Hello all. Too many blog posts start with an apology for not blogging enough, so I won’t do that. Although I’ve blogged very little this term my average is still reasonably high after my hyper actvity last term, and absence, after all, makes the heart grow fonder. Do you feel fonder?
This term is a lot less structured than last term, a bit more like the real world, though still a long way off. Every full time MBA student has to do six ‘electives’, the business school’s term for the courses you choose from a large selection. My choices are:
Managing Negotiations
Designing and Innovating Services
Hi-tech strategy
Corporate Social Responsibility (though the description makes it look more like an intro to the theory of public policy)
Strategic Management Accounting
Managing Change
I’m midway through my third elective. My choices are all bunched up early in the year – some people finish their electives in August, I finish mine in June. Coupled with the IED project (workshop 2 completed, workshop 2 on the horizon), finding a good summer project and finding a job after the MBA I am very busy.
I wrote so many blogs last term because I spent so much time in the library looking for things to avoid working, but this term I have not been in the library anywhere near as much so have not had the inclination.
I am trying to live the seven habits of highly effective people, as propounded by Stephen Covey. I have a love-hate relationship with this kind of thing. The English Literature student in me is sniffy about the corny, sometimes superficial and shallow style dressed up in depth and deep thinking. But they can be damn useful. I like that book because it doesn’t give easy solutions but does give a few handy tools. One of them is the quadrants for self-management:
Basically the very sound advice is that you should be trying to do things in the non-urgent but important quadrant as much as possible. I’d like to think blogging was in that quadrant but there are times when it gets pushed down into the not important/not urgent quadrant I’m afraid.