Friday Whetstone 11-14-2008

I've spent the past few days in Waltham (Mass) and Manchester (NH) learning new things and discovering things I had forgotten. In Waltham, I was able to spend a day learning about Autodesk Green Building Studio and Ecotect which gave me tons of ideas of how to do better site layout and conceptual design when combining those tools with Civil 3D. We'll talk more about that for sure.

Then, Thursday and Friday I am taking the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People workshop. When I was about 22, I saw the episode of the Simpsons where Bart gets put on Focusin. One of the jokes in the show was Bart reading 7 Habits. So the next day I picked up the book and read it.

It seems like a really ridiculous reason to want to read a book, but I am grateful that I did. The first time I read it, it changed the way I saw the world. Over the past 10 years, I've revisited the material when I felt I was going off course. Every time I think about it, every time I truly get involved in the principles that guide my decision making, I learn more about myself and feel energized to keep going, to keep searching and to keep improving.

While I am already familiar with the material, taking the workshop really forces you to face your life, your decisions, your relationships. It's absolutely not a "time management" class. It's a life mission class.

I have some things to finish tonight before I hit the sack, and I am a bit emotionally drained from thinking hard about life today, so I only have one item to share. I always thought I got a lot of email, but since joining Autodesk, I've been completely overwhelmed by my inbox.

I remember the IT person at Stantec came to my desk one day 10 years ago and said he thought he had screwed up my account because he couldn't see anything in my inbox. And I said.... "Of course there is nothing in my inbox, it's all filed away. Doesn't everyone do that?" Apparently not.

The habit of clearing out my inbox at lunch and at the end of the day got a little weaker over the years, but I still did it at least once every two days. Since August, I'm afraid that I have been living in my inbox and just reacting to things as they come in. I HATE IT.

So while I fine tune my Outlook Rules, and come up with a decent system, I am watching as many videos like this one as I can.

Inbox Zero from Google Tech Talks