We Love The Working World - Uh, Maybe

I am struggling to get focused today. I’ve a couple of things going on that have me a bit scattered.

First, it is Monday at work. Monday at work is always a bit of a challenge as everyone hits the deck running, communications fly back and forth, and everyone is full of energy and trying to gain some traction on their work items. This Monday was no exception. I spent most of the morning working my way through about fifty assorted email. One of the challenges there is a classic one. Not every communicator is created equal. Some folks write great email. They are clear, concise, and detailed. They are rapidly actionable. Other email are opaque, bureaucratic, jargon laden, and carefully non-committal. Unfortunately, you have to read through each one to figure out which is which. Now, at the end of the process of the original sweep through the incoming email, I ended up with about ten email that require some form of action. Two hours later of course.

Second, why people schedule meetings the first thing on a Monday is often beyond me. Most of the attendees in the meetings are dealing with item one, so they are distracted or multitasking or both. But, you end up sitting through long meetings that don’t necessarily make any sense. Of course, you never know that until you are through the meeting. Another two hours of the morning was eaten up by a pair of one hour long meetings that could have easily been summed up in ten minutes.

Third, I’ve got a small mountain of work in front of me this week, so I am struggling with where to start.

The end result, the morning is gone, I worked, but I didn’t accomplish anything. Ah, don’t you love the working world?