Bill Clinton Article

My friend posted this Atlantic article on Bill Clinton that I found interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/i-never-dreamed-it-would-turn-out-this-way/379347/

This quote stood out as a problem that many millenials have in pursuit of their own careers/aspirations:

“I’ve got all these ideas,” he said. “What I’m really interested in is what my kind of public service is going to be, here in America and around the world … I’ve got to think that through.”

At the time—indeed, for the next couple of years—even people close to Bill Clinton wondered whether he would ever bring that period of cogitation to a definitive conclusion. They wondered whether he could discipline his curiosity and impulses sufficiently to focus on just a handful of causes, as Jimmy Carter had so effectively done, or whether, as The Atlantic put it in 2003, his post-presidency would turn out to be “limbo in overdrive.”

Tip of the Day: 4 Easy Steps to Doing Anything Better

Today, my tip is about improving your work life (and eventually, your personal life, too). It's 4 easy steps involving planning, communicating, doing the plan and reviewing the plan for improvement. It could also be build, reveal, share and improve.

4 Easy (EASY!) Steps:

1. Plan
2. Communicate
3. Do
4. Refine

Each of the four stages has its own components.

For Planning, you need to make sure that:

• The plan fits your overall goals for the project / organization
• The plan fits within your values (i.e. timeliness, excellence, providing more than was asked for)
• The plan has clearly defined what will be done, who will do each part, when each part will be done, and what resources/information is necessary to start / finish the project

For Communicate, you have to make sure that you communicate your plan to

• The people above you,
• The people affected by your decisions or waiting on your project,
• The people working with you who need to do some part of the plan, and
• The people outside of the organization that might need to know.

Figuring out who will be affected by your plan, and who is waiting on it is a good process.

For Doing the Plan, you have to have a good to do list that is clear and in logical order. Nobody can do everything at once. Do you shampoo your hair, dry your hair and then put conditioner in it? No! There is a sequence that makes everything more efficient!

1. First, do this.
2. At the same time, start this.
3. Then, once #1 has been completed, do this.

Some things can be done simultaneously (at the same time), but other things happen sequentially (one followed by another). You should draw "Flow Charts" to figure out where the bottle necks will be in your plan, and make sure that you address potential obstacles early on.

For Refining the Plan, you want to think about the process you used, the people and situations you took into account as you communicated and performed each task.

Ask:

• Where did you lose time?
• Who did you have to wait for before getting started?
• What made the plan hardest to accomplish?
• What do you know now that can help you next time you do something?

The planing process can help you in personal and professional matters. From the way you make your breakfast (do you start the stove fire first or get your ingredients out of the refrigerator first), to the way you schedule your free time (do you set personal goals for the 1-year, 5-year, 10-year?), to the way you respond to emails from colleagues and employers.

The more often you take your "PROCESS" outside of your head and put it on paper to analyze, the more improvement you will see over time.

On Sinking Ships, by Kathy Phillips

I work in a center at a business school, which allows me behind the curtain of a truly great enterprise. This morning, we had a meeting for all the centers and institutes, at which our vice dean spoke about the transitions we are going to make as a group.

I liked this one thing that she said very much:

"I can't swim. So I cannot be on the boat that is going down."

That was funny.

Good motivation, too.

On Despising Humanity

A good man is pleased, rather than amused, to find patterns in human behavior.

Instead of, "oh God, how sad we are," he says, "wow, we do that, it's true!"

Hot Potato Visionary Types

Sometimes, working with visionaries can be a real endurance race.

Visionaries seem to stand in place and receive a steady stream of hot potatoes from heaven that they pass off to whoever is standing nearby. And you're thinking to yourself:

I am not responsible for executing all of this, right?

Carrying Mattresses and Improving Processes

The people who ought to know the most about process baffle me with their disinterest in having one.

Process be not intuition. Or the other way around. Or both.

Intuition is unsafe, imho. Like institutional memory, it's hard to improve intuition. It's a gut feeling that comes from the same place that brings you bias, prejudice and a yearning for Snuggies.

Processes can be refined.
Intuition fails, and does so with an unshakable sense of righteousness.

I'm all for good, improvable processes. I work in the right place for it, too. At a center for quality, efficiency and competitiveness.

Meanwhile, in the second week back on campus at Columbia, we had a protest outside Low Library today. People carrying mattresses to support the student who was raped, and who has decided to make visible what would have otherwise been an invisible burden.

She is making it artistic. Making something felt into something seen. Would that we all had the craft for that. Or the will. Or both.

I talked with my favorite coworker, who used to be in publishing, about why I love NYC. I said, and I quote myself here, "I want to live and to be and explore. To feel what there is to feel in life. Just like every other twelve year old girl."

No, but really. I've found myself here, even if I wasn't lost before I got here. My colors have become deeper, my feelings stronger (or at least more obvious and interesting to me).

No, it's more than even that. I'm taking sides here. For some things and against others. I'm choosing things and rejecting things (people, too). I'm more well-defined than I've ever been and I fell less changeable.

Those may be the words that I look back on in twenty years with grief and self-pity. But somehow, I doubt it. I doubt that I'll look back on this time with anything but admiration and gratitude.

Labor Day

"Leisure alone, as great as it is, will not restore your soul."

-Rev David Bisgrove

It's Labor Day today.

I've eaten Mexican food and gelato, read up on representative democracy and texted friends. I have a date in a few hours, with an Italian man. It's all very leisurely.

But I feel anxious today. This feeling surprised me because I haven't felt this way all summer. I think it's not about the actual work I'll do this semester. It's about all the missed opportunities and mistakes I made in undergrad. This feeling is about all the happily married finance workers that mill about the city on Saturdays. Really--it has very little to do with me. But I feel it, nevertheless.

Instead of thinking too much on it, I'm choosing to focus on the day ahead and all the possibilities it holds. Museums, if I'm interested. The parks. Friends. Laughter. Exaggerated sentimentality.

And rest.