Work is work, life is what you want it to be

In my last post i discussed that I was going to try to work on less things but in greater depth. I was wondering around my garden over the weekend and I now have my second objective for the year

Try not to work on weekends

This may seems to be an unusual thing to say, however by work I mean professional work. I had managed in a vain attempt to get ahead of myself last year developed a habit of sitting down on Sunday afternoon & clearing out my inbox.

This is just taking time away from the things I should be doing as a father & a home owner – you should see, dear reader, what a mess my garden has become over the last couple of years, and I have neglected the upkeep on my house something shocking.

Why ? Why do I do this ? Why is this important? Somewhere along the way working for IBM is not going to be what I do, sometime, eventually, I have to retire from paid work, and if I’m lucky I will have good health, though given that there is no maximum retirement age in Australia (my minimum is 67) I suspect that one of the last things I will want to do is to clear up 25 years of backlog,

But that’s the trivial response.

The real reason is that in the longer term too much work is not good for anyone, not good for me, and not good for my employer. It makes the person one dimensional, some of the best people I know who do the best work, and are great at what they do, are not workaholics, so neither should I be.

The best example I know is John Cohn,, check it out.

Thanks for Reading

Back to business for 2011

After a 3 month self imposed Social Media hiatus I am back – and I hope, dear reader, that I manage to make this, at least weekly.

This week was the first week that I was back for the whole week from Annual leave – I do try to take a good block of time off over the Summer School holiday period, you know recharge, refresh etc. and get a couple of things done around the place.

As always this time I of year I give myself the challenge of picking 3 things thats will be the basis around which I work through the year, work or otherwise. What I have from 2010 was

• Make sure that I tell the people who are important to me why they are important
• Be fitter at 50 than I was at 30 &
• Ensure that my daughter has a great 16th birthday

And for the first year ever I managed to make every last one of the above.

This year I have only 1 so far, which I have to credit IBM Distinguished Engineer (retired) Clive Harris with the initial advice

No one remembers what you haven’t done for them, so do less but do it better

In the IBM that I work in almost every day is a day of Triage, that is deciding on what is the next most important thing for you to put your attention to, things like

• Clearing you inbox just in case there is something more important’
• submitting your expenses
• Reading trade material or doing research, etc

Can all come well down the list of priorities, yet, as a senior technical professional I am expected to be well on top of these sort of things. The issue is, I know, is that I try to spread myself across too may things and as such I half do a number of tasks & activities that really should have been completed.

That will change in 2011, well as much as I can control it it will & I have 4 major areas that I will focus on

1. Remote Access Transformation
2. Supporting India’s growth & consolidation
3. Work in support of IBM’s technical Community &
4. Continue my work on my Daughters High School’s P&C

(for those for you who are IBMers, the internal version of this post will have a bit more detail)

That’s enough to keep me busy I suspect.

 

Thanks for reading

 

Weekly Metrics

I attended 19 meetings & dealt received 245 emails that I needed to do something with.