On delegating.

If you do, if you delegate, if you’re a good leader and you assign responsibility to other people, and if these people are actually especially willing to help you:

Do not send them dozens of emails.  Do not ask questions over and over.  Do not keep changing the details and plans without telling anybody.  Do not, when asked a question about a huge favor someone is doing for you, begin a sentence with, “You need to….”  Seriously.  If you suck at details and know it and then get willing people to take care of it, let them do it.  It’s actually pretty insulting to keep checking.

And it wastes everyone’s time and might even build ill-will. Think of all the time you waste bitching and moaning.  I mean, did I miss something?  Do bitching and moaning suddenly and magically get ‘er done?

And if you change things until the day before, we all might have saved some energy and sanity by waiting until that day to do anything, huh?

There you go.  Management advice from a student of [academic] philosophy.

Also: Invest in coffee for your staff.  Good coffee.  If I ever worked for something who did that, I might still work there!

If you majored in something.

Then you are an ass for giving people who can’t do it as well as you can (because they majored in something else) guff. Especially when said people can sorta do it a little, i.e., way better than you could do their major. Which they’re silent about. To try to not be a jerk. As if thinking it is not being a jerk already, too.

What?

Sorry you’re busy.

It’s annoying when people act like they’re annoyed if you talk to them when they’re sooo busy, when they also like to bug you when you’re busy. I find these folks overly obsessed with the appearance of their own busy-ness. I have also found that it takes far more effort to maintain the appearance of being busy than to actually get your work done. And their appearance of working always somehow ranks more highly than the work you’re actually doing. But then again, I suppose that in these folks’ world, you’re not working if you’re not talking about it a lot.

Met dissertation director in Washington.

For breakfast, coffee and a chilly walk to the Capital. A nice way to spend the first part of Friday, to be sure. I had to tell him about what happened Thursday in Texas though, since he’d been traveling. Not the kind of news you want to tell a person you like.

Autumn, gone so soon?

lake21109
This was the second weekend of October.  Now most of the leaves on my street are gone, save on the larger oaks.  Wow.  But, as much as October will probably always be my favorite month, November isn’t far behind chronologically or in my esteem.

Turns out there IS a photo.

IMG_0561
Of someone riding my old (2005) bike.  I found this photo on my old hard-drive (the one with Windoze).  It’s my Dad.  It’s during our move from Carbondale to Baltimore in August 2006.  When our bikes were sitting by the little trailer, ready to get packed last, my Dad snatched my bike and took off.  He wound up buying the 2006 model a few weeks later. Cycling is so damned fun that no one can resist and unattended bike.

Dissertation stress makes work stress not so bad.

I haven’t been blogging much on  here lately because I haven’t had the energy and will.  I hate when people say, “I didn’t X because I’m just soooooooo busy [with the inflection that no one, and they mean no one, is as busy as they are].”  So I won’t give you that bullshit.

I’ve been busy with work and planning the memorial ride for the gentleman who was killed in August.  That accounts for a lot of my time.

I’ve also been pulling my hair out about getting my dissertation director to schedule my defense before my wife’s too preggers to travel.  On one hand, I really like the guy and probably have a close philosophical kin in him.  On the other, it’s frustrating to be at the mercy of other people’s schedules and thereby tempted to push them — hard.  I mean, I’m certainly willing to piss people off if I have to, but not until I have to.  Especially not people that I like.  That accounts for much of my sanity.

We’ve also learned that the pregnancy is not without events.  On the ten week ultrasound, there was some bleeding under the placenta that only showed up on the U.S. but shouldn’t have been there.  Our doctor scheduled another for early last week, and it is still there.  The ultrasound technician said it’s something to monitor but not necessary worry about unless the bleeding gets larger.  We haven’t spoken to our doctor since she got the report, however, and it’s worrisome.  It’s also worrisome, to be blunt, when people who you’d think would be concerned are not, or, at least, don’t show it.  Mrs. P. is also on some medication, and that’s never fun.  That accounts for being emotionally dissinterested in blogging.

Excuses, excuses, I know.