Saturday, January 12, 2008

Vote Yes on C, 7 Habits, No more dinner

If you are going door to door telling people to vote no on a proposal to replace open land with housing and your main reason is it will cause housing prices to drop, you might not want to bother with apartment communities.

Oh yeah - if you haven't registered to vote it's time to get to it. If you are young just showing up actually counts for a lot.

Over the past few months I made my way through The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The 7 habits are be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win/win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw. While stated in a list they sound like management buzz words, but the book actually makes some good points. I think the biggest thing I got from the book was it got me to stop and think about what I can and cannot influence and to think about how to influence others rather than expecting everyone to realize something is clearly the right answer.

The one part I really couldn't get into was the part where he wants you to write a personal mission statement and figure out your major goals in life. Not sure if it is just me, or my age or what, but I honestly have no idea what I want to do with my life.

Not sure that I'd recommend 7 habits to everyone, but if you are struggling with your work environment it might be worthwhile. The other part that was tough for me is a lot of his examples are about his marriage and raising his kids which I was not able to relate to.

At work they decided to cut work hours by one hour a day (become a normal 8 to 5 instead of 8 to 6). But that means they stopped bringing in dinner. So I'm trying to figure out how to keep from starving. Not that I feel I cannot overcome finding or cooking dinner, but it caught me a bit off guard this week. I think that if you are going to mess with someone's source of food you should give them a week's notice (or at least a weekend's to give them a chance to go to the grocery store). It's interesting because part of the change is encouragement that everyone be at work during a core set of hours so that they can collaborate. But what they don't get is that a lot of engineers (like myself) get most of their work done when everyone else leaves. I would go on and on, but that's enough venting for now.

4 comments:

The Owl Archimedes said...

Have you read The Elegant Universe or The Once and Future King? If Eric's had any influence on your reading you probably have, but they're both great books. The first 100 pages or so of TOaFK is kinda hard to get through, but then it grrrreat.

How about "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok? One of the few books I actually really liked from high school English.

Also, I just spent 3 days watching Boston Legal: Season 2. It's a riot, and not at all realistic (I hope).

Don't you think people focus too much on what we hope to do in the future with our lives? Or maybe that's healthy, especially when you're 90 and wondering if it's worth waiting out that extra year or two.

Anonymous said...

Have you heard of "The 8th Habit, From Effective to Greatness" by Stephen Covey?

Eric said...

Yeah, you lent me Elegant Universe and long ago The Once and Future King was recommended because archimedes herself conjured up memories of the book.

Thanks for encouraging me to type up my podcasts... felt good to get that out there.

The Owl Archimedes said...

Now that I think about it, I can't remember how I picked up that book, but wasn't it great? And insaneley complicated toward the end.

I tutor middle and high schoolers through tutor.com- these online tutoring services are getting popular, slowly but surely. 24/7 service, no matter where you are (even in India, in some cases, tho not with tutor.com)- it's a good deal.