Back to School...?

After a few weeks break it's nice to sit down to writing a new blog post. I've spent a fair amount of time recently looking towards to future. Next July Janet and I will be back in the UK for perhaps about a year. It's a good opportunity to think about doing some further studies. So I'm wondering what direction to go in, and this comes down to what I want to specialise in for the next few years. So here are a few different initial thoughts from my free-thinking.

Possibility number one would be something like a Post-graduate Certificate in Human Resource Management. Currently I’m on the fringes of the personnel with one of my roles. I’m not sure whether I could say that I have a calling to personnel work, but I see that there is a value in it and that somebody needs to be doing it. I like to get away from communing with my computer and with a personnel future I’d spend a fair chunk of my time servicing e-mails, though also with regular opportunities to encourage, mentor and debrief staff. As with all these possibilities, they all provide the opportunity to get a qualification that leads down a real career path, something which I haven’t had these past few years.

Possibility number two is slightly more unshaped at the moment. It’d be in databases and in particular online databases. One of the things that really engages my mind is the organisation of information. This is quite ironic as I’m generally quite a messy person and even find it hard to organise my e-mail and hard drives. Trying to organise data on institutional funders was one of the first projects I began on arriving in Kenya. I got some way with capturing useful data in an Access database but, querying that data to find appropriate funders was a bit beyond me. In a global organization what is really needed is the ability of someone in the United States, for example, to be able to attend a meeting in which a certain funding opportunity is raised, enter the information on what activities could be funded and where, funds available and criteria and then for myself or others in Africa to have the opportunity flagged up while it is current. Wouldn’t this be a wonderful way for staff around the world to be aiding each other – essentially through a customised Customer Relationship Management system. There would be a number of challenges with taking on a course in databases. I suppose I would need to learn at least one computer language – maybe HTML and SQL as well as specialist software. Despite saying how much this engages me, it’s fair to say that I’ve never motivated myself in learning these skills before so I cannot assure myself of succeeding. That would be the big question. Courses I’m looking at include e-Business which has a nice and wide remit – maybe too wide – and also Internet and Database Systems.

Possibility number three would be to get more skills in communications – a course in HTML so that I can do some webpage design and another in something like Photoshop. I enjoy spending my time designing publications but I’m constrained by not knowing enough. Maybe these sort of courses would help me blossom more in this area.

So these are my initial thoughts. It seems like this year has brought with it the realisation and renewed impetus in learning. I don't feel particularly academic, but I think that as long as I carefully look at the available courses and take advice on which course to enrol on I could be successful.

If you stop when you're stuck, you're in trouble

I was today reminded of a quote I recently read when Googling to try and work out how to spell Roald Dahl - I cannot now remember why...

The quote popped into my mind in a discussion about maintaining margin - a sufficient reserve of time, energy (spiritual, emotional, interpersonal and physical energy) and money to provide for our needs and the needs of others (to quote Ken Williams of International Training Partners.

I was wondering to myself that I maybe bring home problems and concern myself with how to start the coming day in the office - where to begin and how to move forward.

Roald Dalh, lifting his idea from Earnest Hemingway, a suggests a particular way to maybe circumvent this:

…I never come back to a blank page; I always finish about halfway through. To be confronted with a blank page is not very nice. But Hemingway, a great American writer, taught me the finest trick when you are doing a long book, which is, he simply said in his own words, “When you are going good, stop writing.” And that means that if everything’s going well and you know exactly where the end of the chapter’s going to go and you know just what the people are going to do, you don’t go on writing and writing until you come to the end of it, because when you do, then you say, well, where am I going to go next? And you get up and you walk away and you don’t want to come back because you don’t know where you want to go. But if you stop when you are going good, as Hemingway said…then you know what you are going to say next. You make yourself stop, put your pencil down and everything, and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next and that’s lovely and you have to try and do that. Every time, every day all the way through the year. If you stop when you are stuck, the you are in trouble!

 It seems very insightful. For me these days, the only other question I would need to ask is "When do I open my Inbox?" Could I really resolve to come to the office each day with a task waiting to be finished and dive straight in? Time will tell.

Maybe my next work insight blogpost will be to explain the wonderful quote: "If some thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly."