Category: Work

Go to Jamesons

This lesson has to start with a story.

It was May, 1981.  Steve went to local hangout, the bar at the Queen City Motor Inn.  “Where is everyone?”, he asked the bartender.  “Oh we’re out”, was the reply. “Jameson’s Social Club is in, now.  Everyone  goes there”.  So Steve went there.  And there we met.

I am learning to go to Jameson’s.

Instead of pushing and pushing for everyone to come back to Queen City, or in this case to put project resources on the project that was very important, I am learning to look around at what now is important, see where everyone has gone, and go join them there!

As Steve says, “good things happen” when you do this!

Notes Are Our Friends

Dmitry has taught me the value of good design meeting documentation and how to really use it to move forward.

We are working with some fast-thinking researchers, who are great at talking through their design decisions.  When they re-visit the decisions, they keep making use of the good notes from the previous meeting, in order to remember and pick up the thread of thinking and move forward.

I have never seen notes put to such positive use before.  This is a Big Lesson for me.

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!

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.