8r4d Consulting Ltd.

  • multitaskable

    I think a lot of us out there would like to think that we are superb multitaskers. I like to think that of myself. Or maybe you don’t. But we are out there and I know a lot of people who would fit that description: I can do everything, anything, as much as I want.

    Now…

    I have been doing this thing I’ve been calling a “career shift” —well, I mean, it stopped being a career break over a year ago when I started picking up odd jobs and part time work and going back to school. None of that is a so-called break anymore. It’s just a different kind of work, after all. My end goal is something different from where I was, but I am moving towards it with a careful, deliberate effort. So I’m calling it a shift. And in taking this approach I have been doing a lot—no, really, a lot—of multitasking. Or trying to, at least.

    I’ve been working jobs, volunteering, parenting, re-educating myself, writing, job hunting, trying to keep fit, coding, playing video games, reading more, socializing with friends, squeezing in a bit of travel—aaaaand, well… that’s the thing isn’t it? 

    As much as I’ve been doing all this stuff, I think I’ve become saturated. 

    Maxed out. Capacity reached.

    I am officially at the point where doing anything new seems to push something else out the back—and off the list.

    I started blogging more and my coding efforts suffered. 

    I upped the number of shifts I did each week at my part time job and suddenly I realize that I’m not making art.

    I’ve been reading more books, but almost simultaneously my progress on my novel ground to a halt.

    It’s not something I’m formally tracking, of course, but just trends I’ve noticed. Start one thing new, something old vanishes from my life.

    And yet I don’t view this as a weakness. My ability to multitask, something that I’ve long viewed without context or care or introspection is something that I’ve also long thought was nigh limitless. But actually it isn’t. And that’s okay.

    Understanding that the mind has limits, time is strict, that multitasking ones life and projects is finite, and that getting the most from ones efforts is a work of good and strategic choices—this is a kind of self-awareness that, for me at least, has been hard to come by. Knowing that taking on something new will take away something existing, or alternatively, giving up something existing will leave space for something new: this is a variable to help me understand my  ultimate potential to create, learn, and contribute. 

    And it sounds all-to-obvious to write that, but I think if more people could consciously articulate that variable about themselves they would not only make better decisions about their lives and careers, they’d probably find a kind of comfort in knowing that limits are nothing to fear and the very idea of multitasking should be evaluated with a unique and personal lens.

  • professional anecdotal

    I have been observing the subtle art of the professional anecdote.

    As someone pointed out to me recently, LinkedIn and other similar networks, along with individual websites like this very site, a professional-ish blog, are rife with people wearing masks.

    Professional masks, of course. People post on sites and blogs like LinkedIn and their own portfolio websites and almost unanimously do so wearing a kind of digital mask. That is to say, much of what you read here, there and other similar places is almost certainly, to a degree, appropriately, necessarily, and interestingly performative.

    Not in a bad way. Rather, it is performative in a work way.

    We are all trying to be professionals, and build up a facet of our identities online that normally we would reserve for the office.

    And this leads to the fine art of the professional anecdote. How does one tell a work appropriate story that is simultaneously a little humorous, a little insightful, and all around something that might be the kind of story one would feel perfectly comfortable telling at a meeting or a conference or to a client? 

    A few minute before I sat down to write this a former colleague of mine, can I call him a colleague? Someone with whom I did business in the past to whom I am now connected on LinkedIn, wrote a little story about how on the way to catch a cross-country flight to attend a business meeting recently he encountered a faulty gas pump while refueling his rental car, soaked his only pair of shoes in gasoline, and consequently had to think on his feet (groan) while navigating airport security, a crowded flight, and an important business meeting. A little humourous. Insightfully relatable. And assuming it was told with a tact, perfectly the kind of story that one could tell at the start of a meeting with just about anyone. Professionally anecdotal.

    And it is an art form that while often derided a bit pejoratively, just as I did to a degree when I noted that this is a kind of performative mask wearing, it is also a part of professional decorum that is vital to anyone in business these days.

    I note this second take because on LinkedIn lately I have seen some people, clearly the kinds of folks who have crafted long and careful perceptions online to their colleagues, suddenly shift into deep and divisive political opinion, telling stories that tick all the boxes as above, but then also make people a little uncomfortable regarding the state of the world these days, from almost every perspective one might imagine.

    So I wonder: is this a blip, and will the fine art of professional performance online shift back to the apolitical “a funny thing happened to me on the way to work” anecdotes? Or are we entering a refreshened era of tinting those masks to match our political colours to better understand with whom we are doing business?

  • strategic simplicity

    I write all of these things I post into an offline word processor first.  Then I do some light editing, copy and paste into the blogging software, and then ultimately push publish.

    Maybe you read that and thought so what? 

    Big deal? Obvious.

    We all have these simple little habits that keep us organized. They are each of them personal strategies to creep us towards whatever definition of success we’ve chosen. And each of these strategies are fundamental building blocks of who we are how we can get stuff done.

    I was observing a coworker yesterday inputing some data into a spreadsheet. She made a mistake and quickly realized that she had entered the data into the wrong cell. For me, I would have highlighted the cell, Ctrl-Xed it and then highlighted the right cell and Ctrl-Ved it, and been off to the next item. She used the mouse, located the undo button on the menu, clicked it to erase what she had written, then highlighted the correct cell and retyped the data.  Same result, but my method would have been literally five times faster.

    Never assume the little things are obvious or so what? moments. We might spend hours writing and talking about our big strategies for getting stuff done, but often I think I could teach a course on all the little things I’ve learned about getting things done and each individual step I take to accomplish it all.