Management Styles

I found these two articles about micro-managing and 'macro-managing' which I found extremely interesting.

I have been wondering where I fall on this scale. In my job, I don't manage anyone (we are a very small team) but there is an amount of delegation between the team, and pushing work out to various areas of the firm. I also have in the waitressing roles I took whilst at school and university acted in a supervisory capacity although in many ways it is harder to be a supervisor than a manager because you can't make a final decision on so many things.

I think I would be OK at delegating to people but I can understand where Jenica is coming from as I feel that I might stuggle to not interfere if I thought a job was interesting or I could do it better.

I also have sympathy with Bohyun because I would find it extremely irritating to have someone constantly checking up on me and fussing about whether I've done things and I would hope that I wouldn't do that to other people. I had never really thought about some people wanting to be managed quite closely before as every job description I've ever seen has asked for people who work independently.

Definitely a very interesting pair of articles which have brought new ideas into my mind!

Does Multitasking work?

I read two articles recently, both focusing on how to get things done (see bottom of post). I find this really interesting as both of them suggest ignoring email - which is unlikely to happen as a librarian on the receiving end of enquiries - and generally concentrating.

One tip which I did enjoy (because I already do it) is the creation of to do lists...I think it really is vital to know what you need to do, in one place.

I also found this "The moment at which you don’t think you can afford to take a break is the point at which you probably need one." interesting (from the Strange Librarian). I think we have all been at that point where you don't have enough time in the day and skip lunch to get through the work and end up heading spinning at 3.30pm hardly able to think... I guess there will always be days when you can't take an hour off but maybe it is worth taking 10 or 15minutes and grabbing a sandwich in the fresh air or in a cafe away from your desk in order to be a useful person later!

Jack Vinson suggests really concentrating on one thing at a time in order to get them done quickly. This is almost certainly true and has the added benefit of not being nearly so overwhelming as trying to reply to an email, make a phone call, order a report and run a search all at once (as I found myself doing recently). I am going to try as much as possible to get things done and get them done quickly in the correct order. Let's see how long I manage it for!!!


http://strangelibrarian.org/2010/10/10-tips-for-finding-your-groove-and-getting-sht-done/

http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2010/09/29/lets_try_some_monotasking_instead.html

Handwriting

I was reading this article about the value of handwriting and I thought I could definitely have a little rant on how irritating it is that no one writes anymore.

Now, I am not a luddite (well maybe I am a very little bit of one...) but I think it is really sad that handwriting is one of those skills which is being lost, particularly nice handwriting. I look at how my grandfather used to write compared to people of my generation (myself included) and his handwriting was absolutely beautiful whereas ours is scruffy at best. Many of the people I know of around my age, it isn't just scruffiness to worry about but genuine illegibility which is even more worrying.

I think really good handwriting is an important thing to have because it gives you a good impression of a person. I admit to being a judgemental person from time to time but I definitely feel that an organised desk and tidy writing are the sign of a tidy mind and a person of which I would approve.

More importantly though, I genuinely feel that writing aids comprehension. Throughout school and since I have heard people complaining of teachers who just wrote notes on the board to copy down. I am told that this doesn't engage the brain and that people don't learn this way. Well I disagree, one of my favourite teachers at school was a Physics teacher (Mr Vincent) who wrote notes, we compied them down, we answered questons and we learnt. Now I am not a sciency person (although I didn't do too badly) but this method really helped me to synthesise the knowledge. It worries me that children may end up solely copy and pasting their notes in future as I am certain that will make it harder for them to learn.

I know that progress is necessary but I do think that handwriting should be an integral part of the primary curriculum taking up a significant amount of time because if you can't read and write to a good standard then you can't do anything much!