A Free Write is a technique I learned in my college writing class. The rules are simple: write whatever comes into your head for a given length of time. No editing allowed. No spell checking or grammer substitution. Just write as fast as you can to keep up with your mind. Whatever comes into your mind goes down on the paper.
So I said I was going to do a free write on what my favorite job would be. Twenty moniutes is a long time. i have been procrastinating this for a long time. That should tell me something about it. Do I know what my dream job would be? I was thinking about it on the way home from work today. I have a 8.5 mile commute and I have been riding my bike as often as convenient for the last two years. I’m pretty proud of the fact I have put on over 2000 miles in that time. I don’t do it for the ‘green’ aspects, although I do enjoy not spending money on gas. Coudln’t care less about the carbon. I do it fo the exercise I am getting and the opportunity to feel like I’m ‘a biker’. I thought I would lose weight doing it, but that hasn’t happened. I weigh the same. My doctor tells me I have to quit eating so much. That is my problem. I am a nervous eater and like to have something crunching away all the time. That doesn’t help the weight part of the problem at all.
So that was to say I want my job to be in a place where I can continue to ride the bike. That I do enjoy, although not every day. I ride the bus to work in the mornings and bike home. That way I don’t have to take a shower and spend extra time on that. Perhaps when my company finishes the renovation they are doing and open the new health club, I may go back to taking showers at work in the mornings. I do enjoy it in the winter. Unlimited hot water to bask in. Don’t get that at home. So I want my job to be biking distance away. I can’t see it being too much further than the 8 miles it is now. It also needs to be a safe commute. I go East-West now. Going North-South in this town is dangerous. There aren’t any good bike routes that I know of that aren’t taking your life in your hands. I suppose I would be able to find ome somewhere. There aren’t too many places to cross the river.
What else do I want in a job? i want to be challenged, but have the opportunity to be successful. I finally have that at work now. The last 6 months have been hard, because there is no way I, or anyone else, could have been successful. There was just too much piled on. Now that half the burden is gone, there is hope. I just hope I haven’t forgotten how to move things forward in the last 6 months of treading water. I like a manager that encourages me, gives me atta-boys regularly for successes. Those help me push forward. I want to please my boss. I think everyone does. If I don’t hear that he/she is happy, then I wonder if I am doing anything right. It has been real hard with my current boss being based out of the country. We have seen each other less than 5 times in the last 6 months. We talk occasionally, but it isn’t the same. I know I am keeping him up late and he knows I am getting up really early. Therefore, we rush through things and haven’t really got to the things that matter. He is transferring back to the states this week. He will be in the same office as I am and that will be great. I am really looking forward to learning from him and getting some feedback.
Feedback. That is what i want in a job. I want to hear back from people how they think I am doing. I need some sort of measure to tell me how things are going. Metrics are fun. I like measuring things and watching for progress. When I get busy, I forget to do it and things suffer. I need to remember to do that.
My team is 90% remote at the moment. I have only one in the same city as me. That is the new way of managing for my company. I don’t think it is the most effective. It is hard to tell when the people are struggling, unless they tell me. I only hear bad things about performance from other managers. I feel like I am blind. Now I am picking up team members in India. Good guys, but it is adding another element that is even more difficult – culture and language. Never meeting these guys is going to really make it challenging. If they don’t want to open up, I will never know what they are thinking. I think I would prefer to have all my team members in the same location. I feel I can coordinate training, interaction and overall happiness better that way. both their happiness and mine.
Fifteen minutes have gone by. Interesting. Lots can spill out in a short amount of time. I want my job to have a bit of prestige to it. I enjoy dressing for work in a button down shirt and dress slacks. I enjoy some days in levis, but it isn’t that important to me. I want a place that allows people to dress as they please. If you like levis, why not? As long as it doesn’t distract other workers (no low cut blouses, please!), I don’t mind. I don’t really study my coworkers’ clothing unless it is obviously inappropriate.
I like having smart people to work with. I like feeling like I am one of the dumbest people in the room. I love learning from people. I like managing people, although I wouldn’t call it management. I like leading, directing and clearing the path for a team. I like being able to move obstacles from their way so they can be better. I enjoybucking the trends to make work a little better. I caught a lot of flack from other managers at my last job when I took the entire department out to see Lord of the Rings or go mini-golfing. We even went real golfing, complete with carts. It was a great time and everyone else in the company hated us for doing it. What I should have done was get the team to volunteer to cover for them while they went off and had some fun. I read some books on having fun at work and have to agree with them.
Other important factors in a job include having autonomy. I want to be in charge. I don’t like being micromanaged. I like having support to bounce ideas off and to help with big, hairy decision. I hate having someone tell me every answer and reminding me of all the details that were missed while we were pulling a miracle out of the hat.
I like a fast paced environment, but not a constant sprint. There has to be times where the team can relax and regroup. No team can constantly be stressed. Periodic stress builds growth. Constant stress breaks people down and makes them start looking for jobs. Granted the economy right now sucks and people are not in the mood to be doing too much jumping, but that is no reason to take advantage of them. Sometimes the answers need to be ‘No, we can’t do that’. I like having support for that as well.
I like a work space that is not too light. After having a window for a few months, I do enjoy a good view. Somedays, though, I like to pull the shades, turn out the lights and be in the dim. Dark isn’t good. It is too stiffling. The place in which I sit now can be really dark in no one turns on the lights. It was that way this morning when I came in. I don’t know where the lights are, so I had to just sit in the dark until someone else came in. It didn’t take too long. I would probably do better if I took the tubes out of one of the two fixtures above my cube.
Cube. Yeah. I want an office. WIth a door. Sometimes I just need to concentrate. So do my people. I am in a corner and there is only one person near me. But his job requires him to be on the phone all the time and he isn’t a soft spoken person. It isn’t his fault, but it is enough to distract me. I have to wear headphones and listen to music all the time or I can’t think. Of course, listening to music is distracting in itself, so how good is my work? I find myself constantly distracted and unable to keep a logical thought going very long. I need to concentrate.
Well, there is 30 minutes on my dream job. I’ll have to go back now and reread it to see what it really means. That, however, is for another day. I hope you enjoyed the free write. Try one sometime.
