There’s a lot of crap in this post…

I haven’t blogged since before vacation.  I have a lot to talk about today, but I highly doubt I’ll get it all out.  J  We’ll see.  Here we go.

Cutting the Crap Vacation-style

We had a wonderful time in CA visiting family and friends.  We spent a full day at the beach and of course we did Disneyland.  We also visited the Queen Mary, the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Corona Del Mar Tidepools, In-n-Out (twice), and had dinner at Ruby’s on the Seal Beach Pier.  That’s only a smattering of our adventures, but you get the picture.

I think next time we can cut more crap, though.  For instance, LUGGAGE.  Our flight out of CO Springs was great.  We got on the plane with the greatest of ease.  This was because they checked our bags for free in CO Springs.  When we flew out of Long Beach, they did not.  Trying to haul a family of four  (that includes a very active toddler) through TSA WITH a crap-ton of carry-on bags was an exercise in insanity.  Next time I’m going to check all of the luggage even if it costs extra.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s worth my peace of mind.   

And a note to all you parents of young children.  The Ghosts and Legends tour on the Queen Mary isn’t exactly palatable for younger audiences.  Rob and I thought Megan would be fine, but 5 minutes into the tour, Megan made a hasty exit and refused to go back into the bowels of the ship.  LOL  We had to stay topside where she could see SUN for the rest of the time we were there.  Hahaha!

Cutting the Crap Illness-style

Megs threw up the morning of my birthday.  On our way to the hotel the night before we flew home, Megs threw up all over the backseat of our rental car.  The Friday after we got home, X threw up, and didn’t really stop for 4 or 5 days.  For the life of us, we couldn’t figure out where they got the illness until we took X to the doctor the following week.  She asked if our children had been exposed to any water.  Well, duh.  Yeah.  They’d been at the beach on two different occasions, and on one, X had fallen face-first into a run-off stream.  Bingo.  Next time, we’ll be avoiding that.  LOL  

And BTW, I’m SO SICK of my family being sick that it isn’t even funny.

Cutting the Crap Work-style

A few weeks ago I posted regarding cutting the crap at work.  When I got back from vacation, I had the leads from my SL team here in Denver Metro for two weeks.  We made great progress in planning our next project, so I have a few take-aways for the rest of you.  Schedule as few meetings as possible and laser-beam the meetings you have.  Make sure all the right folks are in the room the FIRST time so you don’t have to reschedule the meeting.  We managed to cram a month’s worth of work into two weeks AND still feel good about it.  I’ll blog more about this later.  J  

Okay… I have tons more, but I need to let that go for now.  Some of my ideas are single-post worthy so I’ll get to those soon.  J

Cutting the Crap at Work

In an effort to be more efficient around here, upper management has decided that we need to cut out as many afternoon meetings as possible.  This, they say, will allow project teams to work uninterrupted through the afternoon, and hopefully they will be more productive.  I say HUZZAH to this new cutting-of-the-meetings edict.  After all, Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings… They did it by killing all those who opposed them.  Just sayin’…

So that made me contemplate how I can cut the crap at work.  I probably shouldn’t be looking at Facebook or writing for my blog… Those two are givens.  But I think I can actually make a difference by really sharpening my meeting agendas and making sure only the necessary people attend.   I also think I can be more efficient in my email writing strategies.  I need to make them information dense.  I can do that.  I think.  I’m sure there are a TON of other ways to make things better.  I’m going to look into that more. 

Last year I started reading a book entitled Managing Workplace Chaos by Patricia Hutchings.  It’s a pretty good book that advocated the idea of speed reading to get the info we need.  I think I need to pick up this book again and re-read it.  Do any of you have good reading suggestions?  Or ideas?  Tricks? Tips?  Anything on cutting the crap at work to become more productive?  Talk to me!