Showing posts with label Multitasking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Multitasking. Show all posts

March 31, 2020

Children Are Our Future

There are already 32 states under lockdown orders and more surely to come.

It is good to see the children playing outside (even in smallish groups). 

It's trying times with schools closed, many parents trying to telework, and the need to take care of the children (especially the younger ones) at the same time. 

We can't lose sight that the children are our future. 

They are everything in this world. 

Even with the Coronavirus pounding away at our older and more vulnerable populations, we can still thank G-d that not many children have been infected

Even in challenging times, G-d shows His mercy to us. ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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May 10, 2018

The Essence of Time Management

So here are some quickies on the essence of time management.

1. Urgency vs Importance:

Don't sacrifice the important items for the urgent ones!

- Focus on the items that are important on the right side of the matrix--if they are urgent (upper-right), you need to do now; if they aren't urgent, but they are important (lower-right), you need to make time for them. 

- Deemphasize the items that aren't important on the left side of the matrix--if they are urgent and not important (upper-left), limit them or delegate them; if they aren't urgent or important (lower-left), delete them. 

There are two potential areas of dissonance that can cause you tension, stress, and anxiety.

- When the urgent top row items and the lower-left life necessities get in the way of your focusing on the quality life items that are of long-term importance to you (the lower-left).  For example, work and errands can crowd out your personal, family, community, and spiritual time. 

- When you have too many items in the lower-right quality time area and these are in competition with each other for your time and attention, and you don't know how to prioritize them and get it all done.  It's like there is never enough time. For example, we ignore our spouse, the kids, or closeness with G-d, because we just can't get to it all.

This is where our personal values and conscience come into play to drive what we do and how we spend our precious time in this world. 

We all only have 24 hours in a day, so our actions need to be purposeful and driven by our values!

2. Tasks vs Relationships

Imagine another matrix with focus on tasks on the vertical access and focus on relationships on the horizontal access. 

Again here, we want to ensure a healthy balance of focus on both task and relationships (upper-right corner). 

If we focus on tasks at the expense of relationships or relationships at the expense of tasks, we are going to have a problem.  Moreover, it makes no sense to focus on items that are neither task- nor relationship-focused (lower-left).  

We need to collaborate with others to accomplish great, complex tasks (we can only accomplish so much alone). 

Again, dissonance (tension, stress, anxiety) is caused when we are pulled off-balance to focus on work or people to the exclusion of the other.  

As they say,

"Mission first, people always!"

We've got to build meaningful relationships and work together to get the mission done and the mission can be helping people and building a better society in a variety of ways. 

In a sense, it's people helping people. Love thy neighbor to help thy neighbor.  

Time is of the essence--we have so little of it--it is precious--we can't get it back--it goes so fast--we need to manage it like gold. ;-)

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
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August 3, 2016

Snipped My Tie

This was pretty funny.

I had a loose thread on my tie as is wont to happen. 

And I know well enough not to try and pull it, because then you can really mess the tie up. 

But I am so busy in the office rushing around doing a million things.

So I pull out a scissors and still in a hurry just try to snip off the thread.

Well, I snipped it a little to close to the tie apparently.

This turned out not as a haircut, but more like a scalping. 

No more thread, and no more tie!  

Thank G-d, this wasn't a circumcision or we'd really be in trouble. 

One more lesson is always keep an extra tie at work. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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May 7, 2015

Parenting@CVS

This photo was taken in CVS.

The baby looks like it's trying to escape from the red shopping basket, but presumably the mother at the cashier is going...

"And I'll take one baby with the bottle of milk and Chiclets, thank you!"  

Hey look at all that candy kid...this is better than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)
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July 20, 2014

Better Early Than Never

So I learned a new word/concept today...PREcrastination (New York Times)

It's when you do things early!


The better known opposite word is PROcrastintion.



That's when you put things off or delay...often until the very last minute.

We know why people procrastinate--they don't want or like to do something, have more important things to do, may be overwhelmed with too many taskers, or perhaps they are just plain lazy. 


But why do people precrastinate?


Well, it's sort of the inverse of the above--they may like doing it, it may be a priority, or they just may want to get "ahead of the curve" on all the things they have on their to-dos, or they may be a Type A personality and don't rest until they've "got a handle on things."


Getting things done at the last minute (procrastination), can push off stress until later--perhaps a better time to deal with it, but getting it done early (precrastination), can help eliminate stress by just getting it over with. 


Some of us who get things done right away, may be doing extra work, because at times, the necessity of the moment is "overcome by events" (OBE) later on or we may start something before we even have all the directions or information and do it wrong altogether. 


While others who dilly-dally, may find that they waited too long to get the job done or have other things going on later that precludes them from meeting the timeline--as they say, "if you fail to plan, plan to fail!"


Is there a right or wrong in terms of Pre/Procrastination?


I want to tell you now, but I think I'll wait until later. ;-)


(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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December 23, 2013

Mothers Against Shaving Driving

So you think drinking and driving is bad...it is!

But look what this person is doing while driving. 

No, not texting.

No, not putting on makeup.

This guy is actually shaving while driving an automobile, and he's at an intersection. 

What is he thinking?

Are people really that busy that they can't find a few minutes to shave in the morning in the bathroom?

Of course when this guy has an accident, G-d forbid, he'll make up some shameful lying story to get himself off the hook.

Oh, it was the other person's fault or the accelerator stuck--it's defective.

Where are people's sensibilities? 

Here's a band-aid for the nick you got while shaving this morning. 

Next time use a bigger mirror and keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. ;-)

(Source Photo: Rebecca Blumenthal)
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July 14, 2013

Many For The Price Of One

We were at the movie theater over the weekend and something funny happened when we went up to the counter to get our tickets.

I ask my wife if she also wants anything to eat like popcorn etc.

She says yes, and I ask the lady behind the counter where the tickets and snacks are sold for some popcorn to ring up.

She points to the next register and says "You need to get the snacks over there" (pointing about one feet over to the left). 

I look at my wife like, okay and we pay for the tickets.

Then, we waddles over to the empty counter a foot over and wait for someone to help with the popcorn. 

Well the lady who just sold us the movie tickets waddles over as well and says, "Can I help you?"

We almost cracked up laughing. 

I said, "Yes, we would like some popcorn, please."

She says, "Sure," and proceeds to get the popcorn and we pay again.

What was hilarious was the lady selling the tickets redirected us to the counter over for the popcorn, where she in turn did the proverbial, changing of the hats, and then after selling us the tickets served us up the popcorn as well. 

It reminded me of a TV episode I saw a kid where some people visit a small town and stop at the Sheriff to ask where the local inn is. The Sheriff points them down the street. Then the people go into the inn and there is the Sheriff again, but this time wearing the innkeeper's visor. After checking in, the people ask where the town pub is and then stroll over across the way. They walk up to the bar, and the bartender turns around, and sure enough it's the Sheriff/innkeeper now with a servers smock on and asks what they would like to drink.

I may not be remembering the episode completely accurately, but you get the point. 

In a small town or an organization where people have to multitask, one person can play many different roles. 

That's why very often management in interested in good employees who can "walk and chew gum at the same time"--employees need to be able to perform under pressure to get many projects and tasks done, simultaneously, and they very often need to assume multiple roles and responsibilities to get that done. 

Pointing the finger at someone else saying not my job or the ball is in their court is no longer an excuse not to get things done. We have to shepherd the project all the way through the many leaps and hurdles that may stand in the way of progress. 

When people have to perform multiple roles and jobs--due to time constraints, cost cutting, or shortage of trained and talented people--then they may have to change hats many times over the course of their day and week. 

The Atlantic (5 July 2013) in an article about performing head transplants--yeah, an Italian surgeon believes this is now possible--retells an Indian folk tale called The Transposed Heads.

Two men behead themselves, and their heads are magically reattached, but to the other person's body. The clincher is that the wife of one of the men doesn't know which man to take as her husband--"the head or the heart."

It's a fascinating dilemma--what makes a person who they are--their thoughts (i.e. brain) or their feelings (i.e. heart).   

Similarly, when a person performs multiple roles at home, work, and in the community--who are they really? Which role is them--at the core?

We tend to like doing one or some things better than others, but does what we like doing mean that is who we are?  Maybe doing the things we don't like that challenge us to grow is what we need to be doing? 

Like the lady in the movie theater--one moment she was the ticket master and the next the concessions attendant--both were her jobs.

We too are made up of multiple and complex roles and identities--we are head and heart--and all the things they drive us to do in between. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)


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November 3, 2012

A Little Issue of Trust

When we went to a local DQ and tried to use the restroom, the door was locked. 

Realizing there was no one inside, we went to counter and asked for the key.

The lady behind the counter pulls out this long, heavy chain with this little key on it. 

Apparently, they have had an issue with people walking off with their bathroom key, and they didn't want to trust their key to just any holder. 

But with this mamouth keychain--literally a chain--this was not going to happen to them again. 

Now the problem is what do you do with it when you are in the bathroom? 

Perhaps, this could be a spin on walking and chewing gum at the same time. 

Good luck with this one! ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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January 16, 2011

"Your Brain On Google"

 
Amazing video called "Digital Nation."
Some great points from the interviewees at MIT, Stanford, and more:
- "We are immersed in technology all the time."
- "Technology is like oxygen."
- "Well over half our lives exist in the digital world now."
- "We are constantly multitasking and distracted."
- "The world has sped up."
- "We just want to push the pause button."
- "The Internet has changed from things one does to how one lives."
- "We are changing what it means to be human."

- "We are rewriting the rules of interaction for human beings."

- "Can we solve the alienation that technology has created with more technology?
- "Does increasing use of technology have diminishing returns at some points?"
These questions and thoughts really resonate with me.
Looking back in my own life, things seemed so much simpler 10, 20, and 30 years ago.
Then we were less connected online and maybe a lot stupider intellectually, but more connected in real ways--doing real things with family, friends, and community.
Life is certainly faster now, but are we happier as human beings?
Are we losing ourselves and becoming part of the vast interconnected cyberspace almost as half-humans and half-machines ourselves?

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May 29, 2010

Internet, Anything But Shallow

Over time, people have transitioned the way they predominantly get their information and learn, as follows:
1) Experiential—people used to learn mostly by doing—through their experiences, although these were usually limited in both time and space.
2) Reading—With the printing press, doing was supplanted by reading and information came from around the world and passed over from generation to generation.
3) Television—Active reading was upended by passive watching television, where the printed word “came alive” in images and sounds streaming right into our living rooms.
4) Virtuality—And now TV is being surpassed by the interactivity of the Internet, where people have immediate access to exabytes of on-demand information covering the spectrum of human thought and existence.

The question is how does the way we learn ultimately affect what we learn and how we think—in other words does sitting and reading for example teach us to think and understand the world differently than watching TV or surfing the Internet? Is one better than the other?

I remember hearing as a kid the adults quip about kids sitting in front of the TV like zombies! And parents these days, tell their kids to “get off of Facebook and get outside and play a little in the yard or go to the mall”—get out actually do something with somebody “real.”

An article in Wired Magazine, June 2010, called “Chaos Theory” by Nicholas Carr states “even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.”

Carr contents that the Internet is changing how we think and not necessarily for the better:

1) Information overload: The Internet is a wealth of information, but “when the load exceeds our mind’s ability to process and store it, we’re unable to retain the information or to draw connections with other memories…our ability to learn suffers and our understanding remains weak.”
2) Constant interruptions: “The Internet is an interruption system. It seizes out attention only to scramble it,” though images, videos, hypertext, email, IM, tweets, RSS feeds, and advertisements.
3) “Suckers for Irrelevancy”: “The stream of new information plays to our natural tendency to overemphasize the immediate. We crave the new even when we know it’s trivial.”
4) “Intensive multitasking”: We routinely try to do (too) many things online at the same time, so that we are predominantly in skimming mode and infrequently go into any depth in any one area. In short, we sacrifice depth for breadth, and thereby lose various degrees of our ability in “knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.”
While I think that Carr makes some clever points about the dangers of Internet learning, I believe that the advantages of the Internet far outweigh the costs.

The Internet provides an unparalleled access to information and communication. It gives people the ability to get more information, from more sources, in more ways, than they would’ve in any of the other ways of learning. We are able to browse and search—skim or dig deep—as needed, anytime, anywhere.

With the Internet, we have access to information that exceeds the experiences of countless lifetimes, our world’s largest libraries—and TV isn’t even a real competitor.

At the end of the day, the Internet is a productivity multiplier like no other in history. Despite what may be considered information overload, too many online interruptions, and our inclinations to multitasking galore and even what some consider irrelevant; the Internet is an unbelievable source of information, social networking, entertainment, and online commerce.

While I believe that there is no substitute for experience, a balance of learning media—from actually doing and reading to watching and interacting online—make for an integrated and holistic learning experience. The result is learning that is diversified, interesting, and provides the greatest opportunity for everyone to learn in the way that suits him or her best.

Moreover, contrary to the Internet making us shallower thinkers as Carr contends, I think that we are actually smarter and better thinkers because of it. As a result of the Internet, we are able to get past the b.s. faster and find what we are looking for and what is actually useful to us. While pure linear reading and thinking is important and has a place, the ability online of the semantic web to locate any information and identify trends, patterns, relationships, and visualize these provides an added dimension that is anything but shallow.

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May 22, 2009

Enterprise Architecture 3.0

In enterprise architecture, we routinely plan for new information technologies and not enterprise anything. In fact, what we now interpret as the federal mandate for “enterprise architecture”, the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 really mandated not enterprise, but “IT architecture”. Here, architects didn’t typically develop enterprise (or common) solutions, but rather stovepipe solutions per customer demand. I would call this Enterprise Architecture 1.0.

As enterprise architecture evolved, we saw it mature in its implementation and expand beyond pure technology into the realm of business process reengineering and improvement. This manifested itself in the Federal Segment Architecture Framework of 2008, where we now looked to solve business, not IT, problems for logical business segments of the organizations. This is Enterprise Architecture 2.0.

However, even at this level of maturity, it continued to be somewhat rare to find enterprise architecture that looked at how we are transforming people, organizations, culture, and society itself. This is now beginning to be demonstrated in the architecture using social media and the larger implications of widespread information sharing, collaboration, and broader citizen participation. I would propose that this larger view of, and larger participation in, enterprise architecture is the next evolution and represents Enterprise Architecture 3.0.

Interestingly enough, I read in ComputerWorld, 18 May 2009, an article that took just such a enterprise architecture 3.0 view, called “Are Computers Transforming Humanity” by Mary K. Pratt.

Note, it’s not that these types of articles have not appeared in the past, but rather that they were not as frequent and this thinking not as endemic to the everyday IT planning discussion as it is becoming today.

The article states: “We’ve always had the introduction of new technologies that transform and move society in new ways. It changes our interactions, our sense f the world and each other…what individual and cultural transformations do, new computer technologies portend.”

Here are some of the EA 3.0 trends I gleaned from the article that are starting to manifest in people, organizations and society:

Convenience weighing on privacy—We can plan for new technologies (for example, mobility solutions that yield “quick answers and fast transactions”) to continue that advance of convenience and challenging traditional privacy concerns. As the article states: “what we let hang out there has changed.”

Reaching across all boundaries—new technologies will continue the miraculous feat of breaking down organizational and societal stovepipes. “One of the things that is different today isn’t that we can just act collectively very quickly, but we act across heterogeneous groups.” Plan for IT to reach across boundaries globally (and even inter-galatically, in the not too distant future).

Digital narcissism—technologies are enabling people’s self-indulgent practices where they often use social media tools to “reinforce and further rationalize overblown esteem for their mundane opinions, tastes and lifestyle choices.” We web 2.0 tools like blogs and twitters and social media everyone can have their own soapbox to evangelize from.

Multi-tasking galore—with the constant barrage of new technologies and communications from them, we are forced to multi-task like never before. “Studies have found that the amount of attention many of us can devote to a single specific task is about three minutes—15 minutes at most.”

Learning by doing—“Why should we memorize facts and figures when search engines, databases, and increasingly powerful handheld computing devices make them instantly available?” What we used to have to memorize, we can now just do the look-up for.

The implications of moving and maturing to Enterprise Architecture 3.0 are exciting and will have us thinking long and hard about the implications of what we do in and with information technology well beyond anything we have done before with IT for individuals, units, or line of businesses.

The changes from IT are broader-based than before and we need IT leaders who can plan and govern these larger scopes. Recently, This was evident with the appointment by President Obama of a federal CIO and CTO to oversee the extraordinary shifts in how we can and will use technology going forward in our nation and with our partners globally.


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