Feedback session
Sep. 3rd, 2004 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4The Away Day was surprisingly fun. Lots of chances to talk to people and find out what they actually do, which of course means useful ideas to feed back to the web team for how to proactively improve our service to the different divisions of the university, rather than just reactively responding to short-term requests ...
... I said "proactively", didn't I? Without irony. Oops.
I have, however, discovered that I really enjoy getting people to discuss things. It's fascinating watching people develop ideas & think out loud, and it's great trying to draw people into the discussion when they don't think they have anything to contribute. And even more so when they obviously think it's all boring, but before they know it they're looking interested.
To be fair, at the beginning I thought it was going to be all boring. But then I realised that I was actually getting really excited about Making Things Work Better, and especially Making People Think More. The only problem is I talk too much; I need to get better at making other people talk more.
Also, there were a lot of "why does/doesn't your department do [whatever]" kind of questions, and as the only representative of the web team there (the other people from MISD work in totally different bits of the department) I spent a lot of time defending, explaining, and justifying the work we do. For all that I whinge about it while I'm doing it I do actually think it's worthwhile, and I really enjoyed being able to try to explain why. I don't think I did it as well as I could have done, but at least I tried. And people listened. Which was nice.
Now I just need to make the enthusiasm for doing my job last till Monday morning.
I also need to get more confidence in speaking in public. I'm much better now than I used to be, but I still get flustered when I feel like people Just Aren't Getting It. Part of the reason I'm so much more confident in writing is that I've spent years and years writing, just for myself, with nobody there to laugh at me when the words come out all weird. Clearly I need to do the same with speaking -- just talk to myself when nobody's listening. For some reason, though, it seems so much harder; I can imagine myself talking out loud but it's very hard to actually talk out loud when I'm on my own. Just to babble, the way I babble in writing, getting the hang of the way the words feel, playing with them until I can throw them up and catch them between my teeth with my eyes shut.
I feel like this is a lesson I keep coming back to (and maybe one day I'll actually do the homework) -- that there's a kind of mental block, an obstacle that I think I'm going to call a "Just-Do-It barrier", that's practically impossible to break the first time, and a little more manageable the second time, and little by little it gets progressively easier until presumably one day it's almost second nature, the way writing is to me now. I've found this with karate -- more so because it's a physical skill and I haven't the grounding in physical skills that I have in intellectual ones -- and I've found it with music, particularly recently when I've been trying to force myself to learn to improvise. I'm good at visualising and planning things in my head, but breaking the Just-Do-It barrier is a leap that all too often I just can't make.
* * *
On a slightly different tack... Do you ever get a kind of vertigo-like feeling accompanied by incoherent wishes along the lines of "I want to do everything! I want to be everything! And I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME!"? Or is that just me?
I WANT MORE LIFE.
... I said "proactively", didn't I? Without irony. Oops.
I have, however, discovered that I really enjoy getting people to discuss things. It's fascinating watching people develop ideas & think out loud, and it's great trying to draw people into the discussion when they don't think they have anything to contribute. And even more so when they obviously think it's all boring, but before they know it they're looking interested.
To be fair, at the beginning I thought it was going to be all boring. But then I realised that I was actually getting really excited about Making Things Work Better, and especially Making People Think More. The only problem is I talk too much; I need to get better at making other people talk more.
Also, there were a lot of "why does/doesn't your department do [whatever]" kind of questions, and as the only representative of the web team there (the other people from MISD work in totally different bits of the department) I spent a lot of time defending, explaining, and justifying the work we do. For all that I whinge about it while I'm doing it I do actually think it's worthwhile, and I really enjoyed being able to try to explain why. I don't think I did it as well as I could have done, but at least I tried. And people listened. Which was nice.
Now I just need to make the enthusiasm for doing my job last till Monday morning.
I also need to get more confidence in speaking in public. I'm much better now than I used to be, but I still get flustered when I feel like people Just Aren't Getting It. Part of the reason I'm so much more confident in writing is that I've spent years and years writing, just for myself, with nobody there to laugh at me when the words come out all weird. Clearly I need to do the same with speaking -- just talk to myself when nobody's listening. For some reason, though, it seems so much harder; I can imagine myself talking out loud but it's very hard to actually talk out loud when I'm on my own. Just to babble, the way I babble in writing, getting the hang of the way the words feel, playing with them until I can throw them up and catch them between my teeth with my eyes shut.
I feel like this is a lesson I keep coming back to (and maybe one day I'll actually do the homework) -- that there's a kind of mental block, an obstacle that I think I'm going to call a "Just-Do-It barrier", that's practically impossible to break the first time, and a little more manageable the second time, and little by little it gets progressively easier until presumably one day it's almost second nature, the way writing is to me now. I've found this with karate -- more so because it's a physical skill and I haven't the grounding in physical skills that I have in intellectual ones -- and I've found it with music, particularly recently when I've been trying to force myself to learn to improvise. I'm good at visualising and planning things in my head, but breaking the Just-Do-It barrier is a leap that all too often I just can't make.
* * *
On a slightly different tack... Do you ever get a kind of vertigo-like feeling accompanied by incoherent wishes along the lines of "I want to do everything! I want to be everything! And I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME!"? Or is that just me?
I WANT MORE LIFE.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 11:25 am (UTC)I WANT MORE LIFE.
Of course it's not just you; this is the primary reason I resent having to sleep. Too many precious hours frittered away lying down, unconscious.
And I don't have enough time to do the fun stuff, let alone the things I feel I "ought" to be doing. I could stop sleeping, quit work, and maybe, maybe, have enough time.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 12:07 pm (UTC)God, me too. But at the same time, I like sleeping! I want to be able to be lazy as well as doing everything!
Didn't Thatcher used to manage on 5 hours sleep a night or something ludicrous? Maybe you can train yourself to need less sleep... though there's a risk that you'd end up like Thatcher. Hm.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-04 03:39 am (UTC)I can manage OK on about 6 hours a night for a reasonable period of time; I feel fairly tired most of the time if I do, but that's too burdensome. Less than that in any given night is very tiring, however. I find it extremely hard to sleep more than about 9 hours without waking up and wanting to get up. Even when I'm very tired.
And I'm all for being lazy, but I prefer being lazy doing nothing useful that I enjoy, not being lazy and unconscious. I don't remember dreams, except on extremely rare occasions, so there's not even any memory of anything done while asleep for me; it's really just dead time.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 01:00 pm (UTC)I want to do everything ... so the things I never do don't matter, because everything's fabulous.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 02:05 pm (UTC)Because even if you can't win you can BEAT OTHER PEOPLE.Because it passes the time.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 02:54 pm (UTC)"It would have passed an-(you can't quote that, you haven't even seen the play. --ed)
I want more hours in the day. More days in the week might help, but I'm not convinced; that'd just put more distance between the days, which would be the opposite of an improvement. More weeks in the year is just right out. More years to the life, I wouldn't say no but it's not what I'm really after right now.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-04 03:31 am (UTC)