Rick’s Rants and Raves

It was ten minutes until four o’clock, and as I undocked my laptop, I congratulated myself on what was sure to be an on-time arrival at my boss’ desk. He works in a different building than I do, and it is a solid 7 minute walk from my desk to his. I was taking my laptop and my exercise duffel with me so that I didn’t need to come back to my desk after the meeting–I had a cub scout den meeting to lead, and still had not planned the activities. I figured in my spare three minutes, I might even stop for an espresso at the little coffee shop that likes to prey on my coworkers.

As I approached the coffee shop, I realized that I hadn’t noticed whether the meeting was at my boss’ desk, or in a conference room. I grinned as thought how fortunate I was: with my laptop in hand, I’ll go straight to his desk, and be a tan-nosing (not as bad as brown-nosing) 3 minutes early if he’s there, or I’ll have time to check my calendar and find the room and still be on time.

He was not at his desk, so I opened my laptop and waited for it to come out of hibernate. And waited for it to respond after it was booted. At 4PM on the nose, I shut it down cold for a reboot. With my boss still not at his desk by 4:03 (he’s very punctual), I figured I had better call and ‘fess up to missing the room. He didn’t answer, so I assumed he was in another meeting, and would be back to his desk momentarily. Just as my laptop was fully functional, and I was starting Outlook, he called back. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I missed whether you had a room or if we would talk at your desk” was how I answered the phone. “I’m waiting for you in 3F7. It was in the invite.” Ouch. “My apologies. I’m on my way. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Outwardly he wasn’t irritated with my tardiness, and I don’t know him well enough yet to determine how upset he was inwardly. Our meeting went well, and ranged over a broad set of work topics. One of our business VPs had set up a meeting for later this week to introduce our team to one of her new direct reports. I didn’t recognize the name of the person, so when my boss asked “Will you be there?” my response was “If its in my calendar, I’ll be there.”

After what felt like a lifetime, he stifled the near-mocking laughter. “If its in my calendar, I’ll be there” he repeated. He went on to explain that this was something he hated about our corporate culture (and he didn’t blame me personally)–that we were so driven by our calendars, and frequently so overbooked that we had to show up to meetings completely unprepared. Meetings were frequently a room full of people “just winging it”. He suggested that it wasn’t that hard to look a day ahead, and spend a little time preparing. I replied that it was tough to prepare for meetings when we’re booked 6+ hours a day. I didn’t mention that the other two hours are spent in a futile attempt to keep up with the 200 e-mails that flooded in during the meetings.

The rest of our meeting went well, and he showed a lot of respect for my commitment to leaving at 5PM so that I could be a cub scout leader. He wasn’t able to do that when his son was that age–”I had so little free time that I couldn’t commit to it.”

As I walked from the conference room toward my car, I thought about the concept of “winging it” and how it applies to the rest of my life.

• The most obvious and foremost on my mind was my barely pathetic attempts to plan cub scout den meetings for my son and three other boys. I do a little better than “wing it” only because I can prepare most meetings in 10-15 minutes. I’m sure the kids don’t notice. The parents are probably happy to have someone do it at all.
• This past weekend, my wife and I bought a birthday present, card, gift bag and tissue paper on the way to the birthday party for our niece. Yeah, we were winging it. This isn’t the first time we’ve done that.
• Back when we went to church, and it was our turn to help host the coffee-hour, we bought donuts or cookies or whatever on the way to church.
• Evening dinners are a mixed bag for our family. Anne frequently tries to do menu plans, and I appreciate those efforts. If we have a plan for dinner, it usually gets followed. But as often as not, we’ve run out of menu plans and are just winging it. Tonight was tacos, but we didn’t have any lettuce. So I stopped at the store and bought one item–89 cents of lettuce. When was the last time I’d been to the grocery store? Last night.
• Last week we tore up the carpet from our stairs, hallway and bedroom. Preparation time for undertaking this task? 10 seconds — “Hey, you wanna pull up the carpet today?” “Uh, yeah, sure.” Rip.
• I haven’t seen Scott in weeks. Why? I call him at 8PM and say “Wanna get a beer?” and he has, not surprisingly, other commitments.

I’m sure there are other examples, but I’m just winging this blog post, so it isn’t fully fleshed out.

My life feels like I’m constantly winging it. For the most part, it works out OK. But how much better would it be if I actually spent a little time to prepare more than 10 minutes into the future? The odd part is, I feel some anxiety over putting events on my calendar. How do I know I can keep that commitment? What if something comes up? This weekend Anne and I tried to talk about planning my birthday party–and it was uncomfortable talking about an event 2-3 weeks in the future. Maybe that’s a good sign that I’ve got too much on my calendar.

As I approached the parking lot where my car was parked, I realized there was a fatal flaw in my plan to leave at 5PM–I had left my car keys on my desk.