Month: January 2011

Trust Not the Outlook Update

I have learned, for so many times that I can’t say I’ve learned it at all, that Outlook cannot be trusted to send “updates” to meeting attendees even when it says it has done just that.

Sometimes it prompts f0r sending updates, when you change a meeting detail, such as the time (that’s a big detail). Sometimes it does not.  Then, when you say Yes Please Update The Attendees Won’t You Please, sometimes it just does not, even if it looks like it did.

I am not one to stand up my colleagues, but the technology has led me to do just that, way too many times.

Lesson learned: When sending an update (or thinking you are), specifically look for the reply and/or check your colleagues’ calendars to make sure that the change “took”.  We should not have to do this, but the alternative is risking wasting the time and productivity of others.

Eat

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve learned not to go into meetings (or any interactions with other people) hungry, then I could probably hire a personal chef who would follow me around and serve me food in time to avoid me being very cranky and obnoxious.  And unhappy.

But I don’t have those dollars or that chef, so I need to learn, either once and for all, or (more likely) over and over again until it sticks, to EAT well before I get to starving, no matter how busy I am.

Why is this so hard to learn?

Check the Schedule! (Or Bide Your Time)

On this day, I rushed for a bus that did not exist.  What a bummer.  What’s worse is that this is not the first, or the second, time this has happened.  Oh please I hope it’s the last.

The bus schedule is easy to check.  It’s online.  I’m online.  I just need to take a minute to put those things together in the name of common sense, before I rush for the bus.

On the other hand, I have learned how to use the gift of unexpected open time.  This time it was a latte and a phone chat with a good friend, sitting in the train part of South Station, under the tote board that makes ticka-ticka-ticka sounds as the trains schedules post, even though though the board is 100% electronic and those sounds are only artificial nostalgia.  It works for me!

Whistle or Die

Although I always tell people that if I had a whistle-less teakettle (like my mother-in-law’s) I would probably burn my house down.  And my family bought me a wonderful electric espresso maker after my fear that I would do the same with my stove-top model for that.  Yet, if I forget to close the whistle/cover on my teakettle, I’m in the same scary boat and the water boils out and it’s not a pretty thing.   Or a safe one.

Lesson learned again today: always always ALWAYS close the whistle on the kettle!

P.S. I know that one of my beloved blog-followers is going to hate this.  But I’m sure she would rather I posted and learned!  Right?

Plug In Here

I learned that my Boston Express bus (at least the model I was on yesterday) has little labels way up high above the seats, on the luggage compartments, to indicate which seats have electrical outlets available.  There are very few but it turns out they are well marked.

Now if I can remember to have the cord with the electronic item (an OFTEN-learned lesson of 2010), I’ll be all set!

“Don’t let the perfect drive out the good”

My brilliant and profound (or is it profane?) husband taught me / teaches me this lesson.

Perhaps others said it first, say maybe Voltaire http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire, but Steve says it better.

On this day, the desire to perfectly summarize the lessons of 2010 has been keeping me from adding perfectly good lessons and get on with 2011, so no more of that!  Here we go with another year!

I have purchased the address janeslessonslearned.com and I am on a roll!

Email me your lessons as you learn them and I’ll give you your own day!

Thank you for a year of lessons!

Jane