Anita

19 Jan

Are you managing?

A few years ago, I hooked a friend in to work on a project with me. Josh was great at breaking a problem down into its constituent parts and identifying blockages to be dealt with.

While his big contribution to the project was to build a database and workflow management system, he correctly identified some of my work habits as counter-productive to the project. Ouch.

In attempting to be super productive and active, I’d work on a bunch of tasks at once – switching tasks while I waiting for the printer to finish printing, or the kettle to boil, or working on an unrelated task while talking on the phone.

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I’d get to the end of the day and wonder what I’d completed. I knew I’d been super busy all day – I never took a lunch break, and believed that being available and having lots of projects on the go meant my stakeholders knew I was working on their interests. And yes, I could tell them that their project was ‘on my desk’ and that I was ‘working on it this morning’. But was I giving it the attention it needed?

Notifications from Dropbox, email, advertising apps, phone apps and personal messages all crowd for our attention all the time.

This week I noticed some bad habits creep back in again, and Josh’s hardline on task management echoed in my mind:

If a task only task 20 minutes – finish it. There’s nothing in my line of work that can’t wait for 20 minutes, and then I’ll know that task has been thoroughly processed, rather than lying in bed that night wondering what I forgot to bring to completion.
Turn off notifications – seriously, they get worse every year. Blocking out an hour to work on a database or spreadsheet, only to see unrelated emails pop up is distracting in the extreme. Find some ‘do not disturb’ apps and get your focus back.
Allocate time for the not so heavy tasks that can be done in tandem. My personality means I want to expend some energy doing tasks all at once. While we’re now agreed that women do not multitask, switching rapidly between tasks provides its own dynamic, playful response to work. Set aside a little time for your default mode of operating.

06 Feb

Confessions of an Introvert Networker

introvert-hamster-ball There are a lot of blog posts about introversion and extroversion at the moment – perhaps too many to my mind – but in the interest of SE optimisation I’ll throw my two cents in.

Networking as an introvert can feel a lot like hard work, doubly so when anything that looks like self promotion is a no-no in your culture.

It’s not easy, but it’s doable. So here are some not-so-pro tips that have worked for me:

Keep the main thing the main thing

Know why you’re networking. This might not always be hugely structured, particularly if this is just a general meet and greet. But if it’s clear that you’re being introduced or introducing yourself for a specific project or specific interest area, keep the conversation to the point and make sure you refer back to how you both might like to leave things. Like agreeing to email a relevant link once you’re back at the office, sharing a document, or just texting your contact details. Which brings me to my next point…

Do what you say you’ll do

If you have to set reminders, voice memos or have a collection of scraps of paper, do what you said you’d do, and in a reasonable time frame. Check out my post on Evernote for taking ways to keep this easy and paper-free.

Be prepared

Always. In every way. Dress in a way that makes you feel comfortable, keep you business cards with you, know your story. You’ve always got 30 seconds for a smile, a handshake and a quick introduction. It’s worth its weight with a follow up email later.

Be consistent

Keep communication simple with a broad base of storytelling. Sharing the same message with a diverse range of people takes away this introvert’s stress of what to say and – as a side note – demonstrates consistency and builds a base for authenticity. Rehearse your message until you can externalise it well, because what makes sense in your head might need a little work in a real situation.

Be nice

On her blog, Denise Duffield-Thomas shares how to network at an event, offering such gems as offering compliments, not business cards. Introduce yourself after offering a genuine compliment because, like she says, people will always remember how you made them feel.

Be yourself

It might not be your idea of fun to be the life of the party – it’s certainly not mine. Give yourself permission to share in small groups, send a text when you’d rather not call, or break up your networking time into bite sized chunks that work for you.

We all know that introverts and extroverts can get the same results, just going about it in different ways.

So appreciate your strengths, and enjoy finding your own approach to networking

06 Feb

Better data with Evernote

Evernote_iOS_logo Christmas (as usual), involved lengthly conversations with Technology Evangelist. These usually start with my despair about some technological synching issue followed by robust debate.

Technology Evangelist shared some recent experiences with Evernote. While I already had a log in, up until 2015 this housed 8 baking recipes and 12 e-articles from some academic study I did in 2013.

So I figured I better take Evernote for a bit of a spin and see what it was worth. The headlines are:

It syncs across platforms and devices – a big bonus
Unlimited folder and tagging options
Scanning documents is a breeze
Evernote reads handwriting, scanned documents and PDFs
Workchat makes collaboration easy

Sold!

Let’s break this down:

Evernote syncs in realtime across devices, so I can take a photo with my phone, and see it on another device just by hitting refresh. Perfect.

Tagging and folders make it easy to filter searches, and this is where things get fun. Take a photo of a receipt, a business card* or your coffee- stained brain-storming session and add a tag or two. Evernote will read words and numbers, making it easy to recall this stored information, even if the photo is a little wonky.

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Add a filter if you’re overwhelmed trawling through all those Bunnings receipts.

And of course, collaborate. Share notes and documents in realtime with Evernote’s Workchat.

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All for free. There are dozens of ways Evernote is ready to make you look good, so have a look around and let us know what you think.

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*There’s a specific business card photo function that adds contact details straight to a directory as part of the Premium version. You can still search words via the straight photo function, they’re just not added to a contacts directory.

15 Jan

Trust

Trust is a growing thing. The older I get, the more I inherently have to trust.

Because real trust – and a concept of risk – develops out of knowledge and experience. What do I mean? When you’re 2 years old and someone throws you around, you might ‘trust’ them not to drop you, based on your experience of landing hard (or being dropped). But that trust isn’t particularly deep because the risks are poorly understood. You’ve never heard of a head injury. You don’t know what a broken bone feels like, or what paralysis means. You have a vague sense of danger and that’s probably about it.

But as an adult, not only do I have to give credit to the trapeze artists who devote their lives to assessing and managing risk, but being on the other side of the equation I know that when I throw a child in the air, I’m trusting my ability to not get a cramp, not put my back out, and to be able to anticipate what this kid is likely to do. Risk is based on my developed sense of self and experience.

When I first started working, my trust in my employer was that if I did what they said, I’d get paid – that was the whole transaction. And I trusted them – somehow, implicitly – to not ask me to do anything illegal, terribly unpleasant, and to provide me with the necessaries tools to get the job done.

Fast forward 15 years, and I was working for a small professional services firm and was privy to the financial information for the business. No longer was trust based on doing the right thing, but a clear understanding that if I underperformed or poorly-assessed risk, there wouldn’t be cash flow to pay me. In fact, I could wreck everything quite easily and be responsible for job lay-offs and the financial hardship of others. Understanding my boss’s trust in me developed a stronger trust in him and helped me to appreciate the mutual nature of trust.

Last week Carmel Fisher shared some thoughts on risk and return and how these subjects are taught in a classroom setting, often without a full appreciation of how they outplay in real life.

The phrase ‘in order to achieve a higher return an investor must tolerate a higher risk’ is too glib and is too often skimmed over by students who think ‘yes, yes, I understand that’. They invariably don’t.

Risk means different things to different investors as does the notion of ‘higher’ returns. If risk and return are considered without reference to one’s investing personality and goals and time frame, trouble can quickly ensue.

Risk means different things to different people. Trust has different connotations depending on how one’s trust has been stretched or breeched. Hearing a person’s story offers clues of what constitutes risk and return/reward in their world.

These days my trust is stretched further. Risk is everywhere. I have to trust there is work coming and that those I invoice will be able to pay. I trust some big nebulous world economic system to offer a degree of predictability. I trust that the bank trusts me. The risk has never been greater. Does that mean that the reward is more elusive or the return more satisfying? Perhaps. A clinical view of economics would examine my work output, the return, and try to put a number on the scale of work-life balance and satisfaction. Good luck with trying to evaluate happiness.

As Carmel goes on to explain, the cost (price) of a lifestyle or an asset or choice does not necessarily correspond to its inherent value.

It is human nature to think that price equates to value and that a low purchase price means you have bought well, whereas when a price falls after you purchase means you have overpaid.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett tried to explain the difference by saying that price is what you pay, while value is what you get. I think value is like beauty – it’s in the eye of the beholder.

I’ll take that a step further and add that value is whatever you make of it. Values will change in your lifetime as priorities shift and responsibilities develop. The richer life is not based on a linear progression that sees milestones reached a specific points, it’s a series of clusters highlighting experiences, values and risks reaping untold rewards and beauty. It’s scary, but it’s worth it.