sanity or those books– and I’m planning on keeping my sanity. If I had a clone, she’d split the checking with me, or even take it over entirely, handling problems when she finds them.
Email isn’t any better– it floods my inbox to the point that I lose emails, something I thought happened only to disorganized people– (Oops! that might be me!). I’m trying to do things like color-code email from certain people, like my boss. Email from him is in red text– talk about getting my attention– that does it! I also use colored flags in Outlook to quickly mark and find special emails that I need to act on, regardless of who sent them. If I had a clone, she would be assigned the job of reading all my emails and giving me a summary of what’s really important.
The piles of problems still sit on my desk and some days, they just have to sit there and grow bigger. I have to get tired of looking at them to really act on them. I know that’s not the best way to deal with problems, but some days, it’s the best I can do. There’s always something more urgent that comes up and isn’t on the to-do list. That’s when I decide whether or not I should delegate it, back-burner it, or do it myself. Kind of like plunging into cold water and getting it over with all at once, rather than getting wet one inch of skin at a time and slowly freezing to the bone. If I had a clone, she would handle all the problems, deciding when to delegate them or do them herself.
If I had a clone…we could accomplish so much together…
02.06.08
Maxed out
I’m not going to brag and say I get more emails than anybody I know, because there’s somebody out there who likely gets more than I do. But I probably have a harder time than most folks with getting through all of them each day. Reading, replying, or forwarding them to others seems to take up hours of my time, if I let it. Sorting them according to whether or not they’ve been read only adds to my dismay when I see how many fall into that category. Sorting by other groupings, like subject, author, or size turns up all sorts of interesting emails that are otherwise lost in the daily flood.
When I can’t read emails from discussion lists, I scan their subject lines, sort them by subject, then drag and drop them into folders on my hard drive, where they can live relatively undisturbed forever. I have good intentions to read them someday, but usually never do. Deleting them isn’t the answer. I can’t delete them for fear I will miss some nugget of wisdom or a byte of information I could have found useful. We packrats keep everything, from piles of physical papers to files of digital junk.
Subscribing to and reading blogs is another thing I struggle to keep up with. If I’m not tuned in to blogs and emails, I would miss out on what’s going on and what’s upcoming in my profession. I subscribe to 64 blogs and I thought that was a lot. Then I heard Stephen Abrams say he reads 650 blogs and just lets the information wash over him. I think I would drown.
I’m thinking of cutting back on my non-essential committee involvements at EVPL. I’ve simply got to find more time to get my work done during work hours and let others serve in my place. I’ve been on the Wellness Team long enough that it’s time I step down and let someone else take my place. They need branch representation and I need to get more work done. I think that being at work (unplanned) until 5:50 pm today (and most other days) made me realize it was time to let go of something.
