The Lists of 10 and Making JustALittle Progress on Goals

This is another one of those posts where ideas I've read in different places come together and make me think that maybe I'm not *always* wasting time online. Hah, who am I kidding, I waste prodigious amounts of time online.

I finally finished Scott Berkun's Mindfire essays, after the library sent me 2 overdue email notices and a paper one. I'm sure I owe them enough in late fees to have bought my own copy of the book. 

My favorite essay was the one on creativity. I can't find it online, though I suspect it's somewhere on his blog. The salient points were:

• Creativity isn't some magical power that only a lucky few are blessed with
• Creativity comes from combining known ideas to make new ones
• You need to "practice" being creative to get better at it

One of his suggestions was to keep an "idea journal" handy so you can jot down interesting thoughts and ideas. It's a pretty simple concept and reminded me of something I read ages ago about doing a "daily brainstorming practice" in order to keep those creativity brain cells humming.  I wish I remember where I read that, but the only thing I can remember was thinking that the author was a little...odd.

Yesterday a friend posted a link to this fantastic blog post about accomplishing goals by making just 15 minutes a day for them, instead of procrastinating until that mythical time where we'll have a HUGE chunk of time to work. 

Guilty as charged here. Before kids, I worked best under pressure, spending whole days cranking through projects fueled by Starbucks chai and lots of PB&J sandwiches. Well, as you can guess, with 2 kids under 5, I don't get the luxury of whole days to myself to work on personal projects.

My final inspiration was Laura Vanderkam's excellent article listing things to do when you have 5 minutes instead of checking email.

Do something creative with that pocket of time!

I combined all of these concepts with my love of making lists, and made a list of 10 things I could do to further my goals for the year, all of which can be done in little pockets of time. Some of them are one-time tasks that I can cross off, and others are ideas that I can keep using.

10 Quick Ways to Progress

1. Plan our next meal and make the shopping list 
2. Take a very short walk (anything more than 5 minutes is a win)
3. Write a blog post (hello!)
4. Sort one folder of digital photos
5. Clean up a small space (counter, shelf, drawer)
6. Read a few pages of a book for my PMP certification credit on my phone
7. Figure out how I'll get exercise tomorrow (or today if there's time!)
8. Come up with 5 Paleo breakfast options
9. Update my Etsy shop incoming order notes
10. Create a "template" for meals to make planning easier (eg 2 vegetables, a protein, etc)

Now my challenge is to figure out WHERE to keep this list so I'll see it. I have a OneNote notebook online which I can access on my laptop and phone, but I haven't gotten into the habit of using it. I need this list to be "in my face" so I can avoid the siren song of Facebook and the false promises of a clear Inbox.

But I know it's working, because just reading this list gets me fired up to DO SOMETHING instead of zoning out online. Thoughts?

Look at this photograph

I've been very surprised to find the transition to becoming a stay-at-home parent has been somewhat difficult. I know I'm privileged to be able to choose this life for a few years, and it's what I've wanted since T was born in 2009.  I don't miss the job I left.  

What I do miss is the automatic structure that working outside the home provides - these hours are at work, those hours are at home with kids awake, these hours are mine all mine after the kids have gone to bed.  When working part-time, each of those "buckets" was precious and precariously balanced. I did a decent job at making those hours count, with a lot of hand-wringing in the process, of course.

Now my days are very different. Time has definitely slowed down, which I love. While T is at school or with my parents, I can spend an entire hour in the bed lounging around with BabyM, making her giggle, watching her practice her newfound mad rolling skills, and squeezing her delicious baby fat rolls. I don't feel guilty about lingering chores, checking work email, or doing something more productive like bathing her or clipping her tiny fingernails.  Or T and I can spend over an hour with her new Spirograph toy, and do it again the next day because school's out and we don't need to be anywhere at a certain time.

I have an extremely low tolerance for "busy".  I need a lot of space in my schedule, rather than a packed day of dashing from one activity to the next.

But without *some* structure, things fall apart for me.  I kept some time logs when I was on maternity leave and TJ was also off.  Laura Vanderkam, the author of 168 Hours, one of my favorite EVER time management books (and I have read many - it's a sickness), was kind enough to analyze them and give me some great advice.  On a side note, I met her in person (squee!) a few weeks ago on a fun trip to the zoo. I have taken her advice of making an extremely short to-do list each day and it's been helpful.  

But even with that great advice, I was floundering a bit.  So I created our Summer Schedule, which has been a hit. I'm extremely lucky that both girls nap well, so I have at least 1.5 hours mid-day all to myself.  And the Internet sucked up every last minute, making me feel like I wasted a precious resource.

On a whim, I signed up for the Big Picture Classes (BPC) Phone Photography course online.  For once, they included Android phone owners in the description with specific content just for us, and that's what sold me.  (Every other class I've heard about is iPhone-centric.)  

I have a history of signing up for online classes and not following through.  I love having the materials and reading through them at my own pace, but this means I miss out on the "community" created during the class.

 

So on July 1 I read the first assignment and played along.  At first I rolled my eyes about taking a photo of my feet (I mean, really?!) but then I realized that the prompts had a lot of flexibility and room for creative interpretation. The point is not to just complete the assignment and check it off, but to really THINK about how I can do it creatively and make an image I'd want to include in our Project Life album.

Assignment 1 - Where I Stand

Part of the class is a "photo scavenger hunt" with a list of 7-8 open-ended prompts.  I've been working on those as well as the daily assignments and having a great time with it. I've loved seeing how the other students around the world are interpreting the same instructions.  I'm learning more about how to use Instagram and related tools, plus several new camera and photo editing apps for my Android phone: PhotoGrid, Pixlr Express, and Vignette.

And I'm fired up. I can't wait for new assignments to be posted.  I'm looking out for opportunities to cross off more scavenger hunt items.  I want to spend some time with the documentation for my camera app, which I paid $5 for 6 months ago and never learned how to use properly.  I've rediscovered how freakin' awesome my Galaxy Nexus phone camera really is.

And what I've realized is that I need to be learning new things.  Just crossing tasks off a to-do list isn't enough for me.  One of the valuable things I got from work, and didn't realize until now, was the constant learning curve of new challenges.  The culture of my old workplace was that you never got to "just do your job well" - you always had to take on new work and "do more with less". I used to grumble about it, but it turns out that I *need* that sort of challenge to stay engaged.

Don't get me wrong - I am learning new things about parenting and my kids each day, but that is a very different process for me (and often an exercise in frustration as we all learn how to grow together!) - it's all that squishy interpersonal stuff I've never been very good at.

So this Phone Photography class is exactly what I need right now. I'm thrilled to have a place to channel this energy and regain what I lost after not being at work for so long!  This is making me really, really happy right now.

If you want to follow along with me as I take this class, I'm anandirc on Instagram and will be posting my class photos with the hashtag #BPCphonephotographyproject.

A space that now you hold: Summer Kid Schedule

T's preschool is on Summer Break until Labor Day. Thanks to my new "life of leisure", this wasn't a cause of consternation or a mad scramble to find camps and alternate arrangements to cover the time.

However, I realized about a month ago that I would need to plan *something* for our days.  We don't do well just lolling around in the house. T can play on her own a bit, but quickly gets bored and wants to play *with* me. While I love being home with the kids, I don't want to be drafted into the role of being their playmate and entertaining them all day long either.

We needed a plan. I've always been intrigued by homeschooling, partly just due to the structure and organization it requires to plan educational, interesting activities.

When T was a baby, I made up a schedule to hang on the fridge that outlined our activities for the week including my work days, our Toddler Group, and various meals and naps. It helped a lot by taking some of the "hmm, what's next" processing out of my brain, and also got us on a more regular eating schedule.  (Coordinating 3 meals and 2 baby snacks was driving me bonkers until I picked times and followed them.)

My imaginary Internet friend J (who I've actually met a few times in real life) posted a quick sample summer schedule on Facebook and it was *brilliant*.  The key items I hadn't thought about were having a couple of "activity blocks" like "art project" or "outside fun" or "game" where you could change it up each day, but still have an idea of what to fill that time with.

So I ran with it. Since we have T (age 3.5) and M's (age 8 months) schedules to contend with, ours is a bit tricky.  It was like a fun logic puzzle to fit in all the pieces.

Once everyone is up and has gotten dressed and eaten breakfast, we do a bit of reading time. I noticed that lately we've gotten out of the habit of reading during the day as T is *so busy* with her own playtime.  Consequently M isn't hearing as many books as T did when she was a baby.  Sigh, poor neglected second child.

As much as I can, I try to be hardcore about making sure we're home at the appropriate times for naps and not scheduling over them. M still takes a morning nap, so we're typically home until she wakes from that, which is around 10:30am.  While she sleeps, T and I do either an art project or work on some of her workbooks. (She loves them- I swear I'm not running an academic sweatshop here.)

The *actual* schedule

We then have a morning "Get Out of the House" activity, which on nice days would be a trip to the park to burn off some preschooler beans, or running errands. (Can I say how in love I am with places that have double shopping carts?!)

Next is lunch and both girls napping (or T having Quiet Time) until about 3pm.  (Divine, I know.) After that we have a quick snack, then our Afternoon Activity, which is T's swimming lesson twice a week, a park trip if we didn't go in the morning, or maybe some sidewalk chalk or playing in the rice bin on the deck.  When it's nicer out, we'll get out the Crab Pool and play in there.

Then we get into the home stretch - T watches some Spanish or educational TV while I cook dinner, then we have Cleanup Time (I have J to thank for this!).  By this time TJ is usually home, so we eat then everyone gets ready for bed. On a good day, the girls are in bed, lights out at 7:30pm. We don't always have Good Days, though. Such is life with 2 under 4, I guess.

But just a few days into Summer Break, this schedule is making me a lot less stressed out. I don't have to scramble and plan for each afternoon while the girls are napping - I just need to pick one activity for the days we don't have swimming.  If we get off track due to late naps or sleeping in, no worries - we just pick up where we left off and skip stuff as needed (except for naps. We try not to skip naps because that causes 2am BADNESS).

I printed a copy of the schedule to hang on the fridge (with cute fonts, of course). T likes me to read it to her each day, and has already taken to asking "what's next on the Mama School Schedule?". Definitely my kid.

That's it - very simple, but super effective. I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves over the next couple of months!

There's so much more that you need to work out

I keep composing blog posts in my head during the quiet times while nursing, showering, and driving but haven't been able to sit down and write them.

My daily life has been turned upside down by TJ's return to work.  Not in a bad way, but just in an "I need to get used to the new normal" way.  Before he started work, I literally had not spent more than 4 hours alone with the girls - just the time it took for TJ to get a good motorcycle ride in over the weekend, or have dinner with a friend.

Four hours is very different from an entire week, which is what I had when he had to go to the East Coast for his new job's orientation. It was a trial by fire, serendipitously aided by the arrival of my friend Di who just happened to be visiting that first weekend.  She helped us get in the groove by chatting with T while I was nursing M, or hanging out with M while I helped T get dressed.

Sadly, she had to leave on Sunday night, but we made it through the week.  By the end, I even felt like we had our routine DOWN. I got T to preschool on time every day that week with her lunch, everyone got a couple of baths and we slept ok.  We were in "survival mode", doing only what we needed to get through the day. Sometimes we all went to bed at 7:30pm.

When TJ returned from his trip, we had to figure out our routines again, this time with him. It was great having him around to handle bedtime and tag-team again when he was home, but there were new wrinkles, like the fact that he gets ready for work around 5:30 or 6am, and BabyM is a ridiculously light sleeper, so suddenly my day was starting then too.

But now we're 3 weeks into this new life and finding our way through it.  Once a week or so, I get to that magical state where I got everything done during the day that I was planning to do: basic chores, something fun outside the house with the girls, some exercise, an actual home cooked dinner, and maybe even a blog post or some crafty time.

The rest of the time, I'm still muddling through trying to figure out how to get the girls to nap in parallel rather than in series, how to keep the baby entertained for a few minutes while I shower, and how to convince the 3yo that her mere presence while I'm nursing the baby causes the baby to completely ignore me.

So by the end of the day, I'm worn out and way too tired to use that time to craft or blog. On the bright side I've been getting a reasonable amount of (crappy, baby-bedsharing) sleep, which makes me a better mama overall.

I think I'm going to have to switch my "me-time" activities to the early morning, which is painful for this night owl. We'll see. Every day is like a new (tiring) adventure.

Four steps to your dream work schedule at a tech company

(This was first published on the WomenTech blog in October 2011. I'm trying to consolidate my writing here, so I'm reposting with a few minor edits.)

You can have your cupcake and eat it too.

Work-life balance is an elusive thing and constantly changing. For me, it involves having a flexible work arrangement. I've been lucky enough to work at a large tech company since 2002.  For the first 5 years, I worked A LOT.  Full time+.  I worked every single day of September 2005 preparing for a customer event, but that was my favorite role in my 14 years of working in technology.

I dabbled in flexible work arrangements, working part-time for a while (without kids - that was AMAZING) and trying a compressed work week, with 9-10 hour days and every other Friday off. Both worked well for my needs at the time.

Since my return from maternity leave in 2010, I have worked part-time, ranging from 20-25 hours per week. I was typically in the office 2 days a week and worked a little from home on the other evenings and the occasional weekend as needed.  This allowed me to spend 3 full days at home each week with my toddler.  I'm currently on maternity leave now, and am scheduled to return in a few weeks, though the details are still pending.

When I tell people at work about this uncommon arrangement, they get a wistful look in their eyes and say things like “Wow, I wish I could do that” or “My job could never accommodate that” or “You’re so lucky, I’d never be allowed to do that”.

NOT TRUE, people! I started out just like everyone else, working 45+ hours, email every waking moment, fielding questions and putting out fires for a company-wide initiative. And who could forget those delightful summer Saturdays spent in the office?

And then I realized I wanted more out of life than just work. Don’t get me wrong – I love my job, and I love my company with its myriad opportunities and amazing people. But I wanted time for myself and my hobbies, and of course, time to really *enjoy* this new family thing we've got going on.

It goes without saying that this is not just a womens' issue. My husband requested (and got!) a compressed work week so that we could care for our daughter ourselves for her first year. He was home with her on the two days I worked, and then he’d go to work for the next 4 days. It was surprisingly easy to arrange this with our employer. Harder to get through the weeks without being completely exhausted, but that’s life, right?

So without further ado, here’s the advice I've given to many people who asked how they too can get the work schedule of their dreams. (Short of winning the lottery and quitting altogether, that is.)

How to get the sweet gig:

1. First, read up on your company’s policies and procedures around flexible work. If they don’t have them, you’ll need to decide how badly you want it, and then be the trailblazer and help them get a policy in place.

2. Figure out what *you* want with respect to work schedule and pay/benefits. A lot of people approach this as “I’ll do whatever my company lets me” but I think that’s the wrong way to go about it, and everyone leaves the discussion unsatisfied.

• A compressed schedule (e.g. 4 day work week or 9 days/2 weeks) will allow you to keep a full time workload and salary, but you’ll have to work longer days to make up for the day you’re off.
• A part-time schedule will give you reduced work hours (duh!) but also reduced pay and potentially fewer benefits. In addition, you’ll need to think hard about how your work can be scoped to fit into fewer hours.
• Telecommuting one or more days a week may not change your schedule, but may allow you to shift your schedule rather than spending time commuting.

3. Write up a short proposal detailing what schedule you’re requesting *and* addressing any concerns that might come up. You need to position it as something good for your work group, not just what’s in it for you.

4. Discuss with your manager. Be confident about what you’re asking for, and address his/her concerns with solutions. Be willing to discuss it “up the chain” as needed.

Once you’ve got the sweet gig:

• Be clear with your management and team about your work schedule and location (if you’re telecommuting.) It really helps to have the same schedule each week so people get used to it.

• If you’re not in the office but working, BE AVAILABLE. I can’t stress this enough. Sign into IM, answer your phone and email in a timely fashion and call in to scheduled meetings. People need to know and see that you’re working. Sounds unfair, and we think people should “just notice” our awesome deliverables, but that’s not enough.

• If you are working from home and your young kids are around, you MUST have childcare.There is no way you can do a great job working if you’re also taking care of your kids. Not putting in that “face time” at the office means you need to do an *extra* good job, and that’s not going to happen with distractions.

• If you’re working part time, don’t regularly work more than what you agreed to. Obviously you’ll have to put in extra hours around crunch time, but keep track of this, and make sure it evens out later. It makes no sense to work full-time hours on a part-time salary. If you have too much work to accomplish on your schedule, talk to your manager about prioritization.

• Be equally clear about your availability on days you’re not working. Give out your cell phone info for emergencies, but don’t accept non-urgent meetings and don’t respond to non-urgent emails either. You need to “train” people to understand your new schedule. They won’t respect it if you don’t.

• Review the arrangement periodically with your manager. Quarterly is good. Actively solicit feedback about what’s working and what’s not. Actually do something about what’s not working.

• Don’t be apologetic about having an unusual work arrangement. Be an ambassador, so people can see that we don’t have to chain ourselves to our desks 80 hours a week. Do great work and evangelize what you’re accomplishing and HOW you’re accomplishing it with your dream schedule and your newfound, totally awesome work life balance!

Of course, not everyone who asks gets approved, but a lot fewer people ask than you think, and there aren't actually *that* many people who do propose it seriously. Many companies, including my own, will actually *help* valued employees find an arrangement that works for them, even if their current role isn't a good fit.

I’d love to hear other stories of flexible work arrangements, and any other tips you can share for making it work for everyone involved!

15 Minutes of Email

I know I'm revealing my age (late 30s) when I tell you that I rely on email for most of my personal communication. I hate talking on the phone and realized that a mobile phone plan with 100 minutes was more than enough for me, and we don't even have a home phone. I don't even use those all up.

But I'm not young and hip enough to rely on texting or Facebook entirely, though I use those too. I text people I'm meeting up with re: plans, and use Facebook for folks whose email address I don't have.

I first got an email address in 1991 when I started college. It was long enough ago that not every student entering Caltech got an email address - only those who were taking a computer science class.  I think they changed the policy within a year or two and issued one to everyone.  But at first the only other people I knew who had email were folks at my school, and a few friends at Carnegie Mellon who were majoring in Computer Engineering.

By the time I graduated in 1996, even my parents had email. I currently have at least 6 email addresses (most of which route to my main personal Inbox).  I get a manageable amount of personal email, but still need to work to keep it under control.

I think it was Laura Vanderkam's 168 Hours that made the bold statement that clearing one's email inbox was not a worthy use of precious time, since you can just search for the messages you need. 

BabyM is alarmed by email clutter

I get that, but seeing a full inbox even with all messages marked as "read", gives me the willies. To me, it's electronic clutter, and just as unsettling as seeing our kitchen counter covered in mail, toys, and miscellaneous utensils. Yeah, I'm one of *those* people, who needs to see clean surfaces.  Even if everything is stuffed willy-nilly into a drawer below, the clean surfaces calm me.  But eventually I tackle those junk drawers too.

My new project is to tame the email demons, both work and personal. Work is easy right now - I'm on maternity leave and simply unsubscribed to all mailing lists and have a rule set up that deletes everything that's not addressed directly to me. Sadly when I go back, I can't keep it that way. But work email is a whole different species of monster and requires it's own process which I'll detail later.  I know you can't wait :)

I was seriously inspired a few years ago by Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero idea. I love the idea of not using my Inbox as a to-do list. A girl can dream, right?

So I'm tackling my personal email, in no more than 15 minutes a day. I have a timer. I got hardcore about this because I tend to linger and then completely fall into a hole where I start checking and responding to email, and end up idly surfing Amazon.com for things I might want to buy someday. Then it's 2am and I need to be up to feed the baby in either 1 or 4 hours.  Not a good situation.

It's such a simple process.  I close everything else but my GMail window. I start the timer and work for exactly 15 minutes. When I'm focused like this, it is CRAZY how much I can get done. Today I whittled my Inbox down from 145 messages to 83.

And then I'm done. No guilt for the rest of the day about "getting to email". No pressure to try and respond on my tiny phone keyboard while I'm nursing BabyM. No frenzied quick email sessions interspersed with spending time with T or M.  I can easily find 15 minutes to do a "lightning round" of email that will actually be productive.  And heck, it doesn't even have to be 15 consecutive minutes. 3 rounds of 5 minutes works too.

Yay for New Year Motivation. What about you? Got any email-related goals?