Find meaningful and creative ways to develop professional excellence

I did some brainstorming and not everything fits within my constraints, given that I only work half time, have to leave at noon, and have little kids at home so it is tough to find time outside of work to DO work (nor do I usually want to.) But I didn’t constrain my brainstorming because, sometimes ideas that don’t seem to work at first can be worked around.

IDEAS:
1. get a mentor
2. take a class
3. join a professional society
4. go to a conference
5. do a personal project e.g. “thesis”
6. write a paper / get it published
7. attend a seminar
8. start a seminar series
9. get higher productivity by using personal “rules”
10. network & meet people (especially if I can get work roles with new people; I find working with a variety of people more effective for me than going to networking events where you just talk.)
11. focus on getting work roles that leverage what I am already good at doing and am passionate about
12. mentor a summer student

Still thinking…

I thought I was caught unawares about mentoring some high school students, when I found out two weeks ago I’d been signed up and they’d be coming mid-June. Well, surprise again! One of them is actually coming this Monday, and I just found out today.

Good thing I’ve already been thinking about what they’re going to be doing, so I’m not completely unprepared! One more good reason for planning things ahead.

I just found out a few days ago that I’ve been signed up to mentor 2 high school students this summer. Without being asked! I am kind of worried since I’m already spread pretty thin on the proposal I’m working. But, I am actually really psyched about it too. I think mentoring will be very rewarding, and not too scary considering I’m about 10 years older than these kids… I suddenly feel old :-)

I’ve been back at work for about 2.5 months now, and the last few weeks were super busy! I’ve only been working half time but I feel like I’ve been making major contributions to the proposal I’m working on. I’ve been named Deputy Proposal Manager, so at least I’m getting some recognition! My workplace is getting quite a deal since I’m much more efficient with my time now than when I was working full time, plus I end up putting in a few hours off the clock…

For a couple months, while I am on maternity leave and I have other things to focus on!

And understandably so – I’m having a baby! For now I’ll be content if I can meet all my current commitments and wrap things up before I go on maternity leave in two weeks.

I just hope that by the time I’m planning to come back from maternity leave, I’ll be ready to find work engaging again. I suspect that it will be hard at first…

I recently found out that Remember the Milk, an online to-do list tracker, has a Firefox plug-in to integrate it with Gmail. So, I switched to Remember the Milk for my personal to-do list and added due dates, which I didn’t use on my previous to-do tool. I found it made me somewhat more productive because I tend to leave Gmail open most of the day (and thus, RTM) and my most urgent to-do items stayed at the front of my mind.

But – it meant I started spending more time at work thinking about all of my personal to-do items, which didn’t especially help my work productivity. At least it didn’t significantly hurt it, either.

So, I just decided to put my work to-do list into RTM as well, and to sort my to-do items into lists (i.e. work and home). Now I can set RTM only to show “work” items when I’m at work and “home” items when I’m at home. It’s actually been fairly helpful so far in boosting my productivity over some of the other to-do methods I’ve used in the past.

I imagine I’d get the same effect if I had my to-do list alongside my work email, like in Outlook. But we use Eudora, so that doesn’t work. Besides, I like the interface and it’s nice to be able to access my to-do list from multiple computers. And I can add personal to-do items even when I’m looking at my work to-do items, which helps me get my mind off of personal matters and back to work!

Since I’m cutting back to half time in a few weeks, I’ve been wrapping up a few things and getting ready to pass them on to other people. In a way it’s nice, but after putting lots of hard work into something, it can be hard to hand it off to someone else.

One thing in particular that has been hard for me: I’ve been leading a team of about 7 people in preparation for a proposal, but I’ve now given up that role.

I was originally the appropriate choice for team leader, but eventually the focus of the team changed. I was still expected to carry on despite my comparative lack of experience in the area, and I’d like to think I did a pretty good job (I put a lot of effort into it!) It was both stressful and rewarding.

However, certain other folks at my company felt my continued leadership of the team would be inappropriate. (I agree that the proposal will be better with more experienced leadership.) So, I’ve been replaced. At least it was a graceful transition – there’s no implication that I performed inadequately. Plus I have the outward excuse of my pregnancy & reduced time availability which helps me save face. But still, it hurts after all the effort I’ve put in.

The upside is, the new team leader has been impressed with my efforts so far, seems to respect my opinion greatly, and still wants me to be an integral part of the team. So, I still have some “authority” with the team, without the stress of as much responsibility.

Last week was super-busy preparing for an all-day review, and this week was super-busy dealing with the aftermath and another review of sorts.

I managed to get through the week by having a list of all my tasks on my cubicle’s whiteboard, listed by day (and in fact, the rough order I expected to work on them). I crossed off each thing as I did it. It was a good feeling, and I got a lot done.

I think part of my recent problem with motivation happens when I’m not sure exactly what I need to do next. My job can be nebulous like that sometimes. I didn’t have that particular problem this week, and I had plenty of motivation. But unfortunately the volume and urgency of the work made me a little depressed mid-week. It’s hard to find a good balance.

feeling engaged at work. And of course when I’m not engaged I don’t do my best work. I’m in a job where I do have a lot of control over my responsibilities, so it’s mostly my own fault. I seem to be having trouble getting out of this rut.

I really need to discuss this with some folks at work, but between vacations and their other responsibilities they have seemed largely inaccessible lately. Plus, I haven’t felt super motivated to make the effort to fix the problem. I guess I’ve been pretty preoccupied with the pregnancy, and how/when I’m going to tell them about that…