Sand, Golf Balls, And Beer

A version of this parable was demonstrated at the an IT Manager’s workshop I attended to kick off the priorities and time management segment.  It was a good story then but I like this version better as it includes the two beers metaphor.  

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous yes.

The professor then produced two beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. Now, said the professor as the laughter subsided, I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

The golf balls are the important things—your family, your children, your health,your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. 

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. 

The sand is everything else—the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, he continued, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities.

The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled and said, Im glad you asked. 

The beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, theres always room for a couple of beers with a friend.

 

links for 2008-09-29

• Allergen Info from Mars
  (tags: allergen warnings Mars Candy)

Deadlines The Best Project Management Tool?

I started a conversation with a colleague from Reed College on some lite weight project management techniques.   As it was the initial conversation we meandered around a lot of topics that I hope we will revisit later.  A common thread was more about keeping people thinking and acting on the same page as opposed to which project management package works best.

Ethan posed a question to get at the techniques that I use to develop and meet the milestones and deadlines of a project.  My initial reaction is I don’t set deadlines but instead break the end goal into acheivable tasks and arrange those tasks into a progress that allows us to get the project complete.  I do this because most deadlines are arbitrary and when push comes to shove my project deadlines take a back seat to other priorities.    In most cases this works well as a monumental project because manageable by making it many smaller projects/tasks.  I think others get frustrated with me in this regard as my project upate reports are of what has been accomplished and what is left to be done instead of a nice and neat ETA for completion.

We chatted a little longer and Ethan brought up the point of how would it work for me if we started with a deadline – knowing that we might need to move it later – and then move backward through the progression of tasks to identify some earlier milestones that will help to determine where we are on the project.  In mulling this over, while I do not do that concretely I do do that in the abstract the classroom renovations we did this summer is an example.  Where the deadline is the first day of classes but for us to make that deadline we needed construction done by July 31 so that the technicians could have the time they needed to install the technology.  As the July 31 date came and went with a few rooms still needing carpet and such I knew that we needed to make contingency plans and start to reframe expectations with the registrar and prep the executive director of the potential calls he might be getting.  (In the end stars aligned and we finished everything some how)

Perhaps deadlines can be useful in keeping things on track…

I really look forward to continuing this conversation with Ethan (and anyone else that is reading this) on project management techniques that draw out that encourage collaborative thinking and building a common understanding of tasks and timelines.

Thinking More about Interuptions

I have been struggling with the idea of managing interruptions through avoidance – working somewhere else – as we spent a lot of time talking about during the time management session.

In particular, I have been very aware of the number of interruptions I have imposed on others and that they have impose on me.  In all actuality, I don’t feel that I am interrupted all that often.  Instead I see these ‘interruptions’ more as the natural interactions of a collaborative computing services staff.  We need to work together and feel comfortable going to a colleague for perspective, suggestion, etc…   What I have realized from the last two weeks is that being available is part of being an effective team member.   Supporting the technology necessary to run a campus is so intertwined that any one Computing Services job can not be executed effectively without consulting with ones colleagues.

I am wondering if it Is worth worrying about interruptions?  Or is it better to acknowledge that we will be interrupted and have to interrupt others from time to time and move on?  I do think that we can help each other manage the need to interrupt by

• sharing what we are working on
• developing a shared understanding of priorities
• holding regular (and efficient) project and staff meetings – planning time is productive time
• maintaining a calendar of our time – to help others know the soft spots of your weekly schedule

What are some other ways that we can help each other manage the need to interrupt.

Generalizations of the Digital Natives

I came across this article while traveling(via Mobile Google Reader) and again when I returned to the office (in my mailbox).  As it has to do with generational generalizations (a topic that I have been reading about professionally and personally for a while now)  I thought I would throw down a few ideas to see how they perculate.

In general the article seems to be countering the the Millenial Generation as Digital Wizards argument common from technophiles these days.  The argument made early on seems to make the usual counters providing ‘proof’ that millenials still use the technology of academia (books and libraries).

If you ask me, both sides are wasting time trying to prove their correctness.  The black and white thinking of an 18 -24 year old will do x y and z all the time is as incorrect as thinking that an ‘introvert’ will never say anything in a group setting or a ‘thinker’ is incapable of understanding an emotional agruement from a ‘feeler’.  We need to think about how do tendencies of the life experience of our students inform the tools and processes of our interactions with them.

I think this is a pretty good cross representation of what we could expect to find in any group of our ‘traditional’ college students.

Every class has a handful of people with amazing skills and a large number who can’t deal with computers at all. A few lack mobile phones. Many can’t afford any gizmos and resent assignments that demand digital work. Many use Facebook and MySpace because they are easy and fun, not because they are powerful (which, of course, they are not). And almost none know how to program or even code text with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Only a handful come to college with a sense of how the Internet fundamentally differs from the other major media platforms in daily life.

While this is true I still believe the Millenials are apt to view technology as a layer in their life which translates into them just using the technology instead of understanding how the technology works or global best practices of a particular technology.  I equate this to how I use my car.  I turn the key it runs when it doesn’t the folks at the Ford Garage get a call.

Later in the article the author writes -

Talk of a “digital generation” or people who are “born digital” willfully ignores the vast range of skills, knowledge, and experience of many segments of society.

True enough but there is merit in some generalization or we become overwhelmed as it is chaos.  So the question is how do we organize our understandings of this generation in a way that is useful and true without putting on our blinders to accept the nuiances of individuals within a generation?

On Managing Interruptions

We talked a lot about the problem of being and remaining on task and how interruptions effect this favorable behavior.   In talking about this phenonemnon, I had these thoughts that I hope to eventually turn into a strategy for managing interruptions or changing the culture of interruption seems common to computing services.

• Giving others the right to say I prefer not to be interrupted  – this is a cultural change so I wonder the actual possibility.
• Minimize the times that I interrupt others to the times that are absolutely necessary.
• Develop systems for people to know that when I am working on something that emergencies are the only reason for interruption.
• System for checking in with staff about their projects and needs so I am accessible on my terms (now that I write that it seems harsher than what I actually have in mind) mutually acceptable terms.
• When I do interrupt make sure it is necessary and honor the time I am using to address the emergency by being focused and concise with their time.
• The importance of modeling the behaviors that respect everyones time and need to be on task.

I would invite others to post comments on how you manage interrupts or optimize time on task.

Things I Want to Know About Delegation, Time Management, Prioritization

How to determine what to delegate and what to keep.

• I can make decisions about this based on what a director ’should be doing’
• I can make decisions based on who is best suited to tackle the task/responsibility

How to help those who were delegate to prioritize their delegated responsibilities.

• don’t delegate busy work
• keep them informed of departmental priorities
• listen/learn to the other things on their plate
• be aware others placing demands on their time

How to delegate in a way that empowers people.

• be clear in what is being delegated -
  • is it a task that is falling through the cracks that needs to be dealt with
  • is it a long term process that needs tending and the manner it is tended is up to the delegate?

How to delegate to those that aren’t your subordinates?

• Not sure I am in a place to delegate to non-team members.

Strategies for balancing the daily problems with the need for long term planning

• This seems to come back to planning.  I need to plan in
  • time for the unexpected,
  • time to check in with staff members,
  • time to reflect
  • time to be on project tasks
  • time to interact with users outside of the problem log
• Priority setting is also part of the answer – need to think about this more
• Perspective – at points in the year long term planning is not a possibility

Things to remember from this session…

• There are not many things in my life that actually have a firm time line ever established.
• reflection is productive
• there should be ties between personal work goals, group goals, and institutional goals
• according to Covey a majority of time should be dedicated to tasks that are important but not urgent (for what that is worth)
• it might be worth to hang a yearly timeline on one of the bulletin boards in Murray to visualize the flow of our work year
• when scheduling tasks, schedule the big tasks first or the small tasks will eat up your time
• some meetings are important and need to take priority – especially when they enable others to accomplish goals
• managing interruption is key to time on task – the question is how to manage interruption not evade interruptions?
• SMART goal setting and delegation – SMART stands for
  • S – pecific
  • M – easurable
  • A – ttainable/Authority
  • R – ealistic
  • T – imeline

• I need to think more about how I spend my time, set priorities, and delegate responsibilities based on my leadership style/philosophy.  Particularly does leadership style matter?

What do I want to get out of this session?

I have spent alot of my time over the last year trying to crystalize/communicate the philosophies that I believe User Services needs to function within.  I think I have gotten to a point that I am comfortable with my vision and now need to communicate that to the team.

I want to learn ways to share this with the team so they are empowered to make good decisions that serve the college.

Thinking about my organization strategies

We are at the start of an academic year, a person down, and in the process of hiring a User Support Specialist.  I say these things not as an excuse but to acknowledge to myself that these are not normal circumstances.  What it does mean is that I need to pick and choose how I spend my time now more than at other times in the past year.

In an effort to keep some of the day to day requests for help from boiling over into fires, I have chosen to do a great deal of desktop support to allow the rest of the team to focus on registering students on the network, plan for computer replacement, and attend to the technology classrooms.  This has meant that somethings have needed to take a back burner.  Planning and thinking seem to be the things I placed on the back burner and I don’t know that that is wise for long periods of times or even short periods of time for that manner.

One of the biggest hits has been my blogging time which needs to change (and this post is my attempt to reverse gears).  Blogging is at the core of my planning strategy as it allows me to write, which allows me to think, about anything that is occupying my time or on the horizion which I need to focus my thoughts/perspectives on.  I realized today as I composed responses to emails on the plane that having the opportunity to write and think on a topic and then review what my response allows me to communicate my message more clearly than when I sit down and just fire off responses.  The chance to jott down ideas, ponder, and revise helps keep me focused on the end goals – User Centered Desktop Support.  By having worked through details, hunches, implications of issues prior to responding to them allows me to adjust to the nuances of the day to day in a process driven way.

Another thing that I have dropped from my daily routine is the tweet of what I am doing next.  This may seem trivial but I started doing it following an NPR story that include a piece of research about how vocalizing the next step of a process creates efficiencies in performing the process.  Something about the level of commitment it takes to say something as opposed to thinking it.  And to tell you the truth It worked for me.  When I tweeted “I am gong to respond to emails” that is what I did for the next 30 minutes.  This worked to a large degree even for the tasks that I would normally procrastinate.  The times that I got distracted or interrupted I would tweet that too to acknowledge that I was not successful.   That often is all it took to get back on track with the next thing on the todo list.

I intend to reinstitute both of these strategies pretty much starting now.  We will see how I do.