Notes from a Corporate Life: Thoughts on information and libraries in corporations, music and other things.

'Must have ability to multi-task'. Remember seeing that in job descriptions a while ago? It seems to have disappeared - at least it's not in the job descriptions I've seen recently. I think to a large extent people are simply expected to multi-task these days.

What does multi-tasking really mean? Are there levels of multi-tasking? Is juggling projects considered a level of multi-tasking?  There's checking email while on a conference call - heck, everyone does that, c'mon, admit it - but then there's 'continuous partial attention', now being touted as a admirable quality in the younger generation. This means, at a minimum, listening to your iPod while you text your friend, watch TV and do your homework.

Linda Stone, who seems to have coined the phrase in 1997 while working at Microsoft, states that continuous partial attention is not the same as multi-tasking: 'that's about trying to accomplish several things at once. With continuous partial attention, we're scanning incoming alerts for the one best thing to seize upon'.

I guess I would argue that there are times when it's not possible to separate the two. When I'm deep into research, for example, I love listening to music, but I'm also constantly switching over to and monitoring email. It's the best of both worlds: I'll research for a while, then check email quickly for anything new coming in, switch over for a half-minute and really enjoy a passage I'm listening to, and then I'll delve back into full concentration on the research. When I'm multi-tasking at my highest level, it's like dancing - it's effortlessly coordinated and totally engaging.

It's like a really well-made movie - your focus can change from the music to the characters to the dialogue to the color to the cinematography. None of this change of focus takes away from the movie at all, but enhances it all the way around.

I realize I'm not bringing much new to the conversation. Quite a few folks have blogged about this topic. Perspectives on this range from considering this an evolution to considering it a syndrome. As I've described it above, I would almost call it 'continually shifting engagement'. That sounds a lot better than 'partial attention', doesn't it?

But I've also seen the people (myself included) who can't stop checking email, who talk on their cell phone while playing (well, partially playing) with their children, who interrupt a perfectly good dinner conversation with a phone call or a quick BlackBerry email.

I do believe there is an art to attention and concentration. It takes practice and discipline. It's not unlike meditation; in fact, all this stimuli coming into my attention surely feeds and hypes up my 'monkey mind' that disrupts my limited attempts at meditation. I sometimes wonder why I need all these things streaming in for my attention, what it is I think I'm getting from it, what need it fulfills for me. Does it make me feel needed? Does it make me feel productive? Do I look busy?

Or am I just squandering some good concentration?

In any case, it's been a while since I posted, so I'm glad I did - I managed to listen to and weed out some of my podcasts while I was writing the post.

'Turn and face the strange changes...Just gonna have to be a different man' - David Bowie

Oh, that poor, overused song. I know I'm adding more overuse, but perhaps that overuse is warranted - how many songs so directly talk about change? And can be so easily quoted?

I suppose a hallmark of corporate work is change. Anyone who has worked in a corporate setting, and particularly a high-tech corporate setting, knows this. Change in your manager, change in your focus, change in what you do, change in leadership, change, change, change. It's going on here at Sun as usual, and lately, in addition to Sun changes, I seem to be hearing a lot about changes for some of my professional colleagues too - downsizing, shifts in focus, leadership changes, etc.

Some changes in our lives are welcome - or at least less painful than what we typically associate with 'change'. For example, getting rid of that ugly nightstand that I've unconsciously disliked for a long time - that's 'good' change. Getting some new music that I just totally love. Realizing that the love for my wife and daughter has grown deeper, even just over the last few months. These I tend to think of as 'good' changes, so, in a way, I don't even think about them being change at all (which also leads me to realize that, in my mind, change = pain, bad, etc.).

In speaking with library and information students over the last year, I ask them to think not about the roles they might play in the future as much as the skills they can bring to any role they might take on. In other words, it's not about being a 'librarian" or being an 'information specialist' or whatever other role one might eventually have - though these roles are important, obviously. Part of what makes one agile and adaptable to change is being able to think broadly and flexibly about what one does, or what one could possibly do. And, to me, thinking about my skills rather than my 'job' or 'role' opens up all kinds of possibilities to me that I might never see if I'm just looking for a role or a job.

Let me put it another way using an example - a search example, as it turns out. Say I have a Monster job search set up for 'librarian' and 'library' or even 'information specialist' or 'knowledge manager'. I know I'll get listings of the jobs that have these words in their titles and descriptions.

But what about the job or position that is NOT labeled this way, but still is a great fit with the skills that I have - skills like excellent communication, the ability to problem-solve, critical thinking, the ability to find information, the ability to analyze and synthesize that information, building relationships across groups? Hell, those are critical skills for almost every job that's out there. Yet you, as a 'librarian', have all of those skills, and a host of others that you bring with your previous experience and interests. And those skills, my friend, make you a pretty hot package, now that you're thinking about your skills in a different way.

The key to working with change - when it comes, not if - is being able to think about yourself differently, and this is one way to do it. Are you willing to change yourself and to challenge yourself when change comes? Can you find opportunities to stretch yourself, your capabilities and your skills?

Of course you can.

We all adapt to our circumstances, in one way or another, and get ready for the next change. Change is ultimately about acceptance of the change, and, in some way, changing ourselves.

Often times change seems to happen to us. But in any change, the personal choice and power comes in what you do with that change.

You can choose to not accept the change - and that choice will be extremely hard on you and on everyone around you. This is also known as resistance.

Sometimes all you need to do is accept the change - those are usually the easy changes, the 'good' ones that I mentioned earlier.

But once you accept the change - no matter your feelings, thoughts or perceptions about the change - then there open up endless possibilities in what you can do in relation to that change.

To come back to David Bowie, there are indeed some strange changes going on, and I'm gonna have to be a different man. As I embrace those changes, and as I see anew how I can change myself, well, there's nothing but possibility and opportunity out there.

For a variety of reasons - work/life balance, environmental, etc. - more and more companies are at least entertaining the idea of letting people work from home - at least a little bit.

As I've mentioned before, Sun is way ahead of the curve on this trend. Sun has been driving toward a flexible workforce for years, and, at least in my experience, 'walks the walk' and has come close to perfecting a distributed workforce model. In fact, Sun has gotten to the point of providing what's called the Open Work program as a service to other companies, to help them offer more flexible work programs to their employees.

But what's the experience of 'working from home'? What exactly does that mean?

Within the last couple of weeks, I had the chance to chat with a colleague who has recently returned to Sun after being at another company for a couple of years (it was hard to believe that much time had passed). I asked her if she was able to work flexibly at her position at this other company. She said yes, after a while she was able to work from home one day a week, which worked out well for her.

But what was interesting was to hear how others in that company regarded 'working from home'. My paraphrase (of her paraphrase of their sentiments): 'Oh, we figure if you're working from home, you must have an appointment, or have to wait for the cable guy, or something.' In other words, you're not really working - you're goofing off, sitting on the couch reading a magazine, having a popsicle. (And actually, that doesn't sound half bad right now.)

I must admit, when I first considered working from home, I did think about how nice it would be to be able to just get a snack whenever I wanted, to take a break outside, to be able to run off and do an errand if I needed to do it. Take 30 minutes to go have coffee nearby - and no one would be the wiser, right? There was a certain guilty, sneaky pleasure thinking about it. (And I challenge any of you work-from-homers to deny that you haven't thought about these things, too.)

If I may take a slight detour to this line of thinking, here are some of the factors that I personally believe have to be in place for working from home to be successful:

• Management support. If your management doesn't trust you to do your work when he or she can't see you - well, sorry, but you've got more problems than just not being able to work from home. This is a big step, and not to be underestimated; it requires your manager knowing and trusting you enough - and giving you enough space and leeway - to get things done, without seeing you get things done.

• Peer trust. This isn't something you can write down in a policy or guideline, and it's just as crucial as having management support. You can quickly build up a lot of resentment in your team if there's a perception that, somehow, you're doing less work than everyone else by working from home. Do you sign in late? Do you sign off early? Are you non-responsive for long periods of time? Your peers notice - and can resent you for it.

• Technology. This was a problem for me for a while, even with all the support available at Sun. I had to plan in advance for a while if I needed to work from home. For example, sometimes I needed to email files to myself because I couldn't access my work files from home. Not a huge thing, but a big enough thing so that I would not be able to do certain things at home if I forgot to do those little things. (I do have to admit that I may well have had the tools all along to get around these issues; however, I just didn't know about them. All of these issues are no longer issues for me.)

• Self-discipline. To me, this is the interesting one, and the one that brings up that suspicion of laying on the couch all day.
  

I started working from home one day a week with my manager's blessing, as an experiment for both of us.

For me, there were two extremes.

One is that I myself felt like I wasn't working enough. I felt like I was indeed goofing off - though when I totalled up my hours, I was definitely putting in my time. Admittedly, I was taking breaks (something I don't do at work), and doing errands occasionally. But it felt really weird. It wasn't at all like being in the office - my wife would come in and want to check email, she'd ask if we could have lunch together, I would take some time to help get my daughter off to school in the morning, etc.

My work flow just felt really disrupted and disjointed, which is why I was feeling like I was goofing off. So much was happening, I felt like I didn't have the focus and concentration I was used to in order to get things done. And it felt like it took WAY longer to get work done.

So I started going to the other extreme, just to compensate: checking email from 6 in the morning to 9 at night, doing 'just a little bit of work' in the evening, etc. This made me feel better for a while - but, inevitably, it also started making working from home even worse, because work was taking over my life.

This is the other thing I think work-from-homers struggle with (at least initially) - turning work off when you work from home. It's so easy to 'just check email', to get online for 'just a few minutes' - which turns into a half hour or an hour before you even know it. And this builds up resentment after a while, because you're always tied to work.

It took me a while, but I think I've finally found a pretty good balance. Yes, I do check email at night sometimes, if I'm waiting for a response on something. I know, too, that I check it sometimes because it's a psychological comfort - but then I think, how did people get along before, when I was leaving work at my regular time and away from email? Well, gee, the world didn't fall apart then, and it won't now. So I'm getting better at not checking email at night - I've reduced my sense of self-importance ;)

And I've come to realize that working from home has a different feel and flow than 'working from work', and I've become OK with that. I do tend to still start earlier and work a bit later, but that's because I've started to figure out when my prime work slots are: early in the morning before everyone wakes up and in the main part of the day, when my daughter's in school (this doesn't work as well in the summer). I can work other times, but these are my key concentration times - when I need that. I've learned to adapt my work to possible interruptions in the times outside of these slots.

And I've become more comfortable with taking short breaks during the day, and have recently come to realize that these actually make me more productive, even more so than when I'm in the office. I don't take breaks at work, and I start to feel fatigued by the afternoon. At home, I do take short breaks, and I get back to work refreshed. I get to sit on the porch for a few minutes and enjoy the day - rather than just looking at it from my office window.

Working from home is a good thing - and I'm grateful I can do it. I know I'm very fortunate to be able to do so, to have the flexibility to get done what I need to get done, both work-wise and personally. It's a huge perk.

Sure, my daughter will still come home from school and see me working on the computer and say, "Dad, I want you to play with me!" I tell her I'll be able to play in an hour or so.

Dad's working, even though it might not look like it.

So why do you commute?

In my logical mind, my commutes typically got longer due to money - I was commuting a longer distance because I was taking a higher-paying job.

In retrospect, that's actually not true in any of the cases where my commute got longer.

I started commuting from downtown Santa Cruz to Aptos for a job that paid me less money, but was a different setting (academic) and - not a small consideration - gave me more time off (it was an 11-month contract position).

I originally started at West Marine - which added an addition 10-15 minutes to my commute - because I needed to make more money (turns out I couldn't really make ends meet only being paid 11 months out of 12). But I remember the sinking feeling when I got my first check from West Marine, and it was even less than I was making at my previous job. (This situation didn't last long - not even beyond my third or fourth paycheck - but initially, I certainly wasn't getting more pay, which was a big reason I changed jobs.)

And I took a 20% pay cut, a longer and more dangerous commute, and loss of all benefits - with a two-year-old daughter at home - to take the initial research contractor job at Sun.

So why did I make these job changes, thinking they were all about money, when they really weren't about money?

Probably no surprise to any of you, but kind of a revelation to me - these choices are complex, and, at least for me, usually aren't about money, even though my conscious mind thinks so. So here are some of the real reasons, both before and after:

Why did I take the academic job? Initially, because it was a change and some more flexible time off. In the end, it was great because I got to be involved in automating the library - they still had card catalogs and were hand-stamping everything. I also started to get more involved in the IT side - making some good friends who ran the networks - which has been very useful going forward. Totally worth the commute.

Why did I take the West Marine job? Initially, it was all about money (as described above); but, as I've said before, it gave me my first taste of corporate life and corporate pace. I also learned so much there: I got way into systems, I moved around the company, I got to pick up so many skills (including management skills); it was just phenomenal all the way around. Again, totally worth the commute.

Why did I take the Sun job? Obviously not for money since I knew it was a pay cut (by now I was learning that money wasn't always a primary driver). I had done my practicum there, and thankfully they liked my work and offered me the contract position. What drove me primarily was that Sun was a cool place to work; it was a place I wanted to be. I already had worked with my colleagues and knew they were great people. Yes, there were some tradeoffs, including the money and insurance (we took a calculated risk on doctor and hospital visits vs. paying for COBRA, and turns out I actually ended up with more take-home pay even at 20% less gross pay). But, all told and all taken into account, it was, again, totally worth the commute.

So what have I learned? Again, something you all have probably already realized: there's more to a job than money and commute. There's quality of life to consider. There's interesting and challenging work. There are the people you work with and the people you work for. There's location.

And as I continue in my career, there are considerations about where I am in life: beginning of career? Mid-career? Looking at retirement?

I've realized the importance for me of having a strong, fun team to work with; of having supportive management; of having interesting and challenging work. This is primarily the order of importance to me, too, because often the latter things can't happen without the former being in place.

I'm also starting to look at things I hadn't considered before, such as location and where I am in my life. When I was younger, I could move around the country a lot more, if necessary. With a family, that type of lifestyle can be much more disruptive. And the commute, as we see the effects of global warming, has now become a more important factor. The pieces to consider for any position slide around and their importance changes.

Daily commuting was necessary when I first started at Sun; now, that piece has changed again. And you'll hear more about that in my next entry.

In thinking about my own commute, I also started thinking about the commutes my mom used to make.

She has since passed away, but she was an admirable example of a pretty hard-core commuter. She was not quite the extreme commuter that I occasionally encounter. I had an instructor in library school who literally commuted - drove - from Ventura County to San Jose every week to teach a couple days of classes. But my mom definitely had commuting down to her own science.

She started her commuting career driving from Carpinteria ('World's Safest Beach!') to Santa Barbara - not too bad. Then, as her career opportunities changed and grew, she started commuting into the Los Angeles area, which is getting to the scale of a Highway 17 commute - not necessarily as treacherous, but definitely some passes and long hours involved. We moved within the year to Ventura, which was about 30 miles closer to LA, but she was still getting up early and coming home late, doing two and two and a half hour commutes each way. This was partially due to legendary LA traffic, of course, but it didn't seem to phase her too much. She loved her car - a convertable VW Rabbit from the late 70s, almost when they first came out - and she had her traffic reports, her coffee and her cigarettes, the latter two which got her through many things much tougher than just a commute.

She did the LA commute for almost ten years. Then she moved to the Bay Area, where she commuted from Walnut Creek into the Berkeley area. Shorter, but also subject to traffic snarls sometimes as bad as LA.

As I grew older and got a car myself, I too would drive into LA, but I would drive on the weekends to visit my good friend there. Doing that, I started to see the appeal of long, well-known drives. Yeah, you're on the road, and usually there's not much to look at, but you can have any number of distractions - music was (and is) my big distraction. After a while, it really does become meditative - it's a time and space in which I can discuss anything with myself - but it's also a bit scary that first time you realize you've gotten where you're going, but you remember almost nothing of the trip there.

I guess I'm a second-generation commuter - I learned from one of the best. And while I do understand part of the appeal (who would have thought commuting could be appealing?), part of me also wonders, why did she make that awful commute for so many years? There are times I knew she hated it, but she did it anyway.

And it reminds me of how driven she was (excuse the pun) - how much she loved what she did but, more importantly, loved and provided for me. And that's part of why I don't mind my commutes so much. I know I'm not doing it just for myself, it's for my family, too. I understand a little better now.

Mom, wherever you are - this commute's for you.