Several different people in my twitter feed posted a link to this recent C&E News article about the difficulties some laid off chemists are having finding new jobs. It is indeed sobering reading, and provides a good example of why I have a problem both with Cal Newport's advice to focus on getting really good at something and the "traditional" career advice to find something you love to do: sometimes the market for that something collapses.
I had an up close view of the wave of offshoring that occurred in software development, and then watched that wave crest and retreat as companies realized how tricky offshoring really is and started to bring more software development jobs back in house, or at least to local contractors with whom they could have frequent face-to-face meetings. And then, of course, mobile apps happened, and now suddenly software development- a career path that 10 years ago people were pronouncing dead in the US- is one of the hottest careers going, at least as evidenced by how hard it is to find good software developers to hire.
So perhaps something similar will happen to chemistry. Right now, companies are offshoring chemistry like crazy, and people are pronouncing chemistry to be a career that will disappear from the US. But maybe in 10 years, the wave will have reversed, and something will have happened to bring more chemistry jobs back to the US. For software, I think the tide turned due to a lot of big project failures as people tried to offshore projects using the same loose project management techniques that work for collocated projects and had them fail. I don't know what might turn the tide for the chemistry jobs. I have some friends who are convinced it will be the first big case of lost intellectual property, since in the small molecule drug discovery business the structures of lead compounds are closely guarded secrets. It could equally well be some other costly problem, such as an impurity that scuttles an expensive study. Or it could be the same communication and remote management problems that have led to a rethinking of the "offshore everything!" philosophy in software development. Or maybe I'm wrong, and the wave will never recede.
None of this offers much comfort to someone whose job is gone now, though, since even in my best cause scenario, it is close to a decade before the tide turns. It is easy to try to second guess the decisions of the people in the C&E News article, but that is ultimately pointless. The fact is that even chemists who have done everything "right" can find themselves struggling to find a chemistry job these days.
Instead of trying to convince ourselves that we'd never be in their shoes, we would be smart to read their stories and think about different strategies for dealing with industry-wide changes like they faced. This is why I think carefully about how best to build my career capital. I know that not all career capital is of equal value. This is also why retraining isn't as easy at is sounds- something Nicoleandmaggie referenced in the comments on my last post. For retraining to be successful it has to produce career capital that is recognized as having value in the target career, and all too often it fails to do that, or it fails to give the trainee enough capital to go out and find a job in their new field.
I think a better approach would be to explicitly acknowledge that the days of the secure job, or even of the secure career in a given field, are gone. For better or for worse, we all have to take a more active role in managing our career paths these days. We have to craft strategies, and we will live with the consequences if those strategies fail. My primary personal strategy is one of diversification. I like to grow skills and build capital in multiple areas, thinking that I can perhaps use the skills in the more general areas (i.e., technology and management) to find employment if the jobs in my more specialized area (i.e., the science) become too hard to find. But this approach is no guarantee, and it also has risks- for instance, perhaps if I specialized more I would be more competitive for a dwindling supply of jobs in my particular area.
This need to actively manage your career definitely has downsides- it is tiring, and frustrating, and scary, for instance. But there can be upsides, too. I find it energizing to think of the many possible things I could do next, and as a scanner/renaissance soul, I like the idea that I will do many different things over the course of my career, and I like that it is becoming more common to view that as a good thing. But then, I've been pretty lucky so far. I might not be so sanguine about this all if my luck takes a turn for the worse. Let's hope I don't find out.
What do you think? Have you witnessed any large industry-wide changes? How do you manage your career?
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
A Rare Political Post (No Gloating, I Promise)
I had planned to spend my evening drinking a beer or two and nervously watching the election returns. But I live in California, so in fact, the Presidential election was called before I even put my kids to bed. Therefore, I've decided to spend my evening drinking a beer or two and writing a rare political post- and nervously watching the election returns for my local and state elections and waiting to hear Obama's acceptance speech.
I won't lie- I'm happy with the result. As I explained to Pumpkin as we watched the election returns after dinner, Barack Obama was the candidate I voted for.
But I also explained to her that Mitt Romney is a good man, a lot of good people voted for him, and they, for the most part, had respectable reasons for doing so. (I exclude the Truthers and other closet- or not so closet- racists from that.)
And as I tweeted not long after the election was called for Obama, I'm actually disappointed that the Republican party is going the way it is. I am moderate on most fiscal issues, leaning a little left or a little right issue by issue. Overall, I probably lean a little left. I am, however, quite liberal on the "social" issues- gay rights, women's rights, etc. And I am firmly in the "I believe in science" camp, wanting us to address climate change instead of arguing over whether it is happening, and just wanting us in general to use the available evidence to make policy decisions and not try to make up alternate realities when we don't like the one we've got.
On the fiscal issue and other core government policy issues, like immigration and health care (and yes, I think that is a core government policy), I'd like a credible opposition. I want people who come at these issues from different baseline beliefs about the role of government to bring their best ideas forward, and I want us to debate those ideas and find the best combination to solve the problems we face.
But none of that can happen if one party is more concerned with who I sleep with and what happens after that. It can't happen if one party is more concerned about how to keep certain groups of people from voting than with how to craft policies that will appeal to those groups. And frankly, it can't happen if we are stuck in this place where the partisan game and obstructing the opposition is more important than solving our country's problems. (Yes, I believe both parties have been guilty of that last one, and actually think we are in a negative feedback loop on that, similar to how people react to one car gridlocking with more gridlocking. But Republicans, you're the ones in opposition now, so it falls to you to stop this madness.)
So, while I'm happy that "my side" won this time, I hope that the other side takes a step back, regroups, and finds a way forward that doesn't require all of its nominees to pander to the furthest right wing. I hope it finds a way to be a credible option for me in the future, and doesn't instead double down on its current course.
I hope that because I think we have some big issues to solve in the near future, and I think that some of them are not ones that have an obvious partisan home. I'll make no secret of the fact that I'm thrilled that this election victory means that we keep our place on the path to reforming health care, not just because I think expanding health care coverage is the moral thing to do, but because I think that untethering health care from employment is the smart thing to do. I have written before about how I toy with the idea of going out on my own as a consultant and/or trying to start my own company. One of the things holding me back is the risk that presents, not to my income (which I could manage), but to my family's health care coverage. I do not think I am alone in making that calculation. Why is this not a job creation issue? If we reframe it in that way, could we get sharp minds on both sides of the political divide working on how to make it financially feasible to extend coverage to everyone, regardless of their employment status? Because that is what we need.
The other issue I'd like to see bipartisan brainstorming on is immigration. Again, this is both a moral and pragmatic, economic issue to me. On the moral side, I think that the situation we've created with undocumented immigrants on the low end of the wage scale is reprehensible. On the economic side, I think that the mess we have at the higher end of the wage scale is a competitive disadvantage for our country. We are turning away people who could be job creators, and there are other countries with great quality of life that are happy to welcome them. I do not pretend that finding a fair and lasting solution to these problems will be easy. That is why I want all sorts of people thinking about how to solve them.
And I think this bipartisan brainstorming should be applied to all issues. For instance, I understand and respect the deep and unwavering opposition to abortion that many "values voters" have. I, clearly, view that issue quite differently than they do. But we have common ground. I, too, would like to see the number of abortions in this country plummet. I don't know anyone who doesn't. Let's accept the reality that abortion will remain legal for the time being, and instead of trying to chip away at that work to make it irrelevant. There's research on what reduces abortions. We could work together to figure out how to use that to bring our abortion rate down.
In short, I want us recognize that we disagree on many things, but look for what we can agree on, and use that to find our way to solutions to the issues that matter to all of us. I want an opposition that is more about presenting opposing ideas than about just opposing the other side. I know that this is a pipe dream in our current environment. But it doesn't have to be. I really, truly, hope that the Republicans decide to be that opposition. Who knows- if they do that, in four years, I might find myself in the opposition. Or I might even find myself voting for a Republican. And that would be just fine with me.
I won't lie- I'm happy with the result. As I explained to Pumpkin as we watched the election returns after dinner, Barack Obama was the candidate I voted for.
But I also explained to her that Mitt Romney is a good man, a lot of good people voted for him, and they, for the most part, had respectable reasons for doing so. (I exclude the Truthers and other closet- or not so closet- racists from that.)
And as I tweeted not long after the election was called for Obama, I'm actually disappointed that the Republican party is going the way it is. I am moderate on most fiscal issues, leaning a little left or a little right issue by issue. Overall, I probably lean a little left. I am, however, quite liberal on the "social" issues- gay rights, women's rights, etc. And I am firmly in the "I believe in science" camp, wanting us to address climate change instead of arguing over whether it is happening, and just wanting us in general to use the available evidence to make policy decisions and not try to make up alternate realities when we don't like the one we've got.
On the fiscal issue and other core government policy issues, like immigration and health care (and yes, I think that is a core government policy), I'd like a credible opposition. I want people who come at these issues from different baseline beliefs about the role of government to bring their best ideas forward, and I want us to debate those ideas and find the best combination to solve the problems we face.
But none of that can happen if one party is more concerned with who I sleep with and what happens after that. It can't happen if one party is more concerned about how to keep certain groups of people from voting than with how to craft policies that will appeal to those groups. And frankly, it can't happen if we are stuck in this place where the partisan game and obstructing the opposition is more important than solving our country's problems. (Yes, I believe both parties have been guilty of that last one, and actually think we are in a negative feedback loop on that, similar to how people react to one car gridlocking with more gridlocking. But Republicans, you're the ones in opposition now, so it falls to you to stop this madness.)
So, while I'm happy that "my side" won this time, I hope that the other side takes a step back, regroups, and finds a way forward that doesn't require all of its nominees to pander to the furthest right wing. I hope it finds a way to be a credible option for me in the future, and doesn't instead double down on its current course.
I hope that because I think we have some big issues to solve in the near future, and I think that some of them are not ones that have an obvious partisan home. I'll make no secret of the fact that I'm thrilled that this election victory means that we keep our place on the path to reforming health care, not just because I think expanding health care coverage is the moral thing to do, but because I think that untethering health care from employment is the smart thing to do. I have written before about how I toy with the idea of going out on my own as a consultant and/or trying to start my own company. One of the things holding me back is the risk that presents, not to my income (which I could manage), but to my family's health care coverage. I do not think I am alone in making that calculation. Why is this not a job creation issue? If we reframe it in that way, could we get sharp minds on both sides of the political divide working on how to make it financially feasible to extend coverage to everyone, regardless of their employment status? Because that is what we need.
The other issue I'd like to see bipartisan brainstorming on is immigration. Again, this is both a moral and pragmatic, economic issue to me. On the moral side, I think that the situation we've created with undocumented immigrants on the low end of the wage scale is reprehensible. On the economic side, I think that the mess we have at the higher end of the wage scale is a competitive disadvantage for our country. We are turning away people who could be job creators, and there are other countries with great quality of life that are happy to welcome them. I do not pretend that finding a fair and lasting solution to these problems will be easy. That is why I want all sorts of people thinking about how to solve them.
And I think this bipartisan brainstorming should be applied to all issues. For instance, I understand and respect the deep and unwavering opposition to abortion that many "values voters" have. I, clearly, view that issue quite differently than they do. But we have common ground. I, too, would like to see the number of abortions in this country plummet. I don't know anyone who doesn't. Let's accept the reality that abortion will remain legal for the time being, and instead of trying to chip away at that work to make it irrelevant. There's research on what reduces abortions. We could work together to figure out how to use that to bring our abortion rate down.
In short, I want us recognize that we disagree on many things, but look for what we can agree on, and use that to find our way to solutions to the issues that matter to all of us. I want an opposition that is more about presenting opposing ideas than about just opposing the other side. I know that this is a pipe dream in our current environment. But it doesn't have to be. I really, truly, hope that the Republicans decide to be that opposition. Who knows- if they do that, in four years, I might find myself in the opposition. Or I might even find myself voting for a Republican. And that would be just fine with me.
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Rebuilding Career Capital
When I wrote my review of Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You, one of the things I highlighted was his idea of "career capital" and how having a good store of it can help you get the type of life you want. I wrote about how I have been cashing in some of my career capital to get the flexibility and autonomy that makes it possible for me to combine work and motherhood in a way that makes me feel good about both, and how I think that it is time for me to start building career capital again.
That part of the post resonated with a few commenters, and we had a nice little discussion in the comment section about it. Laura Vanderkam mentioned that she was interesting in hearing more about the topic, specifically about how one goes about rebuilding career capital after "emptying the pot."
This post gives some of the details, at least from my perspective.
Cashing In
First of all, I don't think of the cashing in I've done in the early years of motherhood as "emptying the pot" so much as "not building more capital." To abuse the metaphor a bit, I think I've been spending the interest on the capital I had built in my early career, not the principal. I suppose that if I kept going as I am now, I'd eventually be spending the principal, but I've only been in this "cash in" mode for about six years. As a rough guesstimate, I think it would take ten years in the "cash in" mode for me to burn down to the principal.
Being in a "cash in" phase doesn't mean that I haven't been meeting the expectations of my employers- in fact, if I believe my performance reviews, I've been exceeding those expectations most of the time. It also doesn't mean that I haven't been learning and expanding my skills- looking back over the past six years, I can identify multiple skills that I can list on my resume now that I couldn't have claimed before my daughters were born. And no, I don't mean things like my ability to change the diaper of a squirming, screaming toddler or negotiate snack time with a headstrong preschooler- I mean bona fide work-related skills, like building SharePoint sites or managing a chemistry cartridge in Oracle.
I have not, however, been doing things specifically to build my skill set and expand my career capital. Broadly speaking, I have not been reaching out beyond the core of my job. What this looks like will be different for different people, because different jobs have different things at their core. For me, it means that I have been to only one conference and a couple of user group meetings in the last six years, and all of those have been local. I have not been out looking for useful scientific and technical articles to read, although there are a few relevant blogs that I keep in my reader. I have not expanded my technical skill set much. Specifically, my programming skills are now so out of date as to be rather laughable. I have, however, kept up my core technical skills, and through my jobs, I have updated those.
The reason for this is fairly obvious to me, but it isn't the usual "there just aren't enough hours in the day" sort of reason. It is that I've been too exhausted to put in the effort required to build career capital. Don't get me wrong, there were some extra logistical issues due to having kids, particularly around the attending of conferences, and particularly when I still had a nursing baby. And yes, the day care drop off/pick up routine adds to my commute time, especially now that we have the dreaded double drop off with Pumpkin in Kindergarten and Petunia in day care at a different site. But I have quite flexible work hours, a fairly excellent support system, and the money to buy my way out of a lot of logistical problems. These things could have been overcome.
The thing that I couldn't overcome was that I was just too damn tired to stay awake after the kids were in bed, and if I could stay awake, I didn't have the energy for anything but the most urgent tasks. In fact, there were several time periods during which I was too tired during the day to do the intense work required to learn new skills. Cal Newport has some interesting things to say about the sort of effort it takes to actually get better at something, and I agree with him- learning new skills or pushing to expand your existing skills is some of the most tiring work there is in "knowledge work" careers like mine. I could muster the energy to do that work when it was explicitly required by the job I was doing right then, but I could not muster the energy to do extra.
I know that parents of school-aged kids often argue that the parenting demands actually ramp up, not down as the kids get older. I can see their point- the issues I deal with for my Kindergartener are more complex and emotionally draining than the issues I deal with for my 3 year old, or that I dealt with when the kids were babies. But I still find that the exhaustion factor has gotten much, much, much better as my kids have gotten older. I had two kids who did not sleep through the night until they were two. In fact, Petunia (who is now three) still isn't reliably sleeping through the night all the time, although she does it often enough and is usually non-disruptive enough when she doesn't sleep through that I consider the intense sleep-deprivation phase of parenting to be in my past. Bedtimes are slowly converting from endurance tests to enjoyable routines. Pumpkin is past the phase where she insists on having me take care of her. Petunia is slowing getting past that phase, but is still Mommy-preferring enough that even with a willing and supportive partner, I struggle to put together long chunks of time to work or do work or project related activities when both Petunia and I are at home.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that this experience is not universal. Some kids sleep well from quite early on. My husband and I have a parenting philosophy that requires a large amount of energy in these early years. But that is the point- to combine work with parenting and be happy with how I was doing both, I needed a fair amount of flexibility in my jobs, and the career capital I had stored up from my early career allowed me to get that.
Rebuilding
So here I am, feeling like I once again have the energy to rebuild some career capital. How am I going to do that? In some ways, it is quite simple: I'm just going to change my focus at work slightly. Instead of focusing purely on what this particular job needs from me, I will expand my focus to include what I need from this job, i.e., what skills I want to build to get me to the next level in my career.
That simplicity is deceptive, though, because the correct answer to the critical question of which skills to build is far from obvious. I am currently thinking very hard about where to focus my growth efforts. There are three aspects of my job: science, technology, and management. I could decide to focus on any of the three, or any combination of them, and there are many different avenues for growth within each area. To make this decision, I'll have to think about the prospects for my particular field and for my overall industry, and also about the potential for making lateral moves- or heading in completely new directions. It will take me some time to sort through all of that, so I have decided to start making some changes now, even though the best strategy is far from clear. Here is my list:
1. I've started saying "yes" to more local seminars and networking events, particularly if they are during the work day. I'll still have to get my work done, so this leads to longer days, but is less intrusive and easier to organize logistically than the typical after work networking happy hour. (This actually leads me to an interesting side observation: if you want to network with more senior people, you should probably look for seminars and lunch time or even breakfast events, and not happy hours. I've noticed that few of my peers and even fewer of the people senior to me go to the happy hour events. This is not to say that happy hour events are useless- networking with peers and early career folks is a good thing. But if you want the senior people, you probably need to look elsewhere.)
2. I've printed out a few journal articles that I want to read. My plan is to pick one day a week to designate as "paper reading day" and to read one paper with morning tea on that day. I made this plan just as budgeting and goal setting madness overtook my schedule. Next week, I may actually get to implement the plan, assuming I can unearth the papers from underneath the pile of budget spreadsheets on my desk.
I want to read the paper with my morning tea because I'm sharpest first thing in the morning, and reading and really understanding a journal article is hard work. Once again, my "regular" work will still need to get done, so this may lead to more work after the kids are in bed, but now that I can regularly stay awake for an hour (or more!) after they go to sleep, that is a possibility.
3. I'm taking note of unfamiliar technical concepts that I come across, and I plan to spend one lunchtime per week research the concepts I note down. I usually spend roughly 30 minutes eating lunch, and I usually work through at least half of that time. The other half I spend reading random stuff on the internet- this is where my weekend links posts come from, and is a very good brain cleansing break, so I think it would be foolish to jettison that practice altogether. But once a week, I can have slightly more direction to my internet searching. And of course, I can still take a walk after I finish eating, which is the other half of my lunch time rejuvenation scheme.
And that is it, at least for now. I may eventually decide to do something more drastic- I'm toying with the idea of assigning myself a non-work project that will force me to learn some more modern programming skills. But I don't think I'm ready for that quite yet. Bedtime still takes too long, and weekends are still too fragmented for me to feel up for that sort of project. Besides, it might cut into my writing time, and I find writing to be a very useful way to work through issues and ideas that might be distracting me, and also just to relax and refresh so that I'm ready to focus on work again the next day. And it is fun, so I'm not willing to give it up.
What about you? Have you ever come up with a plan to build career capital? Have you ever been in a period where you spent that capital- and how long did it last? Did you think you were spending interest or principal by the end of that time? I think this is a topic for which individual experiences will vary quite a bit, so I'd love to hear what you all think about it in the comments.
 |
| That's the swamp of career failure on the left, the pit of bad motherhood on the right |
This post gives some of the details, at least from my perspective.
Cashing In
First of all, I don't think of the cashing in I've done in the early years of motherhood as "emptying the pot" so much as "not building more capital." To abuse the metaphor a bit, I think I've been spending the interest on the capital I had built in my early career, not the principal. I suppose that if I kept going as I am now, I'd eventually be spending the principal, but I've only been in this "cash in" mode for about six years. As a rough guesstimate, I think it would take ten years in the "cash in" mode for me to burn down to the principal.
Being in a "cash in" phase doesn't mean that I haven't been meeting the expectations of my employers- in fact, if I believe my performance reviews, I've been exceeding those expectations most of the time. It also doesn't mean that I haven't been learning and expanding my skills- looking back over the past six years, I can identify multiple skills that I can list on my resume now that I couldn't have claimed before my daughters were born. And no, I don't mean things like my ability to change the diaper of a squirming, screaming toddler or negotiate snack time with a headstrong preschooler- I mean bona fide work-related skills, like building SharePoint sites or managing a chemistry cartridge in Oracle.
I have not, however, been doing things specifically to build my skill set and expand my career capital. Broadly speaking, I have not been reaching out beyond the core of my job. What this looks like will be different for different people, because different jobs have different things at their core. For me, it means that I have been to only one conference and a couple of user group meetings in the last six years, and all of those have been local. I have not been out looking for useful scientific and technical articles to read, although there are a few relevant blogs that I keep in my reader. I have not expanded my technical skill set much. Specifically, my programming skills are now so out of date as to be rather laughable. I have, however, kept up my core technical skills, and through my jobs, I have updated those.
The reason for this is fairly obvious to me, but it isn't the usual "there just aren't enough hours in the day" sort of reason. It is that I've been too exhausted to put in the effort required to build career capital. Don't get me wrong, there were some extra logistical issues due to having kids, particularly around the attending of conferences, and particularly when I still had a nursing baby. And yes, the day care drop off/pick up routine adds to my commute time, especially now that we have the dreaded double drop off with Pumpkin in Kindergarten and Petunia in day care at a different site. But I have quite flexible work hours, a fairly excellent support system, and the money to buy my way out of a lot of logistical problems. These things could have been overcome.
The thing that I couldn't overcome was that I was just too damn tired to stay awake after the kids were in bed, and if I could stay awake, I didn't have the energy for anything but the most urgent tasks. In fact, there were several time periods during which I was too tired during the day to do the intense work required to learn new skills. Cal Newport has some interesting things to say about the sort of effort it takes to actually get better at something, and I agree with him- learning new skills or pushing to expand your existing skills is some of the most tiring work there is in "knowledge work" careers like mine. I could muster the energy to do that work when it was explicitly required by the job I was doing right then, but I could not muster the energy to do extra.
I know that parents of school-aged kids often argue that the parenting demands actually ramp up, not down as the kids get older. I can see their point- the issues I deal with for my Kindergartener are more complex and emotionally draining than the issues I deal with for my 3 year old, or that I dealt with when the kids were babies. But I still find that the exhaustion factor has gotten much, much, much better as my kids have gotten older. I had two kids who did not sleep through the night until they were two. In fact, Petunia (who is now three) still isn't reliably sleeping through the night all the time, although she does it often enough and is usually non-disruptive enough when she doesn't sleep through that I consider the intense sleep-deprivation phase of parenting to be in my past. Bedtimes are slowly converting from endurance tests to enjoyable routines. Pumpkin is past the phase where she insists on having me take care of her. Petunia is slowing getting past that phase, but is still Mommy-preferring enough that even with a willing and supportive partner, I struggle to put together long chunks of time to work or do work or project related activities when both Petunia and I are at home.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that this experience is not universal. Some kids sleep well from quite early on. My husband and I have a parenting philosophy that requires a large amount of energy in these early years. But that is the point- to combine work with parenting and be happy with how I was doing both, I needed a fair amount of flexibility in my jobs, and the career capital I had stored up from my early career allowed me to get that.
Rebuilding
So here I am, feeling like I once again have the energy to rebuild some career capital. How am I going to do that? In some ways, it is quite simple: I'm just going to change my focus at work slightly. Instead of focusing purely on what this particular job needs from me, I will expand my focus to include what I need from this job, i.e., what skills I want to build to get me to the next level in my career.
That simplicity is deceptive, though, because the correct answer to the critical question of which skills to build is far from obvious. I am currently thinking very hard about where to focus my growth efforts. There are three aspects of my job: science, technology, and management. I could decide to focus on any of the three, or any combination of them, and there are many different avenues for growth within each area. To make this decision, I'll have to think about the prospects for my particular field and for my overall industry, and also about the potential for making lateral moves- or heading in completely new directions. It will take me some time to sort through all of that, so I have decided to start making some changes now, even though the best strategy is far from clear. Here is my list:
1. I've started saying "yes" to more local seminars and networking events, particularly if they are during the work day. I'll still have to get my work done, so this leads to longer days, but is less intrusive and easier to organize logistically than the typical after work networking happy hour. (This actually leads me to an interesting side observation: if you want to network with more senior people, you should probably look for seminars and lunch time or even breakfast events, and not happy hours. I've noticed that few of my peers and even fewer of the people senior to me go to the happy hour events. This is not to say that happy hour events are useless- networking with peers and early career folks is a good thing. But if you want the senior people, you probably need to look elsewhere.)
2. I've printed out a few journal articles that I want to read. My plan is to pick one day a week to designate as "paper reading day" and to read one paper with morning tea on that day. I made this plan just as budgeting and goal setting madness overtook my schedule. Next week, I may actually get to implement the plan, assuming I can unearth the papers from underneath the pile of budget spreadsheets on my desk.
I want to read the paper with my morning tea because I'm sharpest first thing in the morning, and reading and really understanding a journal article is hard work. Once again, my "regular" work will still need to get done, so this may lead to more work after the kids are in bed, but now that I can regularly stay awake for an hour (or more!) after they go to sleep, that is a possibility.
3. I'm taking note of unfamiliar technical concepts that I come across, and I plan to spend one lunchtime per week research the concepts I note down. I usually spend roughly 30 minutes eating lunch, and I usually work through at least half of that time. The other half I spend reading random stuff on the internet- this is where my weekend links posts come from, and is a very good brain cleansing break, so I think it would be foolish to jettison that practice altogether. But once a week, I can have slightly more direction to my internet searching. And of course, I can still take a walk after I finish eating, which is the other half of my lunch time rejuvenation scheme.
And that is it, at least for now. I may eventually decide to do something more drastic- I'm toying with the idea of assigning myself a non-work project that will force me to learn some more modern programming skills. But I don't think I'm ready for that quite yet. Bedtime still takes too long, and weekends are still too fragmented for me to feel up for that sort of project. Besides, it might cut into my writing time, and I find writing to be a very useful way to work through issues and ideas that might be distracting me, and also just to relax and refresh so that I'm ready to focus on work again the next day. And it is fun, so I'm not willing to give it up.
What about you? Have you ever come up with a plan to build career capital? Have you ever been in a period where you spent that capital- and how long did it last? Did you think you were spending interest or principal by the end of that time? I think this is a topic for which individual experiences will vary quite a bit, so I'd love to hear what you all think about it in the comments.
Saturday, November 03, 2012
Weekend Reading: The Really Short Edition
Budgets were due this week, and I had so many meetings that I basically had to cede defeat and accept that any actual work I did was going to have to be done at home, after the kids were in bed. And of course, there were TWO Halloween parades to go to (they were both very cute), and the trick-or-treating... and Petunia got a fever, and woke up miserable and crying at 2 a.m. both Wednesday and Thursday and refused to either go back to sleep or be comforted by either Mr. Snarky or my Mom, who'd flown over to watch Petunia during the day. So I haven't had a lot of time to read things on the internet.
All of which is my excuse for why I just have a few links for you this week.
I found this post of Jonniker's about being average via One Tired Ema. I like her point about how life is not a fairy tale on more than just the "no prince charming comes and solves all your problems" level. And how its OK to "just" have an average life.
The Gothamist has been running photos of the devastation Sandy caused around NYC. There are links to the other photo essays from the one on the Rockaways. The photos are so sad. Between those and Maria and Snickollet's wonderful and honest answers to Moxie's recent post about solo caregiving, I am feeling grateful for my life, crazy work schedule and all. There are a lot of harder challenges than having too many budget meetings.
Judging by my calendar, I might actually get to sit at my desk during the work day next week, so maybe there will be more links next weekend.
All of which is my excuse for why I just have a few links for you this week.
I found this post of Jonniker's about being average via One Tired Ema. I like her point about how life is not a fairy tale on more than just the "no prince charming comes and solves all your problems" level. And how its OK to "just" have an average life.
The Gothamist has been running photos of the devastation Sandy caused around NYC. There are links to the other photo essays from the one on the Rockaways. The photos are so sad. Between those and Maria and Snickollet's wonderful and honest answers to Moxie's recent post about solo caregiving, I am feeling grateful for my life, crazy work schedule and all. There are a lot of harder challenges than having too many budget meetings.
Judging by my calendar, I might actually get to sit at my desk during the work day next week, so maybe there will be more links next weekend.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Eleven Answers
Awhile back, Tragic Sandwich pinged me to answer 11 questions. She's had a stomach flu, so now seems a good time to write a post that is specifically a distraction for her! Also, I want to write a post, but the other topics I have in mind feel too exhausting right now- I am at the tail end of goals and budget season at work, which has left me feeling a bit mushy-brained.
Anyway, here we go- answers to Tragic Sandwich's 11 questions:
1) What was your favorite after-school activity?
I didn't do many in elementary school- I remember one cooking class and one sewing class, and almost taking a Mexican dance class but wimping out because my two best friends wouldn't join me. Mostly I walked home with my older sister, we let ourselves in, and then watched Gilligan's Island and Three's Company and other educational programming.
My main extracurricular in junior high and high school was orchestra, which was during school hours (except for the concerts).
2) What’s one fact or skill you remember learning from your favorite teacher?
Hmmm. I got my favorite quote ("Everything works out well in the end. If things aren't going well, it is not the end yet.") from a college physics professor, but he wasn't really a "favorite teacher."
I really liked my high school chemistry teacher. What skills did I learn? How to use units cancelling as a double check on your work when solving problems. That was a useful thing. He also gave me some really good advice about college- namely, to take the honors classes if I tested into them, because they would be smaller.
3) What’s the most valuable piece of criticism you’ve ever gotten?
That I needed to work on making sure I didn't get too far ahead and lose slower team members work. I still struggle with patience in this regard- but I have gotten better, and try to remember to slow down and explain things to people who might be a little lost.
Actually, the person who gave me this advice- on a performance review, no less!- sometimes reads this blog. Hi, Susan! I don't know if I ever told you how useful that feedback has been. I guess now I have.
4) If you could only eat one vegetable for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Oh boy, I hope I get to eat some meat and starch, too! I am not a big veggie fan. If I had to pick only one, it would probably be spinach, for salads. I like a spinach salad with a nice balsamic vinaigrette!
5) Who is your favorite fictional character?
Elizabeth Bennet. What can I say? I am an Austenite and Elizabeth is the best heroine. Although I also like Anne Eliot. I look forward to introducing my girls to the joys of Jane Austen.
6) What color shoes are you wearing right now?
Black flip flops. What little lobsters on the band. I bought them in Newport, Rhode Island, when the shoes I had with me rubbed a blister.
7) What is your favorite vacation spot?
Muri Lagoon, on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Which is also where we got married.
Mostly, though, we don't do return visits. We like to see new things. If I picked the place we returned to most, it would actually be Costa Mesa, in Orange County, because that is a favorite spot for a quick night away from the kids.
8) What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to your hair?
I got an asymmetrical cut in junior high. About the same time, I used to perm it, too. It was the 80s.
9) What time do you usually eat dinner?
6 p.m. This has started to creep later now that I have two separate pick ups to do before I come home to make dinner. And when it is my husband's turn to cook (on weekends), it is always later- he sucks at estimating the amount of time it takes to do things. No one's perfect, I guess.
10) What’s the best moment of your day?
Day care pick up. Petunia comes running over with her arms out for a hug, yelling "Mommmmeeeeeeee!"
Second best moment is picking up Pumpkin and hearing about her day. She's not quite so demonstrative these days, though- no running, yelling hugs!
11) What’s your favorite breakfast food?
Ooh, I love breakfast. Favorite is probably really good pancakes. Most frequent is oatmeal.
That's it! I am supposed to write my own list and tag other people to answer my questions, but... it is time to start the morning routine. Budget spreadsheets await me....
Anyway, here we go- answers to Tragic Sandwich's 11 questions:
1) What was your favorite after-school activity?
I didn't do many in elementary school- I remember one cooking class and one sewing class, and almost taking a Mexican dance class but wimping out because my two best friends wouldn't join me. Mostly I walked home with my older sister, we let ourselves in, and then watched Gilligan's Island and Three's Company and other educational programming.
My main extracurricular in junior high and high school was orchestra, which was during school hours (except for the concerts).
2) What’s one fact or skill you remember learning from your favorite teacher?
Hmmm. I got my favorite quote ("Everything works out well in the end. If things aren't going well, it is not the end yet.") from a college physics professor, but he wasn't really a "favorite teacher."
I really liked my high school chemistry teacher. What skills did I learn? How to use units cancelling as a double check on your work when solving problems. That was a useful thing. He also gave me some really good advice about college- namely, to take the honors classes if I tested into them, because they would be smaller.
3) What’s the most valuable piece of criticism you’ve ever gotten?
That I needed to work on making sure I didn't get too far ahead and lose slower team members work. I still struggle with patience in this regard- but I have gotten better, and try to remember to slow down and explain things to people who might be a little lost.
Actually, the person who gave me this advice- on a performance review, no less!- sometimes reads this blog. Hi, Susan! I don't know if I ever told you how useful that feedback has been. I guess now I have.
4) If you could only eat one vegetable for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Oh boy, I hope I get to eat some meat and starch, too! I am not a big veggie fan. If I had to pick only one, it would probably be spinach, for salads. I like a spinach salad with a nice balsamic vinaigrette!
5) Who is your favorite fictional character?
Elizabeth Bennet. What can I say? I am an Austenite and Elizabeth is the best heroine. Although I also like Anne Eliot. I look forward to introducing my girls to the joys of Jane Austen.
6) What color shoes are you wearing right now?
Black flip flops. What little lobsters on the band. I bought them in Newport, Rhode Island, when the shoes I had with me rubbed a blister.
7) What is your favorite vacation spot?
Muri Lagoon, on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Which is also where we got married.
Mostly, though, we don't do return visits. We like to see new things. If I picked the place we returned to most, it would actually be Costa Mesa, in Orange County, because that is a favorite spot for a quick night away from the kids.
8) What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to your hair?
I got an asymmetrical cut in junior high. About the same time, I used to perm it, too. It was the 80s.
9) What time do you usually eat dinner?
6 p.m. This has started to creep later now that I have two separate pick ups to do before I come home to make dinner. And when it is my husband's turn to cook (on weekends), it is always later- he sucks at estimating the amount of time it takes to do things. No one's perfect, I guess.
10) What’s the best moment of your day?
Day care pick up. Petunia comes running over with her arms out for a hug, yelling "Mommmmeeeeeeee!"
Second best moment is picking up Pumpkin and hearing about her day. She's not quite so demonstrative these days, though- no running, yelling hugs!
11) What’s your favorite breakfast food?
Ooh, I love breakfast. Favorite is probably really good pancakes. Most frequent is oatmeal.
That's it! I am supposed to write my own list and tag other people to answer my questions, but... it is time to start the morning routine. Budget spreadsheets await me....
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