Monthly review: April 2010
| monthlyThe world is an explosion of colour. It’s gardening season, and I can’t wait to explore herbs, vegetables, and fruits. It’s biking season, and I’m lovin’ the exercise. As for sewing, I’ve swapped out my fleeces and started sewing linen. Spring has sprung!
I’ve been slowly working on improving little things in life. For example, I picked up a few more porcelain saucers from Goodwill so that I’m not always scrambling to find clean saucers for guests during my tea parties. I’ve also been doing lots and lots of gardening, and the plants are starting to poke up. Lots of drawing, too.
Monthly goal review: One of my goals for April was to figure out how to free up a weekend instead of doing batch cooking all the time. Now we’ve got the roast-chicken-for-frozen-lunches extravaganza down pat, and have a month of frozen goodies ready to go. Yay! I’ve been doing a bit of sewing, too, and have made a few tops I enjoy wearing. I haven’t been doing a lot of Emacs tweaking, though. That’s okay – I’ve been busy doing other things.
What’s up for May? I’m going to focus on slowing down and being mindful. I want to focus on the moment and giving myself time to tidy up, double-check, and reflect. I occasionally misplace or forget things, and I can get better at remembering. So May is spring-cleaning month. I’m going to get the hang of this!
April recap:
After preparing my personal business commitments in March, I spent some time thinking a lot about career growth. I thought I’d figured out my dreams of wild success, but I suspect there’s still a lot missing from that picture. Here are some thoughts on work:
- Thinking about travel
- Technical leadership
- Happiness at work
- Women and technical leadership
- Stitching together a semi-rotational program; training is not the limiting factor
- New hires, ignorance and innovation
- Thinking about mentoring
On getting started with collaboration - From the ground up: Helping our organizations work smarter
I’ve been exploring leadership, collaboration, presentations, and creativity:
- Smarter leaders braindump (long, visual)
- The problem with personal branding
- Thoughts on presenting: I love the backchannel
- Paper is the new PowerPoint
- IgniteToronto video: The Shy Presenter
- Large team challenges
I’ve been thinking about life, too:
- What do I hope to inspire people to do and be?
- On role models
- Forgot my keys; automating memory
- Being visible
- Show your work
- Find your wall
And writing about other stuff!
- My cats have been teaching me how to draw
- On stores and surroundings
- SimpleXML and Xpath problems solved
- Tea
- For love of numbers
- I heart gardening
- Unstructured time update
- WordPress admin screen tweaks
Weekly reviews: