October 5, 2007 by Kara.

A few days ago, Craig Childs wrote how to Write a Personal Mission Statement in 5 Steps.  It’s a good article that summarizes Randall S. Hansen’s 5 step plan for writing a personal mission statement.  The process outlined by Dr. Hansen is:
1.  Identify Past Successes
2.  Identify Core Values
3.  Identify Contributions
4.  Identify Goals
5.  Write Mission Statement
Earlier this year, while I was looking for a little direction in life, I spent some time trying to determine what my personal mission statement should be.  I spent quite a bit of time on the Franklin Covey web site, using their Mission Statement Builder.
The Mission Statement Builder comes in three “flavors” - Kickstart, Museum, and Journey.  Each provides a different way of deriving your mission statement and you get the opportunity to wordsmith your final product when you’re finished.  I went through all three of the tools and also did a little soul searching to come up with the following which is long, but is still meaningful to me as I read it today, even given the changes in my circumstances to a job I love and a new home which have helped to resolve many of the issues I was having at the time.

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July 21, 2007 by Kara.

Today is one of those days where you take a deep breath, relax your shoulders, and realize that sometimes in life - you just start over.  I have accepted a new position and will be moving.  Obviously, this blog - with it’s title - Ho’ohana - is about finding worthwhile and meanful work.  Work that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning.  Work that lights that passion fire inside of you and makes you want to excel at everything you do.  I feel like, in the last four years, I’ve been walking around in a cave in my current job.  It’s a great job - and will be a fantastic job - for someone else.  But, it’s not a wonderful job for me.  I’ve taken a job back where my passion is - in a place where I was happy before - so one can only hope that this will have the same positive impact as my previous jobs had.

This job does mean a relocation away from family and friends, although only about 70 miles, but this too brings an opportunity for a fresh start and for new experiences.  Yesterday I made an offer on a house - should hear today whether it is accepted, or countered. 

So, for the next few weeks - if I can get a few spare minutes to write and can still find the computer amidst all the boxes, I’ll share with you some of the ways I’ve used GTD in the home buying process already and how I already have planned my new house with GTD and general productivity in mind.

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July 3, 2007 by Kara.

1. Listen - Photoshop 2 minute tricks (in audio and video formats)
2. Learn - Hewlett Packard Online Free Classes for IT Professionals and the general public
3. Learn - MIT Open Courseware - hundreds of MIT courses there for your perusal anytime
4. Link - Lifehacker
5. Live - Take an Earthwatch vacation - learn while you see some of the most amazing scenery in the world and help advance scientific research.
6. Learn - Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina
7. Learn - Annenberg Media

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June 16, 2007 by Kara.

If you’re a regular reader (hard to be that when so far I’m publishing a new post once over two months), you will recall that I’m trying to find Productivity Nirvana.  You might guess - as far behind as I am in the posting schedule I created - that I haven’t reached it yet.  No excuses - I’ll get around to that post on procrastination and all the other stuff that’s been keeping me busy - somday

So, this installment of the Productivity Nirvana series is on When To Ask For Help.  I find it difficult to ask people for help.  All sorts of things run through my head before asking a person to help me - they won’t want to do it but will feel obligated if I ask; they’ll say no (that old fear of rejection); they’ll want something in return.  It’s a little easier if you’re paying them to help you out because then you don’t necessarily have to worry about having to return the favor, but money is a precious resource we shouldn’t waste so here is a quick guide to when to ask for help.

1. Ask your parents for help - My dad’s eyes light up when I ask him for help.  Granted, I typically reciprocate with help at the computer or some other task at which he’s not so great - but he loves to help me out with projects.  My parents (yours may not be the same so you’ll have to judge that for yourself) are not shy about telling me no if they can’t/don’t want to do something so this is a no brainer for me - if I need help and mom or dad can provide it, I’ll ask.
2. Pay the kid down the street - I hurt my back recently.  Hurt it badly - as in can’t even lift the cat kind of badly.  My flower beds fell victim to a complete lack of ability to get out there and work in them.  I was contemplating having to call a professional service in to pull weeds, plant new annuals, spread mulch, etc. when I decided to ask some of the local kids if they were interested in the work.  Now, for just $7.50 per hour plus cold drinks and popsicles in the fridge/freezer, I have all the help I want whenever I need.  And, with just a small amount of instruction, the quality of work is OUTSTANDING!!!  The kids - who manage hectic summer schedules with camps, ball practices, summer reading groups, and active social lives - are not at an age to hold down true jobs but still like a little running money.  You can negotiate how to pay them - either though PayPal or cash/check.
3. Delegate - If you are lucky enough to have a trusted assistant and/or staff that can assist you don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to them - and let them grow in the process. I’ve begun delegating some of the more complex projects I work with at work in small chunks to staff members to “start on them”.  They do some key idea generation and I’m not stuck staring at a blank screen.  Always, Always, Always give credit where it is due though - never be the boss who has the staff do all the work and then you take all the credit.  You won’t win points with the staff you’re coming to rely on and if the boss finds out whose idea that really was you may be shocked who gets the next promotion.
4. When you’ve helped others - I have friend with whom I regularly trade tasks.  A good friend of mine is great at fixing broken electronics but hates to paint.  I love to paint and am terrible at fixing stuff when it’s broken.  So, we just trade.  Try to keep it even - but when you can’t free food goes a long way towards evening up the trade.
5. Before you get in over your head - I’ve gained enough wisdom to know there are certain tasks I probably shouldn’t do myself - and some that I simply can’t do myself.  Before you start something that you’re not going to be able to finish ask for help.  Obviously, we sometimes get into situations we don’t anticipate but don’t be embarassed and let it get worse and worse because you don’t want to ask for help.  Think of all the time you’re spending worrying over it and how much stress it’s causing you to not have it done once you’ve started it.  You may need to ask for help in getting it done.

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March 14, 2007 by Kara.

I’m already a post behind in my aggressive schedule and I have a couple of other ideas on posts I want to put up.  I could make all sorts of excuses as to why I’m behind but the big one is that I got the call on Monday for a second interview for the new job to which I’ve applied.  The interview is tomorrow at 12:30 and I’ve been preparing my heart out.  But - as with all such things - that which is supposed to happen will be and the reasons why may never be understood.

So, on with our post. This is a post about in baskets.  I could start by saying I like baskets.  I used to be a Longaberger consultant so I have many, many baskets (nice ones, with pretty fabric liners and plastic protectors to keep them safe from harm). However, for some reason, the inbasket concept has never worked for me.  I think it’s because in my current job there is too much to do in order to keep it all in one basket (the current stack of paperwork that needs my attention is about two feet high - it takes a big basket to contain that).  Now - you might say - you just need to buckle down and get to work if your paperwork stack is that high.  But, in my defense, I will tell you one of my primary roles is working with a construction project and it only takes one change order (complete with its six official copies and all attendant documentation to support that change order) to make up six to eight inches of that stack in my inbox.  So - get four change orders on the same day (which is what happened yesterday) and you’ve got two feet of paperwork.  And - that construction project is only 1/2 of 1/3 of my job.  

So - one problem with in baskets is that my job requires asking a lot of questions about things before they get signed.  So - it doesn’t necessarily help to have my staff members all put their signature folders into my mailbox or even to bring them to an inbox in my office as normally there are verbal conversations which need to occur with the bulk of the documents.  I have three different teams of people that work for me - each requires signatures on/reactions to a completely different variety of items (facilities issues that require fast turn around and quick decisions, finance issues which require a keen eye and thinking like an auditor, and IT issues that require asking what if questions - sometimes fast and sometimes needing to slow down the speed of the bus to let the riders catch up). 

But that’s not my biggest problem.  My biggest problem with inboxes is I just simply have too many of them.  The problem above with my work inboxes just underscores the issue, but it gets worse when you put it all together with my personal life.  It seems like everywhere you go now someone wants to give you more and more to do.  So - I thought it might be helpful to list what I consider my inboxes and see if you really do have just one.  I’ve sorted these by work and personal. It’s important to note that because I work for a public institution that receives taxpayer dollars as a part of its funding, I’m militant about keeping my personal life and my work life separate (personal calls only get made on a personal cell phone, etc.) So, here goes my list of inboxes…

Work

1. Exchange Email Account
2. Central Mailbox
3. Departmental signature folder (x3)
4. Phone w/voice mail
5. Cell phone w/voice mail
6. Help desk ticketing system for both our IT office and facilities office (I normally don’t have to respond to tickets, but if a staff member is out for the day because we’re not deeply staffed they become mine to worry about)
7. The in basket I do keep on my desk that some people do use
8. Trillian (for instant messaging with my boss and my staff)/Google Talk

Work isn’t such a bad list when you look at it, but I average about 40 “gotta read this or gotta do this” in detail messages a day and average 18 phone calls in a day.

Home

1. Personal email account on Gmail.  I have accounts on most other providers (yahoo, aol, hotmail, etc. simply for instant messaging purposes, but they don’t get checked that often.)
2. Google Reader
3. Personal cell phone - I average about two calls a day on this one plus 10 - 15 text messages (a little news and some personal communication with family and friends)
4. Home phone with voice mail
5. Mailbox at the end of my driveway and wherever the UPS/FedEx driver decides to lay packages on a given day. (They are both very creative with where they will stick a package)
6. The inbox at church - I am the volunteer audio visual coordinator at church (which basically means I spend as much time doing that job as I do on my full time job - or at least it feels that way). This isn’t too bad now as most stuff gets sent through on email.
7. The inbasket on my desk at home where I lay stuff I really should be doing.
8. My Tivo “Now Playing” list.  I love Tivo!!!

Those are my lists, although they probably aren’t 100% complete, but it is everything I can think of.  I’ve tried every way I can think to get all this down to a smaller number, but the plain and simple fact - at least as I read this - is that technology doesn’t always make our lives easier.  I remember a time (barely - I am still pretty young) before answer machines and voice mail; before cell phones; and even (gasp!!) before email.  Take out those from my lists above and my lists get cut in half.  (Don’t take away the Tivo though as that is nothing but a good thing - some technology really does make our lives easier). 

There you have it - my inboxes.  I’d love to cut this number down and know that if I spent some time forwarding phones and forwarding emails and doing all sorts of other things I could probably reduce this number - but what if you do want (or in my case need) to keep your lives separate.  Personal and work shouldn’t mix (at least not where there is a fiscal ramification or where church and state need to be kept separate and my personal political opinions and affiliations can’t mix with my job).  How do you maintain all these inboxes and keep your life a little less hectic so you don’t have all these inboxes?

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March 5, 2007 by Kara.

I used to consider myself a good multi-tasker.  Then, several months ago, I started to feel drained - constantly.  I would be pushing things around - doing little bits of three or four projects at a time - without the opportunity to finish one, get that since of accomplishment, and move on to the next.  For a week, I tried to do a good job of only doing one thing at a time - no multi-tasking.  Since I keep a pretty detailed journal of the tasks I complete on a daily basis, I realized I was getting as much done doing one thing at a time as I was trying to work on three or four things at the same time. 

In my opinion, multi-tasking came about when email and our first rounds with internet connection came online.  Early internet connections were slow - hence we would load a web page, wait while it loaded, and then could go back to it once it loaded.  In essence, multi-tasking came about because we needed to fill that time while the page loaded.  (I once had a dial up connection so slow I could make breakfast while the page loaded).  As faster connection speeds has come about our need to fill that void while pages load has ceased, but our urgency to try to do multiple tasks at one time has not.  We still think of ourselves as multi-taskers and so we try diligently to live up to the expectation of doing multiple things at the same time.

In this same vein, the amount of information not only to which we have access in order to make decisions, but also the paths that information can take to get to us have increased tenfold in the last five decades.  Crackberries, IMs, emails, multiple email accounts, RSS feeds, cell phones, voice mail, unified messaging, and much more have forced their way into our personal space and we allow them to constantly draw our attention from what’s important (relationships, personal growth, happiness) to what’s urgent (fires to be put out, projects to be completed).  What if we turned off all those items for a day and focused on the really important stuff? 

I’m interested in the studies that say information overload is actually good for us and that it can allow our brains to make more connections between topics and expand our horizons a bit.  While I certainly don’t disagree with that at all, I also believe that we need points of rest and that those points need to occur more often than what they probably do right now.  I often use an analogy that was included in a humourous Internet post about cats and how they are “distracted by shiny things”.  All the information coming into us in all these formats comes as a myriad of shiny things which draw our attention.  However, if I also learned a lesson from my cat, it’s to take frequent rest breaks (my cat takes full on, sleeping on his head he’s so out of it, naps).  Our bodies and our brains need a chance to digest information, think about it, process it, and then determine what we can do with that information that might change the world.

So, while information overload might be good for us, it’s also important to set limits - delete a few emails that aren’t critical for you to read, without reading them.  Say no to a project or an idea - even if just for now.  Spend time with your family, your coworkers, your staff in a supportive environment - rather than just a run, run, run type of world.  Take time for yourself - doing something you truly enjoy.

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February 13, 2007 by karamonroe.

Buster, over at Mutual Improvement, has posted an interesting question - what is your order for the following list of priorities:
Home
Travel
Creativity & Self-expression
Love & Relationships
Beliefs
Education & Self-improvement
Money
Work & Career
Health

Well, for me, I would reorder as follows:
1. Love & Relationships (where I put family as well)
2. Health
3. Beliefs
4. Creativity & Self-Expression
5. Work & Career
6. Education & Self-Improvement
7. Money
8. Home
9. Travel

Of course, any time you do an exercise like this, the obvious question that comes to mind is - is this how I’m living my life. For me, the honest answer is no. However, my work towards fulfilling my 12 habits and towards examining the reasons why I work and perhaps finding a new job are all important aspects of getting this list back in the right order in reality and not just on paper.

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February 13, 2007 by karamonroe.

Have you ever had that discussion with your parents - you know the one where you are unhappy with your job and you’re looking for a change because of all the stress, chaos, and simply the lack of passion for what you’re doing. And when you do have the discussion, the parent (in my case my father), get’s that glossed over look in his eye and says - you haven’t seen stress until… or you don’t know what work is until… 

Please don’t get me wrong.  He has worked harder in his 65+ years than I probably will work in 90+ years if I’m blessed to live that long.  However, times change dramatically with each generation.  His experience with work was different than his fathers and mine is different than his.  Not only are the contexts and the environments in which we work different, but we are different people.  Not terribly different, but different enough for me to know that I can’t work because it’s a good job with good pay and good benefits if it doesn’t interest me or feed my passion for living. 

I like a posting at StartupSpark on how you’ll know you’re an entrepreneur (You can also find the listing at lifehack.org).  I don’t think you have to necessarily own your own business or jump into a start-up company to be an entreprenuer or at least have an entrepreneurial spirit.  I certainly have held positions where I felt like an entrepreneur.  I loved the work, I loved the people whom I served and whom I worked with, I had a passion for what I was “selling” (and for that matter still do even though I haven’t been in that position for more than three years), I lived my work, I was always looking for new opportunities - both to extend what we were doing and how we were doing it and, most of all from the StartupSpark list, I think that I was always prepared to say, “I don’t know but I’ll figure it out.”  That is the part I’ve lost in my current position.  I can easily say I don’t know, but the I’ll figure it out part - that passion to answer the next question, conquer the next challenge, fill the next void, just isn’t there in this job. 

So dad, for you, please know - I don’t really think I have it bad.  I just want more.

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February 13, 2007 by karamonroe.

The midwest is being pounded on by mother nature in the form of a winter storm. It’s one of those storms that isn’t really bad yet, but has promises of many great things to come.  As a facilities director, it is my job to assist in the decision making regarding whether or not to close our little campus.  Thankfully, we’ve decided to close for the day.  Needless to say, this helped me greatly in my question towards the early rising and more routine evenings/mornings as I always try to get to sleep a bit earlier the night before a stron like this since I know I’ll have to be up so early and I got up at 4 this morning to start monitoring the weather situation.  I did take a couple of cool pictures out the window this morning with my Nikon D80 which I’ll share with you in a post a bit later.  If you’re in the midwest, stay inside today and off the roads.  If you’re on the east coast, particularly New England - get ready.

Anyway, if you work in a business where you have the opportunity to take a snow day once in a while (either the business imposes it or you simply save a sick day or two in order to use as snow days - regardless of whether there is snow on the ground), I say congratulations.  It is a great day when mother nature says, you need to stop.  For those folks who can’t stop - doctors, nurses, my social worker friend who works at the local hospital, road crews, police, fire, and emergency workers - the rest of us NEED to stay off the roads and let these people do their jobs under the worst possible circumstances.  The rest of us need to cuddle up under a blanket with our favorite pet and a good book and catch up on our leisure reading, blog postings, or just get a little shut eye. 

I do love snow days.

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January 17, 2007 by karamonroe.

I came in to work this morning and heard two wonderful words - email’s down (I guess it would be three if you count the contraction).  What a blessing.  For a few glorious minutes, hours, or even maybe a day - no one will be able to reach me via email.  Don’t get me wrong - email is still my preferred method of communication.  However, after being off work sick for three days last week, I’m backlogged in a way that just shouldn’t be permitted.  More than 89 items which still require action after a cursory read of the more than 300 messages in my inbox.  I delegated 20 or 30 of them relatively quickly, deleted, filed, or quickly responded to more than 100 that were junk or “just FYI” or quick yes and no answers.  Yet I’m left with these 89 action items, with due dates in some imposed by the sender (I need this by tomorrow is the best one - since I got it last Wednesday and was out sick, do I even need to respond?). 

 Email is so abused in our culture.  We’ve used it as a way to get around face-to-face communication about difficult situations and as a way to cover our own butts when we think something might go wrong in a situation.  So..here’s to hoping that the techno-Gods keep email in its proper place for a while - turned off.  Perhaps that’s an idea for a staff development day - turnt he email server off for a day or two even once per month to allow people the opportunity to get caught up. Like casual Fridays, but we could call it no email Thursday. 

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