Businessy Stuff
The growth of blogs in my news feeder is a little frightening. Along with Aaron, I’ve started to become hooked on Gettng Things Done. The biggest downside is that I spend so much time learning how to get things done, that I rarely get those things done. I suspect that the only reason that I am interested in all of these Getting Things Done blogs is that I like the cool technologies and the neat gadgets that go along with them. (oooh, space-pen!)
So, while cruising around these web-sites I start running into numerous blogs about business practices. Including some really cool information about how to go into an interview. This lady says that interviewees should have just as many questions for their interviewer. It shows that you are an interested employee and that you actually care about what type of job they might have to offer. Essentially you shouldn’t appear to be a wet blanket that will take whatever offer they are willing to throw your way. Instead it’s important to let them know that you care about what type of business you would work for and are considering if you even belong at the business you are interviewing for. Crafty, eh.
*Ugh, I swear if the Jeopardy theme song comes up one more time on shuffle… I’ll snap!
Sorry, venting. Umm, what else is going on? Oh, I’m currently working on a large research paper for Communication Law. Just finished up an exploratory essay that’s due this afternoon. I’m kinda excited to get this paper done. I am covering the issue of copyright law online. There is so much information and so many different ways to approach the topic that I’m betting it will be difficult to focus the topic appropriately. This Comm Law class has really enlightened me to the ways that the US legal system funcitons. And the professor for it is actually pretty cool, her classes are always some of the most interesting. I also get some consistently bad grades in her classes, but that’s because I can be pretty lazy for some of these things.
*Gagh!!!! The Jeopardy theme song just came up agian!!!! What is the deal with this iPod!??!!? Hulk angry!
Back to the project management things I was talking about earlier. There were a few very interesting articles on ALA that discuss use-cases and determining the scope of a project with a client before you get too far into it. You know me, I’m all about the organizational diagramming, so I really dig the idea of mapping out the goals and actors in any given project. When I learn about stuff like this it convinces me more than ever that there should be a project management class offered here at UNK for multimedia majors. Seriously, this is stuff that will take me a long time to learn on my own out in the real world. Why not provide training in some basic project management and planning techniques for multimedia students. It’s like I always say, anything really worth learning is best learned on your own.
Another really cool article covered the Pickle Jar Time Management Theory. This is a time management theory that I had actually heard about years ago. When a friend presented this at church as a way of setting priorities in your life. You take a Pickle Jar (or acquarium) and fill it with the biggest rocks first. Then you pour in pea gravel, then you pour in sand, then you pour in water. If you tried to fill up the acquarium in reverse order you would not be able to get everything in. This is what happens if you dont put your higher priorities first in your day. After you get the big important things in then you can fill in all the spaces with the lower priority tasks. The point, back when I first heard about this from Randy was that God needs to be our biggest rock, he’s the one thing that we need to make sure that we get taken care of first in our days. After that it’s easy to fill in with all the littler things. This doctrine goes completely opposite to the college lifestyle. Me, and most people that I know fill up their day and then try to cram in some big high-priority project at the end of the day, usually around midnight. This leads to long nights working on projects and total sleep deprivation.
Just writing this down has really cemented in my mind that I need to take this more seriously. My big electronic imaging projects need to take higher priority earlier than the night before. And my devotional time with God definately needs to become a big priority for me, I’m going to move it to a time slot right away when I wake up in the morning, then I wont have to worry about it the rest of the day.
Wow, this blog post was really convicting for me, and probably disorganized and non-sensical to the rest of you.