SUPER Learning

I know I mentioned at the beginning of my time here that I was learning a lot. That’s still the case everyday but in the last week this has intensified. The previous two weeks I was on holiday, check out http://canadatokathmandu.tumblr.com for my travel blog if you’re interested. I went to Greece for a week, it was awesome but this is the work blog so:

Got back on Friday which was spent catching up on everything (and working of course). Then last Monday we had an all day workshop with everyone in the NOC staff, absolutely everyone, which was awesome! We’re at a lot of different skills sets so part of the workshop was making sure that we *all* have some basic diagnostic skills and if we already knew some uses for them; extend that knowledge.

I’ve said it before I’m sure but I’m very new at this sysadmin/managing services malarkey so I really enjoyed the workshop because it’s helping us get the tools we need to work better. It also meant we all met up for the first time. I knew most people from before but it was definitely nice to all get together - plus there was a barbecue which is always good!

There was a meeting with our main customer on Tuesday out of which came some good stuff. Most important as far as I’m concerned (on a personal level) is the fact that we’re going to visit the client as individuals for a day or two at a time. I’m looking forward to that as well. It has been becoming increasingly obvious that in this situation a better-than-average customer relationship is necessary. Sometimes a distant relationship is fine but when you’re working as closely as we are then getting to know each other is very important.

Improving our knowledge of each other, both teammates and clients can only be a good thing. I’ve always held that communication is incredibly important so now that we’re improving our channels of conversation I think a lot of stuff will improve.

The middle of the week was suitably hectic for post-holiday me then today we slowed down a little for a personal/professional development meeting. Took an hour out to discuss the book/life-management system of Getting Things Done. Definitely looks interesting. It’s going to become a regular thing, every Friday afternoon I think. The best part was working out what your ‘next actionable item’ is. Once you know the very next thing you can do, it’s a relief, and even if that this is asking stuff of other people, you know that you are working on the next step to completing your project. It’s a good way to work.

Even if I find the next steps hard to absorb, the lesson of granularising (yes, it’s not a word) your workload and tasks can only be good for you. I think that may actually be why I sometimes miss Starbucks. While here there’s a lot things I need to do, manic moments and all that jazz. But the tasks aren’t always well-defined and there’s a lot of steps that aren’t specific to try to diagnose the problem. The thing about Starbucks was that on your shift you’d be assigned a position, you’d be on bar, till or floor. So you’d be making drinks, serving customers or clearing up. And each of those positions has specific steps which you can do. It may get repetitive and boring, or crazy manic. But you’ve got one job to do, with specific steps and a specific goal. That kind of situation can actually be quite calming, you can autopilot it sometimes. Your mind is calm and (generally) not too harassed.

Those are my musings for the day anyway, I hope you didn’t read them if you thought they were boring. Nag me on Twitter if you want Greece photos btw, they’re on facebook some of them but not all.

<aside>I’m going to see HARRY POTTER TODAY. WOO!</aside>

Have a good weekend,

Willow x