Category: Learned Again and Again

Mail Early

I (hope I) have learned to mail earlier rather than later.

I love sending packages to Loved Ones, and I always think they will take less time than they actually will.  Because of this, I end up paying more than I would if I had just packed it up and hauled it down to my cute little small-town post office, where they address you by name, a few days earlier!

I have, for sure, learned to never use those pre-paid return stickers for returning mail-order stuff.  They charge $6-7, or more, for something I can often mail myself for under $3.  I need the difference, you see, to pay for my procrastination, above.

Ask / Unscented Edition

If there is one theme to the lessons of the year-plus of this blog, it is “Ask!”

Steve got tired of those heavily scented inserts that come in magazines as ads.  He figured that, in this day and age, there must be a way to avoid them.

He went to the magazine’s website, clicked on some options, and lo and behold, no more perfume cards!

All he had to do was ask.

Home Sweet Office

I have learned, again and again and again, that I love working at home.

I do love going into the office, seeing my friends and colleagues, and having that in-person connection during meetings.  I also like the Big City and much of the commute.  It’s still a kick to work in Boston.

But it’s hard to beat the added value of the extra five to six hours I get in my day when I work from home.  Between the extra I can put in at work and the extra I can keep, it feels like winning an extra day in my day!

Taxi Lesson 2: No Faster

I should know this by now.  I’ve learned it before.  More than once.   In the last year, alone.

This lesson: To get across the middle of Boston is not necessarily faster by taxi than by walking and the T.

It takes me 45 minutes to get from Fenway to South Station, including walking through Chinatown.  If I need to do it without the walk, then it’s two trains and I need to allow a little longer.  It takes me at least that long from Longwood, as well.

So, one might think that a taxi for this distance, would be shorter, right?  I mean, it is about 3 miles, after all.

Nope.  In rush hour, you can fly through some parts, or not, but the area around South Station is bound to be gridlock.   And it’s the kind of gridlock that leaves you watching the traffic lights and your watch and your odds of making the bus all change before your eyes, without moving at all.

Which brings me to TWO extra bonus lessons for the day:

1. When you are sitting in a taxi within site of your destination and you are not moving, GET OUT and start walking already!

2. Never make plans that matter what time you arrive, for after a Boston commute day.  This was one of the first lessons in this blog, but I guess I forgot it and need to learn it yet again.  And maybe again.

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?

Again with Holiday Eve Squared

It seems fitting that, at the end of a year of learning and recording lessons, I would have to re-learn and re-post something learned only one week ago!

December 30 seems like a few-commuter day, right?  And 3:30 is a nice early time to leave the city, even a really big city like New York, right?

Wrong!

January 30 is New Year’s Eve Eve, so even if a smaller number of people are leaving the city for the holiday weekend, they ALL leave at the same time!  Which, apparently, is about 3:30!

I have learned, I really hope for the last time, to treat these days as high commute days and get out really really early, or very late!