Working from home and Helios, decision considerations, IPCC notification, and gum drops…

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I worked from home today, and I spent time:

  1. Going through my e-mail, which was quite the “pile” since I was out last week
  2. Responding to various questions and requests in said e-mail
  3. Devising my weekly highlight report for the week ending 01/11
  4. Editing two white papers for one of my writers

At about 3:00, I headed over to Helios, and actually did the white paper editing from there.

Someone in my IBM social network posted these five questions that they always ask about work they are considering taking on. Personally, I think they’re excellent questions to ask in all of life’s decisions.

  1. What do I want? Note this is not “what do I need”, nor is it “what do they expect”. It’s about harnessing desire and motives. Follow this up with “what’s important about that?”
  2. What is fun for me? Follow this up with “What aspects of fun can I embed in this task/project/goal?” This is about bringing joy and laughter to work efforts. And about building in fuel for when the going gets tough or boring.
  3. What is hard or scary about this? Find something. I want a growth edge. If I don’t find something to gasp or gulp about, I want to dream bigger or aim higher.
  4. What larger purpose does this goal/project support? Congruency, fulfillment. They aren’t just big words. They can be a part of our lives.
  5. What relationships does this effort strengthen? Isn’t it really all about people, at the end of the day? I want to name names and put those important people at the heart of my efforts.

Good news from the professor whose research data I worked with during my last semester of classes in grad school: Our proposal to present a paper at the IEEE Professional Communication Conference July 13-16 in Montreal has been accepted. Sweet.

I have a bag of Market Pantry brand Spice Drops, which I’ve always called “Gum Drops” growing up. These are the colors of the drops, in the order of my liking—one is my least favorite, six is my most favorite.

  1. Green
  2. Purple
  3. White
  4. Yellow
  5. Orange
  6. Red

Today, after having a couple of each, I found myself eating all the greens ones next, then all of the purple ones, because when I come back at another time to the ones left, I want them to be the ones I like the most.

I stopped at the grocery store, where I found, among other things, the Jimmy Dean Fully-Cooked Sausage Patties on sale, and I bought one box of the pork sausage ones and one box of the turkey sausage ones, which I’ve never tried.

I had one when I got home, and they were delicious, and at half the calories and one-fourth the fat of the pork, I’ll definitely be getting those from now on.

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