I realize that for many people, they may think that the home stretch for an Associate Grand Matron does not come along until October, when we are within striking distance of Grand Chapter, but from my perspective, the real home stretch is right now, as my partner and I work on finishing up the thousand things that have to go to print in the Itinerary and the hundred things that need to be finished for our workshop and the dozens of things that need to be done for deadlines in August and September. Unfortunately, sometimes things that you thought were done rear up their ugly heads and come back to life with ever more complications. Next time, I am driving the wooden stake right through the binder of worksheets and then shooting it with a silver bullet.
The calendar is just about almost done, one OV place, some receptions and some events for other people and groups that go on our calender is what's left. That's the home stretch, I think.
The pieces and parts for all the books are pretty much drafted, except for a flyer that is going to go into the Workshop materials, and the above mentioned calendar. That's the home stretch, I think.
We've figured out that the print copy Worthy Matron books that some people want are going to need about a two inch binder and the Worthy Patron books will need two to two and a half inches and as soon as the order deadline passes, we will be contracting with the printer to produce those. That's the home stretch, I think.
I believe that all but one of the 2013 Grand Family have gotten their measurements in to the seamstress for their Installation dresses, the ladies all have their travel jackets and the skirts are bought but not all distributed yet. The medieval outfits are ordered and the men are supposed to be getting their information for purchasing this next week. That's the home stretch, I think.
All but about thirty of the appointments are done. We are still sending out letters on the ones that have not finished. There are a few where we don't yet know who we will ask to serve and are still deciding that, so we still have some letters and e-mails to send but we hope to make some decisions on those final slots soon. That's the home stretch, I think.
With lots of things almost done, but very little DONE done, I spend most of my time feeling that I am constantly behind, but others who have gone this way before assure me that I am actually right on target. I sure hope they are right and that all these final persnickety little things will just fall into place and then I will look up and I will be done with all this planning and not late!
It has been sad missing a bunch of events this month, but the time was completely needed and useful. Last Saturday, I was at my office working on this stuff for six hours straight and then two more hours at home. There is just no way to get everything done without at least some weekend time when you work a regular work week. But since we are in the home stretch, I am hoping that the calendar will free up from here on out and we can pick up traveling again.
This weekend, I will attend the event in Salinas and the one in Santa Rosa, but will miss the Saturday event.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Some Done/Some Not
This past weekend, I continued to beat down the Mighty List of All Tasks. The frustrating part is that while there is lots of progress, there are few things that finally get DONE. With too many things, there is just a little bit more to do, that 80/20 rule still hanging on to me. It is a little bit blah, because it feels good to finish something and cross it off your list, but when you make lots of progress, but don't quite finish, it sort of hangs on you.
I did get some things done. The first draft of homework for the Deputies is finished and just needs some other eyes to review it and make sure that the questions and answers make sense and are correct. The legislative deadline has come and gone, so anything that anyone was doing on that front is now over.
But then some things are cross-overs. The books and attachments that will be burned onto CDs are done and getting burnt, but there are a couple of items that might have otherwise gone on that which are not done, like the calendar (still waiting on a few places) so they not only have to be finished, but now they will have to be copied separately too. Does that count as a new task or not finishing an old one?
And some things, like appointments to this and that are just plain not done and still need to be worked. In some instances, I have names for the spots and just need to get letters out, but in some cases, I have no names. It is very geographic too, I have found. I've got a whole four inch binder of member records and member resumes but sometimes out of the hundreds of people in my book, not one of them lives in a particular area that I need.
I must say that the member resumes that people send in have been enormously helpful and I am very excited about getting some members involved that weren't before. But not everyone fills in the most useful information, so that is less useful. On the member records, filling in the occupation is priceless because we have lots of jobs that need a particular skill, maybe accounting or health services or law or even IT experience. Location is important too, but even more important are skills and interests. A person's occupation does not always tell all that they can do. Someone might be a nutritionist by day, but have great craft skills that can be used on a number of committees. If those aren't written in, there is no way to know about them.
Even when you have names though, timing can become an issue. That people could do this before e-mail is astonishing to me and I am so grateful that I do have e-mail to help me. But that made me wonder a little bit too. I mean, before e-mail, if you wanted to ask someone to do something and they lived far away, you usually would send them a letter, but then you had to wait for their response to come back by mail too. If you had to ask three or four people to take a spot, waiting each time until the one you first asked says yes or no before moving on to the next one, then how many months would it take to get done? I am told that just as many people say yes and no nowadays as they used to and that hasn't changed. What I am told has changed is the size of the pool of people on whom to draw, especially in some areas of our state. But if people used to get three and four and five rejections before filling a spot before, how ever did they get done in time using nothing but mail and the occasional VERY EXPENSIVE phone call?
Of course, I am also sure that people who did this right when people were just starting to have telephones probably said the same thing about people who didn't have that convenience. :-) And every time I hear someone say that we can't do something by e-mail or over the Internet because not everyone has an e-mail address or Internet access, I always hear an echo of some long ago forgotten era Sister saying "But we can't use telephones for that - not everyone has a telephone number or access to a telephone. No! We need to stick to mail because everyone has that!
This weekend, I am staying home and beating down the list some more (Back, Back, Dread Beast!) and will miss the Official Visits. It is disappointing because the Grand Family is going to some really nice and fun areas this weekend, but "We have to do the boring things before we do the fun things" and I have a lot of filing and drafting and mailing (oh my!) to do.
I did get some things done. The first draft of homework for the Deputies is finished and just needs some other eyes to review it and make sure that the questions and answers make sense and are correct. The legislative deadline has come and gone, so anything that anyone was doing on that front is now over.
But then some things are cross-overs. The books and attachments that will be burned onto CDs are done and getting burnt, but there are a couple of items that might have otherwise gone on that which are not done, like the calendar (still waiting on a few places) so they not only have to be finished, but now they will have to be copied separately too. Does that count as a new task or not finishing an old one?
And some things, like appointments to this and that are just plain not done and still need to be worked. In some instances, I have names for the spots and just need to get letters out, but in some cases, I have no names. It is very geographic too, I have found. I've got a whole four inch binder of member records and member resumes but sometimes out of the hundreds of people in my book, not one of them lives in a particular area that I need.
I must say that the member resumes that people send in have been enormously helpful and I am very excited about getting some members involved that weren't before. But not everyone fills in the most useful information, so that is less useful. On the member records, filling in the occupation is priceless because we have lots of jobs that need a particular skill, maybe accounting or health services or law or even IT experience. Location is important too, but even more important are skills and interests. A person's occupation does not always tell all that they can do. Someone might be a nutritionist by day, but have great craft skills that can be used on a number of committees. If those aren't written in, there is no way to know about them.
Even when you have names though, timing can become an issue. That people could do this before e-mail is astonishing to me and I am so grateful that I do have e-mail to help me. But that made me wonder a little bit too. I mean, before e-mail, if you wanted to ask someone to do something and they lived far away, you usually would send them a letter, but then you had to wait for their response to come back by mail too. If you had to ask three or four people to take a spot, waiting each time until the one you first asked says yes or no before moving on to the next one, then how many months would it take to get done? I am told that just as many people say yes and no nowadays as they used to and that hasn't changed. What I am told has changed is the size of the pool of people on whom to draw, especially in some areas of our state. But if people used to get three and four and five rejections before filling a spot before, how ever did they get done in time using nothing but mail and the occasional VERY EXPENSIVE phone call?
Of course, I am also sure that people who did this right when people were just starting to have telephones probably said the same thing about people who didn't have that convenience. :-) And every time I hear someone say that we can't do something by e-mail or over the Internet because not everyone has an e-mail address or Internet access, I always hear an echo of some long ago forgotten era Sister saying "But we can't use telephones for that - not everyone has a telephone number or access to a telephone. No! We need to stick to mail because everyone has that!
This weekend, I am staying home and beating down the list some more (Back, Back, Dread Beast!) and will miss the Official Visits. It is disappointing because the Grand Family is going to some really nice and fun areas this weekend, but "We have to do the boring things before we do the fun things" and I have a lot of filing and drafting and mailing (oh my!) to do.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
The Eighty/Twenty Rule
I don't know if you've ever encountered the Eighty/Twenty Rule in your life, but it is intruding on my existence with a vengeance.
For those unfamiliar with this diabolical proportion, the Eighty/Twenty Rule says that when you set out on a task or work with people or do anything else with discrete parts that you can identify, eighty percent of the items will take twenty percent of the time and finishing the other twenty percent will take eighty percent of the time. Sometimes I have seen people push it to Ninety/Ten, but that is the exception.
So here I am, in the middle of The Big Push To Finish EVERYTHING and the 80/20 has hit me on the head hard. I am trying to finish committee appointments, calendar items, workshop arrangements and everything is running into the 80/20 wall.
For example, I had asked people to get me locations for their OVs and events back in February. I sent a reminder at the beginning of May and now it is the middle of June. As of last week, I had eight of thirty-nine districts who had not gotten me their information. That's darn close to twenty percent. So eighty percent got their stuff to me with two e-mails and the others needed to have individual district e-mails sent out. Of those, several have gotten back to me and all but one has at least told me that they are working on it and provided me some status. I have one that is just out in the weeds, I suppose, so I guess I will be picking up the phone tomorrow and seeing if I can reach anyone that way.
Same thing with committee people - I sent out many letters in May and have been doing additional batches each week since, as I work my way through the various committees, with an eye to being done with my mailing out by the end of the month if lucky, by July 13 if not lucky. On my spread sheet, I note the date that I sent out the letter and the requested response date. My eighty percent people get back to me. The twenty percent run silent and deep. I don't mind (much) that people sometimes can't serve because I can understand that. It's chasing down the ones who don't respond that takes all the time. Sometimes they've moved and that is perfectly understandable because they never got the letter, but evidently some people don't open their mail for weeks at a time. How do people manage that? I would go nuttier than I already am to have a big stack of mail unopened. Of course it is also possible that they are on vacation. Since I have not been able to be on vacation longer than one week at a time, maybe I just lack the experience to know how you can get weeks of mail and not open it. Sigh!
At least, having gotten started, I am told that I have a fair chance of finishing on time. And I do have it a lot easier than some who preceded me. While I am sending letters for lots of things, there are also some things, like Grand Chapter Week committees, for which I can send e-mail instead and save a stamp. And for following up, almost everyone has an e-mail address, so that is nice too.
I am told that once upon a time, we had so many members so eager to serve that Associate Grand Matrons could start sending out their letters in June and July and still fill all their positions by July 31 to make the print deadline. Those must have been the days! Of course, it is a good thing that it worked for them though, because they couldn't send out e-mail follow ups - for follow ups they had to call each person one at a time. And there were no unlimited long distance plans either. What their phone bills must have been! No wonder everyone always did the asking by letter. Postage was cheaper than the phone charges! Wow!
Next weekend, I am staying home to keep getting out committee letters and work on the calendar and the workshop details.
For those unfamiliar with this diabolical proportion, the Eighty/Twenty Rule says that when you set out on a task or work with people or do anything else with discrete parts that you can identify, eighty percent of the items will take twenty percent of the time and finishing the other twenty percent will take eighty percent of the time. Sometimes I have seen people push it to Ninety/Ten, but that is the exception.
So here I am, in the middle of The Big Push To Finish EVERYTHING and the 80/20 has hit me on the head hard. I am trying to finish committee appointments, calendar items, workshop arrangements and everything is running into the 80/20 wall.
For example, I had asked people to get me locations for their OVs and events back in February. I sent a reminder at the beginning of May and now it is the middle of June. As of last week, I had eight of thirty-nine districts who had not gotten me their information. That's darn close to twenty percent. So eighty percent got their stuff to me with two e-mails and the others needed to have individual district e-mails sent out. Of those, several have gotten back to me and all but one has at least told me that they are working on it and provided me some status. I have one that is just out in the weeds, I suppose, so I guess I will be picking up the phone tomorrow and seeing if I can reach anyone that way.
Same thing with committee people - I sent out many letters in May and have been doing additional batches each week since, as I work my way through the various committees, with an eye to being done with my mailing out by the end of the month if lucky, by July 13 if not lucky. On my spread sheet, I note the date that I sent out the letter and the requested response date. My eighty percent people get back to me. The twenty percent run silent and deep. I don't mind (much) that people sometimes can't serve because I can understand that. It's chasing down the ones who don't respond that takes all the time. Sometimes they've moved and that is perfectly understandable because they never got the letter, but evidently some people don't open their mail for weeks at a time. How do people manage that? I would go nuttier than I already am to have a big stack of mail unopened. Of course it is also possible that they are on vacation. Since I have not been able to be on vacation longer than one week at a time, maybe I just lack the experience to know how you can get weeks of mail and not open it. Sigh!
At least, having gotten started, I am told that I have a fair chance of finishing on time. And I do have it a lot easier than some who preceded me. While I am sending letters for lots of things, there are also some things, like Grand Chapter Week committees, for which I can send e-mail instead and save a stamp. And for following up, almost everyone has an e-mail address, so that is nice too.
I am told that once upon a time, we had so many members so eager to serve that Associate Grand Matrons could start sending out their letters in June and July and still fill all their positions by July 31 to make the print deadline. Those must have been the days! Of course, it is a good thing that it worked for them though, because they couldn't send out e-mail follow ups - for follow ups they had to call each person one at a time. And there were no unlimited long distance plans either. What their phone bills must have been! No wonder everyone always did the asking by letter. Postage was cheaper than the phone charges! Wow!
Next weekend, I am staying home to keep getting out committee letters and work on the calendar and the workshop details.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Feeling Loopy
Wow! How can it seem like forever and just a couple of weeks have gone by? I knew time flies when you are having fun, but evidently it flies by when you are busy, fun or not.
After my last blog, I set out on a nine day loop of the State, starting in Bakersfield on May 19, all the way to our last event in Loleta on May 26 and driving home on May 27. My escort drove me out to Bakersfield and stayed with me for Tulare on Sunday, then he had to head home and my partner and his wife took me the rest of the way, ending at my house Sunday evening. Since Monday was Memorial Day, he and I got lots more done on Monday, especially processing all the mail. It took us four hours to process all the letters and workshop registrations that had gotten to my mailbox in those nine days. Of course since there was no mail on Sunday or Monday, another huge pile hit my box on Tuesday. And I was swamped with work stuff all the rest of last week to make up for being out of the office. Not that I was on vacation, I had to remind lots of people, just working out of the office all week. I have finally gotten caught up, sort of, yesterday.
The loop was great even though I spent most of it tired and eating badly. I do not want to be asked how many pounds I gained that nine days nor how many months it will take me to lose the weight. That would just be mean. The problem is that on most days, we would have breakfast and then we wouldn't eat again until 2:30 pm and then we wouldn't eat again until evening refreshments after the night OV. Or we would eat breakfast and then have a snack on the road and then have dinner at 4:00 pm and then have massive dessert after the night OV. Or we would eat breakfast and lunch and lunch again at 3:30 pm as the OV refreshments and dinner at 5:30 and dessert after the night OV. Or we would . . . Does this draw a picture as to how one could gain weight doing this? So anyone who is not certain why I am asking the Associate Matrons to let me know if their District is serving a meal so we can have it at mealtime can read this and hopefully understand what this does to a person's blood sugar. Sigh!
The very best part, bar none, was getting to see all the members in the various Districts. For some members who live far away and do not make it to Grand Chapter, the only time I get to see them is at their Official Visits, so it is nice to see familiar faces from my visits to those Districts in the past and find out how their local members and Chapters are doing. It was also nice to see familiar faces from the Grand Families with whom I have served in past years. Even though I have moved on to a new wonderful Family, I still love all the members that I have served with all these years and it is so nice to have friends everywhere!
I am missing most of the events this month trying to get paperwork done. I missed all last weekend, will make all of this coming weekend, but will then miss the two weekends after that. I have to get lots and lots of appointments made, which means lots and lots of letters, finish all the handouts and materials for the AM/AP workshop, finish the workshop plans, get more clothes chosen and purchased and most urgently, get the calendar finished so it can be handed out at the workshop. The unforgiving clock keeps going tick, tick, tick forward and never stops and never moves backward. One member thought that the workshop was in June instead of July and I must admit that evil thoughts crossed my mind at anyone taking away a day of the time I have, let alone a month! And while the workshop is at the end of July, I wonder if people realize that the calendar and all the handouts have to be done in the next two weeks so that they can be copied and burned onto CDs. Sigh!
I also admit that I hate chasing people down and nagging them, but that a bit of that seems required to get information, especially for the calendar. I understand that sometimes people figure that someone else is taking care of that and until they get the reminder, they don't know that no one did, so reminders are good in that sense, but I always feel like I am scolding and I don't want to be doing that, so hopefully all of that will get done and back to me without me having ask my partner to give anyone The Glare! Believe you me, you do not want The Glare! :-)
So, Lord willing and the Crik don't rise (that's Crik, not creek, different things :-), June will be the push to the paperwork month and so much will get done that I can go to everything in July with a clean conscience. We'll see how that works out.
Next weekend I will be in West Covina, Yorba Linda, Bellflower and El Segundo. I will not be at anything June 15-17 or June 22-24.
After my last blog, I set out on a nine day loop of the State, starting in Bakersfield on May 19, all the way to our last event in Loleta on May 26 and driving home on May 27. My escort drove me out to Bakersfield and stayed with me for Tulare on Sunday, then he had to head home and my partner and his wife took me the rest of the way, ending at my house Sunday evening. Since Monday was Memorial Day, he and I got lots more done on Monday, especially processing all the mail. It took us four hours to process all the letters and workshop registrations that had gotten to my mailbox in those nine days. Of course since there was no mail on Sunday or Monday, another huge pile hit my box on Tuesday. And I was swamped with work stuff all the rest of last week to make up for being out of the office. Not that I was on vacation, I had to remind lots of people, just working out of the office all week. I have finally gotten caught up, sort of, yesterday.
The loop was great even though I spent most of it tired and eating badly. I do not want to be asked how many pounds I gained that nine days nor how many months it will take me to lose the weight. That would just be mean. The problem is that on most days, we would have breakfast and then we wouldn't eat again until 2:30 pm and then we wouldn't eat again until evening refreshments after the night OV. Or we would eat breakfast and then have a snack on the road and then have dinner at 4:00 pm and then have massive dessert after the night OV. Or we would eat breakfast and lunch and lunch again at 3:30 pm as the OV refreshments and dinner at 5:30 and dessert after the night OV. Or we would . . . Does this draw a picture as to how one could gain weight doing this? So anyone who is not certain why I am asking the Associate Matrons to let me know if their District is serving a meal so we can have it at mealtime can read this and hopefully understand what this does to a person's blood sugar. Sigh!
The very best part, bar none, was getting to see all the members in the various Districts. For some members who live far away and do not make it to Grand Chapter, the only time I get to see them is at their Official Visits, so it is nice to see familiar faces from my visits to those Districts in the past and find out how their local members and Chapters are doing. It was also nice to see familiar faces from the Grand Families with whom I have served in past years. Even though I have moved on to a new wonderful Family, I still love all the members that I have served with all these years and it is so nice to have friends everywhere!
I am missing most of the events this month trying to get paperwork done. I missed all last weekend, will make all of this coming weekend, but will then miss the two weekends after that. I have to get lots and lots of appointments made, which means lots and lots of letters, finish all the handouts and materials for the AM/AP workshop, finish the workshop plans, get more clothes chosen and purchased and most urgently, get the calendar finished so it can be handed out at the workshop. The unforgiving clock keeps going tick, tick, tick forward and never stops and never moves backward. One member thought that the workshop was in June instead of July and I must admit that evil thoughts crossed my mind at anyone taking away a day of the time I have, let alone a month! And while the workshop is at the end of July, I wonder if people realize that the calendar and all the handouts have to be done in the next two weeks so that they can be copied and burned onto CDs. Sigh!
I also admit that I hate chasing people down and nagging them, but that a bit of that seems required to get information, especially for the calendar. I understand that sometimes people figure that someone else is taking care of that and until they get the reminder, they don't know that no one did, so reminders are good in that sense, but I always feel like I am scolding and I don't want to be doing that, so hopefully all of that will get done and back to me without me having ask my partner to give anyone The Glare! Believe you me, you do not want The Glare! :-)
So, Lord willing and the Crik don't rise (that's Crik, not creek, different things :-), June will be the push to the paperwork month and so much will get done that I can go to everything in July with a clean conscience. We'll see how that works out.
Next weekend I will be in West Covina, Yorba Linda, Bellflower and El Segundo. I will not be at anything June 15-17 or June 22-24.
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