Category Archives: Work

do your homework

September 30, 2014 6:18 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I find that when people complain about things at work going badly or not turning out the way that they expected it’s due to a lack of focus on fundamentals.

One production guy that used to work with me always complained that he was constantly behind and that he didn’t understand certain procedures or how the rest of the company did things.  I pointed out that he never took the time to do the extra reading and work necessary to keep up.

No matter what industry or specialty you are in one thing that is for certain is that things won’t stay the same.  Someone, somewhere will introduce changes, improvements, or just make what you do obsolete.  If you don’t put in the extra effort you will find yourself slowly losing ground till one day you’re totally out of touch.

Most people don’t get to that point of course but they do slack off from time to time and find themselves behind the curve.

Not only does this apply to work and business but I have found that it applies equally will to other facets of life such as books, movies, music, and culture in general.

We should all strive to keep up to date and spend extra time keeping up.  Now obviously everyone is different and we all have different priorities so you may want to keep an eye on one thing or a few things and let others slip from time to time.

Cancel one night out with friends or a night watching TV and catch up on your vital reading, research something you’re not too good at and see how others are doing it.  Find out something about current trends and what’s going on.  If you’re an artist or an athlete or do something physical take some time off and work on some of the fundamentals of your craft.

The main point is though that life doesn’t sit still and neither should you.

Posted in: business, standards and practices, work

summertime blues

September 10, 2014 7:05 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was coming out of the Alamo Drafthouse one Saturday in mid August.  Some of the movie workers were gathered round in the parking lot talking.  I caught a good deal of the discussion as I wandered past.  Some of them were quitting and headed back to school.  Whether to high school or college I couldn’t make out.

They were glad to be leaving work and to start the new school year but also dreading the monotony of constant schoolwork.

This brought back some memories of working during the summers in college.  Particularly a summer that I worked construction out at NASA.  My then brother-in-law got me a job as a day laborer for the company he was working with.  He was a shift foreman for an electrical contractor and needed some muscle to move parts and supplies for a new office building at the NASA complex in clear lake.

I started out by going to the early 1990s Heights neighborhood, which at the time was much scarier than the now fashionable Heights neighborhood.  I arrived around 6AM and was lost.  I stopped at a convenience store to get directions and a guy in a long green coat sidled up and offered to sell me “new tires” out of the trunk of his car.  I’m surprised he didn’t kosh me over the head with a lead pipe.

Anyways I found the main office which turned out to be a part office and part warehouse where I and 3 others watched a safety video and got a lecture from a middle management type about being very careful since we didn’t have health insurance and that was all there was to it.  I was now a day laborer.

So I spent the Summer driving out before dawn with my brother-in-law and working 14 hour days for 5 days a week and 10 hour Saturdays.  The double pay really added up over the Summer, specially since I was too tired to spend any of it.  On top of everything I signed up for a community college course to finish off an elective course in college.  So between that and work I was pretty much exhausted the entire Summer.

Work itself was tedious.  The electricians were all journeymen and were a motley crew of individualists here for the duration of the contract.  Once it finished they would all go their separate ways and get whatever jobs they could.  Union seniority was really the only distinction.  The shop steward made sure that we didn’t work a second after quitting time and reminded me often and loudly that as a non-union day laborer that I wasn’t covered by the Union in case of accident so I should join up and pay dues.  I explained to him several times that Summer that I wasn’t interested in making construction my life and that I was in fact in school.  Didn’t seem to matter to him.

I expected to be ostracized due to the fact that I was in school but the opposite seemed to take place.  Most of the electricians were interested and asked questions about modern college life.

I can’t say that I made the best laborer.  Most of these guys had been working hard since high school and were fairly muscular and large.  By comparison I was small but apparently they appreciated that I tried to do my job as best as possible.  Apparently day laborer isn’t a very well thought of position.  They apparently are often late to work or don’t show up at all and spend an inordinate amount of time hiding in the supply shed trying to avoid working.  Being naive as I was I didn’t know enough to hide from work and as a result I was being requested by various teams of electricians on different floors for whatever they needed.

Eventually this got me in trouble.  One of the older electricians had a son who was a day laborer.  This laborer was a snappy dresser and was not fond of getting his clothes dirty.  He was as lazy as some of the other laborers.  The older electrician took me aside one day and threatened me.  He said “Do you want to live longer?  Then stop working so hard!”  At least I think it was a threat.  Hard to tell.

The threat didn’t matter to me.  It was mid August and my time was coming to an end.  Community College was long over and I needed to get back to school and get my stuff out of storage and move back to College Station.  I walked up to the foreman’s trailer and gave my week’s notice to the site foreman.  All of the foremen there got really quiet.

“Can’t you wait for one more month, we’re almost done”  I couldn’t and truthfully I didn’t want to either.  Construction was a good experience for me but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for my life.

My last Friday came and I checked out.  The site foreman announced it on the walkie-talkie and all the electricians wished me good luck at school.  It was oddly touching.  As I was leaving one of the junior electricians came up and took me into the supply shed.  He looked left and right and behind him and handed me a scrap of paper.  “Just in case you’re interested”  Then he was off again.

It was a notice to some Christian revival meeting out in some small town I had never heard of.  Unexpected but very kind of him and I could see why he would be nervous.  The company would probably frown on this sort of thing.

I drove home that night and by Monday I was back in College Station setting up my apartment.  I had my working summer and was glad to be out of the hard world of construction work but I was also dreading the monotony of school life once again.

Posted in: Houston, memories, school, work

hectic holiday aftermath

September 2, 2014 6:27 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I love being lazy.

At least I used to.  Holidays, not vacations mind you but short one or two-day holidays, were opportunities to do nothing and to take delight in just being. I could linger in bed sometimes up to 11 in the morning sleeping, reading, or watching TV.  Once I discovered online games I could stay in my PJ’s till 3 or 4 in the afternoon sitting in front of my desktop involved in some online adventure.

But not anymore.  Holidays now mean extra work on the day back or work during the holiday to keep things from piling up on the day I return.  Even though I’m out of the office, my overseas customers aren’t.  Even my clients in the US expect to have replies to their queries and to pick up the threads of a deal from before the holiday immediately.

How was I able to ignore this for so long?  One answer is that I didn’t use to have so many responsibilities.  I’ve inherited or created responsibilities over the years and I know from experience how work piles up if I just let these sit till I’m back in the office.

My method of dealing with this backlog has changed over time.  I used to do some “pre-work” and address some issues before I left the office before the holiday.  A sort of pre-emptive strike.  But half the time the situation would change over the weekend and I just created more work for myself.

What I’ve switched to now is to doing little bits of work over the holiday.  I telecommute so my office is with me at home.  Since I’m always up before dawn I do some light office work.  I chase down old leads and contacts with emails, I update sales spreadsheets, I clean out directories and old files.  Things that need doing but aren’t heavy-duty work.  I also peruse the email traffic that’s come in during the holiday so I don’t get any nasty surprises when “I return”.

I swear I’m not a workaholic.  If anything this is my way of not having to work harder.  I think it’s a great way to keep the work load down and to use time that I might normally waste.

 

Posted in: business, holidays, work

all in

August 9, 2014 6:39 AM , Leave a Comment ,

My but what a week it’s been at work.

About Thursday afternoon I reach my limit.  I barely limp into the end of the work day with nothing left in me. I get that drained tired feeling that I know all too well.

But this time it’s not the same feeling I used to get near the end of the week.  Not the “I’m tired because I’m just going through the motions” type of tired.  This time it’s tired because I’ve been doing meaningful work and seeing results.

The type of tired you get after a good solid workout.  You know you did your best and your body performed the way you expect it to.  Well this is similar but instead I did my work as best as I could and my clients responded by trusting me with new contracts.

That’s the type of tired that I want to feel.

Why can’t every week be like that?

 

Posted in: attitude, life in general, work

but the forest IS made of trees!

July 20, 2014 6:52 AM , Leave a Comment ,

“All politics is local”

“You don’t see the big picture”

“Won the battle but lost the war”

All phrases meant to explain our disconnect from viewing situations without respect to scale.  To one degree or another we are all guilty of this at some point in our lives.  We sometimes obsess so much on a particular detail or we look at the overall picture and forget to address  particular details and suddenly everything goes wrong.

Some examples?

Back when I used to be in production I would sometimes become so obsessed with some part of a map.  I would go over and over and over it so many times that I would lose track of time and suddenly I would find myself behind schedule.

And of course the opposite is also true.  You can create the best possible product and do your utmost to create something fantastic and suddenly one little hiccup and one little wrong or missing detail destroys days, weeks, or even months of precious work.

So how to balance this out?  I don’t think it’s so much  matter of striking a balance between being detail oriented and being aware of the broader perspective.  Neither of these is really a negative quality to have in your work.  Being detailed oriented makes your work precise and comprehensive.  Having a broader perspective let’s you keep an eye on what you are trying to accomplish.

Rather, I think it’s a matter of doing both but adding a third dimension to your work.  An independent arbiter in your mind that will look at the project objectively and step in when needed to make the necessary adjustments.  Quality control is often derided as a fussy and unproductive part of the work cycle and it is never appreciated until it’s missing in the final product.

A good dose of quality control will be an important facet of your work in the long run and give you a reputation among your peers as someone who can handle highly complex projects on time and with an eye for meticulous detail.

 

 

Posted in: business, career, work