library day in the life: observations
As I mentioned last week, one of the reasons why I participated in the Library Day in the Life meme was because it provided a good opportunity to track my daily activities for a week. I guess I have enough of a non-traditional job title that I get a fair amount of email from librarians and library school students asking what my job is really about and to describe a “typical” workday. My reaction to such requests usually ranges from “neat!” to “there’s no such thing as a “typical” workday.” Still, I do try to be as helpful as I can, and in the past the best I’ve been able to come up with is a summary of the major stuff I’m responsible for, but that doesn’t really tell you anything about a typical or non-typical day, does it? Well, now I have a link I can give people and that makes me happy.
Also, having just returned from a pretty intense leadership program made me approach the exercise as an opportunity for professional self-reflection. Here are some of those reflections to round out this series of day-in-the-life posts:
- Maybe it’s me, or maybe it’s the type of work I do (more likely it’s a bit of both), but I need large blocks of time to get things done. Squeezing in tasks between meetings is almost an exercise in futility.
- When faced with a daunting to-do list, with no specific priorities, where everything is due NOW, I inevitably start with the things I enjoy the most: wireframing and related design work, usability, and code munging.
- I could spend days munging code.
- I need to find a balance between spending my time in amongst the weeds (see last bullet) and staring at the stars (strategic thinking and planning, big picture analysis, scanning the horizon).
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