This month three things are happening to me...
1. I am moving flats.
2. I am starting my 3d placement
3. I am going on holiday to Ibiza
What makes this a particularly interesting month is that this is all happening in one weekend. I arrive back from holiday the same day I am due to move out from my flat and start my next placement the following Tuesday. Needless to say, this will be a really interesting weekend.Conveniently, as there are three things happening, three thoughts in particular occurred to me...
1. Having something to look forward to keeps me focused on the moment... Something that I respond really well to is having something to look forward too. I cant wait to go on holiday, and by and large, I think that the holiday has had a positive effect on my work. By having the "prize" at the end of the tunnel, I am willing to put in longer hours, inconvenience myself and generally take myself out of my comfort zone.
This I think is in part down to the fact that I know I have a full week out of the business coming up.There is one really interesting thing about this, for me anyway. We all get holidays as part of our contracts, so, technically we 'deserve' them (or at least are entitled to them).
However, I view them as a reward for the work I do - they are a motivation for me to work hard. The conclusion for me here is two fold. Firstly, I am motivated to work hard by the potential to not work. Just what this says about my job, I am not sure, but it certainly implies that I value my time off.
Secondly, being rewarded is important for me. While I may like to say that I don't need rewards or recognition from other people (and I do like to say this), it seems that I need at least some sort of recognition from myself. If I am motivated to work hard in order to enjoy my holiday, I at least need that "self recognition" that I deserve a break in order to fully enjoy it. This tells me a lot about how I view myself.
2. 3rd Placement...3rd time still lucky? This is more of an out and out question. So far, I have felt very lucky since moving to London. I have met some great people, I have developed a really good group of people I enjoy socialising with and, generally, feel accepted. My 3rd placement represents the 3rd time in a year I have changed job roles and work place (4th if you count my previous job), and I wonder, can the luck keep up.
I am really positive with regards the role and the people I am working with, but it will be interesting to see how this works out. Its not that I am pessimistic, but from experience, luck does run out.At which point you need to ask, was it good decision making or luck in the first place.
3. New Flat, New Flatmates, New Start? I am quite excited about moving flats. My family aside, I have only ever lived with 4 different groups of people (2 at Unit, 1 in Belfast and 1 in London) and living with another new set will be very interesting. My expectations are that everyone will keep themselves to themselves and it will be quite a quiet group of people, but I cant be sure (having only met one of them for 15 seconds).
However, what is interesting for me is that the people I live with have become almost an aside to my life.When picking a flat, I was more interested in the following 5 things:
1. Location (near work)
2. Location (near Stamford Bridge / central London)
3. Nice Room4
. Location (nice area - apologies for the cliché)
5. Football - local football!
Who I lived with was almost an after thought. Which made me think about my priorities in London. My priorities are definitely the following three things:
1. making a success of my job
2. enjoying myself physically (e.g. playing football)
3. having a good social life
This is the first time in my life where none of these priorities were directly tied to the people I lived with. To be quite honest, from some one who grew up with a quite close family unit, this surprised me that the people I shared my home with were almost an afterthought.
-
So, what does all this mean....well , I can draw three conclusions, then I am off to bed....
1. Priorities remain the same - I still want to be happy, have a fulfilling challenging job
2. BUT, what drives them change - I am now less concerned with my home and more concerned with my job / career. Who'd have thought it.
3. Time off matters - Basically, taking time off and time out makes me enjoy myself more and makes me more productive. Turns out, I am not the "machine" I once told someone I was, and those basic human needs surface at some point or another.--
I guess that this post was really about what is currently 'driving' me to work.
I've found this summer to be really tough for a variety of reasons, but what appears to be constant is that with good social life, challenging work life and something to loaf forward to, you can still feel pretty good about things.
Bring on Ibiza!
DD
Sunday 16 August 2009
Tuesday 11 August 2009
To infininty, and beyond. Or to Walsall and Back
Hello!
Today I was, for the first time in Walsall, with one of my colleagues EB. I know that I have been threatening to give a finalised post on the PLP and training in the business, I thought that today's experience warranted a blog post.
As I write this am travelling back to London, and I started to get very introspective about what went well and what went badly about the graduate project we were delivering. To give you all a bit of perspective, we were travelling from London to Walsall to deliver a one hour workshop to some of our sellers. The purpose of our workshop was to "share best practices". Here are a few things I learned from the experience:
1. Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance (but no too much): Myself and EB had practiced and prepared our workshop for about 3 hours. This does not include the direct work that goes into the slides / research, just purely on the content after we know what we wanted to say Without thinking about it, we seemed to settle on a ratio of for every one hour of deliver, three hours of preparation were required to get us comfortable with the material. Now, I am not saying that this was an amazing workshop or perfect delivery, but I was at a point were I was confident in the material and the workshop.
2. Less Talking, more walking: I discovered today that I have an urge to walk around when I am talking / presenting. Every time that I got started on a slide, I had an urge to stroll around the nice big room we were in. Why is this? In retrospect, I think it is down to two things. One part is definitely nerves. It can be a little stressful delivering a message to a group of people you have never met and I think I had some nerves, this probably manifested itself in me wanting to move around so as to distract the people present. I guess, subconsciously, that if they are focusing on my movement and not my speech, I am less likely to be concerned about what I am saying.
The other reason I think is impact. Most of the people I see talking, be it in TV or in person, do so while making some form of movement. When it feels inappropriate to use your hands to emphasise a point ( and here it did - I was not arguing after all) I think I wanted to move to add emphasis to my points. But I somehow resisted the urge to move….but what did I do?
3. Nerves? No way! I just want to be loved; This is something I noticed myself doing very early on. Once I had introduced myself and started talking, I insisted on becoming defensive. Not only did I start talking about where I am from, but started talking about how new I was to the business and, hell, I think I even started to sound more Irish! Why? Well, I don’t really know - I guess I just figured that I would use / abuse some of the fabled Irish charm. So, what does this say about me? Well, maybe nothing more than I want to be liked (hell, who doesn’t) but it may also say that I am willing to resort to wiley charm to get people on my side. Either or, its not necessarily a bad thing… is it? And speaking of bad things….
4. Bad Jokes = Bad Idea: I told two bad jokes, though each was bad for a different reason. The first was bad as it made reference to…well…how shall I say it….self love. Admittedly this was only a double entrendre but still, I think that it was definitely a bad idea. Plus no one laughed (I don’t think they got the double entendre!). The second joke was bad due to the audience….it was not awful mind you, but I used a vaguely sexist quote from an audience of which the majority were woman… though I think they liked me enough to let me get away with it…I hope…
5. Finally… How does that make you feel? Ultimately, it was an interesting day - all that travel for a one hour workshop. I had never been to Walsall and it was nice. I felt nice. I had never ran a workshop, it was nice to be able to do so. I also thought the crowd liked me and my colleague, so that was nice. I also was not too nervous, which was nice. And everyone I met was nice. So the whole thing was nice.
But for me that’s just it…nice is comfortable. Cotton wool is nice, and its fluffy, just like sharing best practices / presenting. And for me, this is the difference. I had a nice day, but I much prefer a driven, challenging one. I am coming back, a little tired and happy with the work, but I don’t feel exhilarated or like I have seriously achieved something. I would rather be out of my comfort zone, facing challenges, being put under pressure and pushing myself.
The saying "its nice to be nice" is very appropriate, but I would add that "its better to be challenged". Was I challenged today? Yes, but only in nice ways. And nice is not enough for me….and yet nasty is too far. So, I need to find somewhere in the middle? Quite possibly….but what does that mean…
Conclusion
Part of me thinks that nice is nice, the other part thinks nice is lame. So, I probably need somewhere in the middle, less nice, more spice, if you will. But then again, as my often worn red T-shirt says, "spice is the spice of life". So….I say….bring me more spice.
DD
PS for those of you who know me, you can probably guess how tempted I have been to leap into poetry here….so many words to rhyme with nice and spice….I just about resisted the urge….
Today I was, for the first time in Walsall, with one of my colleagues EB. I know that I have been threatening to give a finalised post on the PLP and training in the business, I thought that today's experience warranted a blog post.
As I write this am travelling back to London, and I started to get very introspective about what went well and what went badly about the graduate project we were delivering. To give you all a bit of perspective, we were travelling from London to Walsall to deliver a one hour workshop to some of our sellers. The purpose of our workshop was to "share best practices". Here are a few things I learned from the experience:
1. Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance (but no too much): Myself and EB had practiced and prepared our workshop for about 3 hours. This does not include the direct work that goes into the slides / research, just purely on the content after we know what we wanted to say Without thinking about it, we seemed to settle on a ratio of for every one hour of deliver, three hours of preparation were required to get us comfortable with the material. Now, I am not saying that this was an amazing workshop or perfect delivery, but I was at a point were I was confident in the material and the workshop.
2. Less Talking, more walking: I discovered today that I have an urge to walk around when I am talking / presenting. Every time that I got started on a slide, I had an urge to stroll around the nice big room we were in. Why is this? In retrospect, I think it is down to two things. One part is definitely nerves. It can be a little stressful delivering a message to a group of people you have never met and I think I had some nerves, this probably manifested itself in me wanting to move around so as to distract the people present. I guess, subconsciously, that if they are focusing on my movement and not my speech, I am less likely to be concerned about what I am saying.
The other reason I think is impact. Most of the people I see talking, be it in TV or in person, do so while making some form of movement. When it feels inappropriate to use your hands to emphasise a point ( and here it did - I was not arguing after all) I think I wanted to move to add emphasis to my points. But I somehow resisted the urge to move….but what did I do?
3. Nerves? No way! I just want to be loved; This is something I noticed myself doing very early on. Once I had introduced myself and started talking, I insisted on becoming defensive. Not only did I start talking about where I am from, but started talking about how new I was to the business and, hell, I think I even started to sound more Irish! Why? Well, I don’t really know - I guess I just figured that I would use / abuse some of the fabled Irish charm. So, what does this say about me? Well, maybe nothing more than I want to be liked (hell, who doesn’t) but it may also say that I am willing to resort to wiley charm to get people on my side. Either or, its not necessarily a bad thing… is it? And speaking of bad things….
4. Bad Jokes = Bad Idea: I told two bad jokes, though each was bad for a different reason. The first was bad as it made reference to…well…how shall I say it….self love. Admittedly this was only a double entrendre but still, I think that it was definitely a bad idea. Plus no one laughed (I don’t think they got the double entendre!). The second joke was bad due to the audience….it was not awful mind you, but I used a vaguely sexist quote from an audience of which the majority were woman… though I think they liked me enough to let me get away with it…I hope…
5. Finally… How does that make you feel? Ultimately, it was an interesting day - all that travel for a one hour workshop. I had never been to Walsall and it was nice. I felt nice. I had never ran a workshop, it was nice to be able to do so. I also thought the crowd liked me and my colleague, so that was nice. I also was not too nervous, which was nice. And everyone I met was nice. So the whole thing was nice.
But for me that’s just it…nice is comfortable. Cotton wool is nice, and its fluffy, just like sharing best practices / presenting. And for me, this is the difference. I had a nice day, but I much prefer a driven, challenging one. I am coming back, a little tired and happy with the work, but I don’t feel exhilarated or like I have seriously achieved something. I would rather be out of my comfort zone, facing challenges, being put under pressure and pushing myself.
The saying "its nice to be nice" is very appropriate, but I would add that "its better to be challenged". Was I challenged today? Yes, but only in nice ways. And nice is not enough for me….and yet nasty is too far. So, I need to find somewhere in the middle? Quite possibly….but what does that mean…
Conclusion
Part of me thinks that nice is nice, the other part thinks nice is lame. So, I probably need somewhere in the middle, less nice, more spice, if you will. But then again, as my often worn red T-shirt says, "spice is the spice of life". So….I say….bring me more spice.
DD
PS for those of you who know me, you can probably guess how tempted I have been to leap into poetry here….so many words to rhyme with nice and spice….I just about resisted the urge….
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