Action packed day. Doesn’t feel very productive but I think I got a few things done that I wanted to. In at 7:06, caught up on email. 8am. Early integration meeting, worked on MS Project during meeting. My turn comes next to last anyway. 930. Find out our 930 meeting was moved to 11. Email KC back re OEM Answering more email questions and concerns re: fetch 11am. RH vs FE is on track, 2 good things were found out yesterday and this morning. I think we are 2/3 of the way there. 11:40 go to lunch with the team, cuban place, have mojitos and ropa vieja (skirt steak). 1:04 call in for meeting since we are still enroute to office. Had to pay $1 for no status on 1 item, but I saved 2 more by sending emails yesterday.Between 2 and 4, tried to focus on getting 1-2 machines fetched, but there were constant interruptions, so I decided to go with the flow instead. People are still concerned about fetch, apparently they didn’t get the passwords I printed like 3 weeks ago and left with sac boss. Oh well. Decided not to press my luck, it’s more important to show sac I am on their side than to cause bad feelings by charging ahead and stomping toes. Wrap up all email and head for home. ...

I signed the petition opposing the recall. Here is the petition link, in case anyone else is interested. The petition is open to people in California as well as outside California.

The What I did today series is an exercise to review at the end of the week to see if I am feeling more productive. But to everyone else it’s probably boring… Catch up on email. A second person needs reassuring in Sac. Send brief email. Fax from Network Solutions was on my chair. Call NSI, leave message. Find email with same message, forward to legal chick in pasadena who has pretty much stopped replying to my emails because I ask rude questions (like when are you going to do your job, lady?) 9am, meet with FE team re RH vs. FE. Score is RH 5, FE 0, but FE has a couple of plays yet to make. Identify what they are, set next meeting (now daily) Sac guy can’t talk at 11, and has sent more email. Send a more detailed mail. 10am, my staff meeting, everyone plays show and tell like normal. RH vs FE is hot and smoking, Fetch is going well so is not quite as smoking. 11am, read email, sac guy is not impressed by my bluster of an hour ago, so instead I go with the softball this time, start to email, then AIM, and get him on the phone. I agree that he’s right (or at least I sidestep the opportunity to say he’s wrong) and he will agree that it’s OK to do things the “expedient” way for now. DH machine has suddenly become a hot item, so I deflect it onto TP. Poor TP wasn’t the cause of the delay, but because at least three of our team were deflecting blame at each other in front of the end user, I stepped in and made it his problem. If the user had not been standing there I probably would have let them hash it out among themselves but I feel it is poor form to say “that’s not my problem” in front of a customer (even if it’s not my problem :) 12, lunch. spaghetti. mmm. never mind that I had spaghetti last night, it’s not Pomodoro but still good. 1, more change control, heads down, get folks pointed in the right direction, get some machines hammered out myself. Worked through 3:30 and missed my 3p with MV. Wrap up message for CC, and announce another CC for Friday. Talk to AN and agree that we shoudl go to Sac Friday (for 5-6 hours only, to come back Fri end of day). As pennance for missing MV meeting, I write up a proposal and send it off to him. I also write up another proposal for another item on tomorrow’s meeting. ...

Successful change control (1 of 3 this week) Lots of last-minute crap for the CC Had lunch: soup, fruit salad Tuesday staff meeting Postpone meeting with MV, he was busy Met with BOE team Set up meeting for FE vs. RH tomorrow Calmed down DR who was fired up about access for some reason Dinner: pasta pomodoro S and H came over to retrieve little cat Watched stargate with M (3 episodes?) Pedalled on bike ...

Mon 9/1: Bike, 16 miles Tue 9/2: Bike, 7.5 miles Wed 9/3: Bike, 10 miles Thu 9/4: Bike Fri 9/5: Bike Sat 9/6: no Sun 9/7: no Mon 9/8: no Tue 9/9: Bike, 10 miles Wed 9/10: no Thu 9/11: Bike, 10 miles (a.m.) Fri 9/12: no Sat 9/13: no Sun 9/14: Bike, 10 miles Mon 9/15: Bike, 9 miles (a.m.) Tue 9/16: Bike, 10 miles (a.m.) Wed 9/17: Bike Thu 9/18: Bike Fri 9/19: no Sat 9/20: Bike Sun 9/21: Bike Mon 9/22: no Tue 9/23: no Wed 9/24: Bike 10 miles Thu 9/25: Bike 10 miles Fri 9/26: no Sat 9/27: no Sun 9/28: no Mon 9/29: Bike 8 miles Tue 9/30: no

Of course, creating a Personal Mission Statement for yourself is a serious undertaking, which must be approached with thoughtfulness, introspection, patience. It usually takes months of thinking and rewriting to develop one that you are comfortable with. OR you could just go to this site and click and it will create one for you. ;) You now have a possible starting point for your personal mission statement. To find happiness, fulfillment, and value in living I will: LEAD a life centered around the principles of honesty, patience, and humility. REMEMBER what’s important in life is family, friends, sincerity, sense of accomplishment, and peace of mind. REVERE admirable characteristics in others, such as being patient, proactive, wise, sensitive, creative, and compassionate, and attempt to implement similar characteristics in my own life. RECOGNIZE my strengths and develop talents as a person who is a communicator, diplomatic, sincere, imaginative, insightful, and empathic. HUMBLE myself by acknowledging that I can be procrastinator, unmotivated, and disorganized and by constantly striving to transform my weaknesses into strengths. ENVISION myself becoming a person who: - my family members think is compassionate, patient, and dependable. - my friends think is creative, patient, sensitive, and witty. - my coworkers think is proactive, dependable, self-reliant, and wise.

I’m exploring the FranklinCovey.com web site. A bunch of essays are freely available here: Knowledge Expo These two seem to relate most of Habit 2 well: Center on Principles by Stephen R. Covey and Moral Compassing by Stephen R. Covey This is a good explanation of Habit 3: First Things First by Stephen R. Covey

I’m still reading Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. A quick summary of Habit 2: Attend your own funeral. First creation, second creation. Difference between leadership and management. Finding one’s center. Personal mission statement. Rescripting, a work in progress. Importance of visualization.

The #1 habit of “highly effective people” according to Stephen Covey is “Be Proactive”. This makes a lot of sense to me. I believe I am already very aware of this principle, but there are probably numerous ways I could take it to heart which I have not yet tried. The basic point of this chapter is that our freedom to choose our own actions is what makes us uniquely human. Most animals are wired up like this: (stimulus) -> (response). If an animal can be trained, that is still a pretty direct response to a stimulus. Humans are unique in their ability to decide on a different action (or no action) to a given situation. We are wired up like this: (stimulus) -> (filter: beliefs and values) -> (decision) -> (response). This is similar to something else I wrote in 2001. ...

This author has put his finger on exactly what bothers me about most “self help” literature. There is a fundamental difference between building a strong character and just putting on a happy face and “thinking positive”. As my study took me back through 200 years of writing about success, I noticed a startling pattern emerging in the content of the literature. Because of our own pain, and because of similar pain I had seen in the lives and relationships of many people I had worked with through the years, I began to feel more and more that much of the success literature of the last 50 years was superficial. It was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes–with social band-aids and aspirin that addressed acute problems and sometimes even appeared to solve them temporarily, but left the underlying chronic problems untouched to fester and resurface time and again. ...