cute & nerdy

Last week, I was spontaneous. On Monday, I bought a plane ticket to leave Austin on Wednesday to go to DC. No time to prepare, just go. Well, aside from the chicken scratch of a short packing/chore list.

Today, I find myself preparing for two weeks of vacation (most likely staycation) by entering checklists about projects I want to do during my time off into Things. Looks like I'll be doing a lot of reading, cleaning and shopping. That's doesn't sound too horrible.

Give me enough time and I may end up putting deadlines around each item, as well as a structured taxonomy and notification system. No matter which form it takes, it appears I'm unable to have a checklist-free vacation.

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Somewhere out there...

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:36:00 -0700

...is my dream job. I recently drafted by a job description for the position. If you haven't ever tried to do the same, I strongly suggest it... even if you're totally content where you are OR you're the boss man (or lady!).

For me, the process looked like this:

One evening trying to figure out how the heck I was going to pull something like this together.
One evening copying and pasting all the things I liked best from a bunch of job descriptions I had recently bookmarked
One evening organizing, rewriting, and cutting out all the fluff
3 days of stewing on it (not opening it, but thinking about it quite a bit)
1 hour making a few final edits

This is the result:

dream-job_job_description.pdf Download this file

I'm not sure if writing the job description or stewing on it was more enlightening, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. It forced me to think about what is really necessary for me to be happy.

I have no idea what the title for my dream-job would be, but I realized that doesn't matter much. I also realized that while I need a challenge to stay stimulated, the key ingredient for me is the people that I surround myself with -- and my desire/ability to make their lives easier. I want to make things happen, set them in motion, and make it fun (and profitable) for everyone!

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Our idea of heroism needs updating

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:20:00 -0700

A few months ago I went to a get-together in Mexico for partners/principals of organizations like mine. It became very clear to me by the first session that I wasn't like everyone else. They were the idea people. I was the person focused on turning those ideas into reality, in an efficient, profitable, client-focused way. I seriously started to question my role and whether I could be viewed as in equal in this crowd. By the end of the meetings, I had four requests from different companies to come help them figure things out so I'm hoping that I somehow made an impact.

Last week, a work friend shared a book with me called the The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande. I finished the book last night. After reading this book and recently finding out that there are businesses out there who are searching for someone like me to help make order out of the chaos, I'm feeling much better about my role, espcially since I find it fulfilling. Honestly, this quote from the book kind of sums it up for me:

We don't like checklists. They can be painstaking. They're not much fun. But I don't think the issue here is mere laziness. There's something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us - those we aspire to be - handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists.
Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.

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