Backup

Given the intensity of my workload before the end of the financial year and the stark contrast between that period and now, it's been very weird for me to be working at my current pace over the last week. I had enough to do but I actually had to create a few tasks along the way, which was great from a client relationship point of view because they saw that as a proactive measure on my part. I even went out to visit a client out of the blue one day, which did wonders for our relationship. Friday Friday was probably the busiest day of the week. I started the day at a board meeting, which went till about 12:30 pm. Then we had lunch together, followed by a board development session that went till 2:30 pm. I then hopped in the car and drove all the way to Eagle Farm to run a regular meeting for a client that went for about 2 hours. I was pretty buggered by the end of the day. As Ryan and Jake are in New Zealand, I drove straight home, attended to some emails, and waited for Sam to...

I thought this is traditionally the quieter time of the year for me but there was plenty happening at work last week. As my new financial year's resolution, I want to streamline things and make life less complicated and hectic for me, which means I want to stay out of internal politics and all the bureaucracy as much as I could. I don't think I am doing a very good job at that so far. Friday Even though our team had scheduled a team-building activity for Friday afternoon, which turned out to be lawn bowling (it was a surprise activity), I made an excuse to get there later than everyone else so I didn't have to actually lawn bowl myself. I think my team half-expected that anyway because they knew I wasn't exactly an outdoorsy kind of person. The excuse enabled me to pick up some RAM for my Drobo out near the airport before I came home, installed it, and then dragged myself to the lawn bowl place. It wasn't such a bad way to spend the afternoon at all. The weath...

It was a weird work week. Apart from the fact that I only just got back to work on Tuesday, there wasn't too much chargeable work to do, so I was experiencing a different kind of stress. I also had my annual performance appraisal, which went well, especially considering a few of my colleagues had really crappy ones. I wasn't surprised though because I made budget for the year. In fact, I overshot it and when my division was behind by about $1M this year, I must have come across a mega-star by comparison. Anyway, it went very well and when the conversation drifted to political territory, I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to argue, so I pretty much let things go. They must find my quite unpredictable if I think about it - I could be quite political and rally up the troops when things happened in the past but I could then appear disengaged at other times. Keep them guess, I'd say. Friday evening I hadn't done an awful lot during the week and even less so o...

It was a crazy financial year end, so by the time it was finished, I was utterly exhausted. To be fair, the last few days before 30 June didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought but I still managed to work up a frenzy. I did go back to work on 1 July to finish my fees for the month and tidy up the loose ends. Luckily, I smashed my budget this year, so much so that I had to spend a fair bit of time parring back my billings for the month to 'pad' next year's budget. Just as well - they have upped my budget for another $140K compared with last year's, so it was good to 'bank' $45K of the month's excess billings into the next financial year. Friday evening As a die-hard weekly movie-goer, I still went to Friday night movies with the boys. Sam didn't come though because he needed to get a massage. We decided to do something different and instead of going to Grill'd, we went to the food court in Myer Centre instead. After dinner and walking ...