Well folks, after ranting about the admin yesterday, we’re back today with the June edition of proper admin because… why not?
Music news, maybe
Of Monsters and Men is back! They have a new album coming out this summer and announced a Boston show for September. They also released a high-energy single – it’s called ‘Alligator’. This is the kind of thing I define as The Good News.
Celtic Social Club is also back but they appear unlikely for a trip to the USA in 2019. I liked the new track ‘Sunshine’ but this live clip of ‘Make It Right’ better represents their sound.
Slow Club is definitely NOT back but there is a documentary coming out soon that was shot during their final tour. I tried to go to one of those shows but, sadly, only half the band made it (read a little more about it in this post from the TOA archives). Needless to say, I have a few unanswered questions about that night and I’m curious if this film will answer any of them.
More audio news…
It was a strong podcast month – here are the highlights:
*Michael Lewis’s new podcast, Against The Rules, examines the role of referees in American life.
*More Or Less looked into US healthcare spending.
*Call Your Girlfriend discussed everyone’s favorite dinner party topic… abortion.
*Trevor Noah hilariously shared his views on sports fans at the sixty-minute mark of this Bill Simmons Podcast episode (it runs for around twelve minutes).
How’s work?
Er…
Last week, you said –
I had a nice senior moment when we transitioned over to Slack. About a week in, I typed out a message to two people in my team and pinged it out to a (very) public channel instead. Nothing HR-worthy in the message and I was able to delete it almost immediately, but I think it’s a good representation of where my head is at the moment.
OK – do I dare ask... anything else?
I complained yesterday about overwhelming admin. Here on TOA, the big problem is the delay between finishing a book and posting a reading review within ninety days – these days, the average is approaching double that target. The moment this sunk in was unrelated to books – I was copying my notes from the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference I attended in early March when I realized that at the current pace my post about it would probably go up in September. It just seemed like too long even though there is no law that prevents me from posting about any event (or a book I read) a half year after the fact.
There is a certain value in having arbitrary metrics. When I say ‘I want a three month turnaround’, I can hear the naysayers saying nay – what are you gonna do if it’s four months? I get that because I’ve been among those naysayers myself, rolling my eyes when I sit through some explanation about the speaker’s goal of doing ‘three hours of creative work per day, no matter what’. I always think the same thing – no matter what? If it ends up being ten minutes a day short, you gonna burn all your work and quit?
The lesson here is that comparisons against these arbitrary parameters point to underlying problems. After identifying a problem, the individual can make adjustments. Readers might assume I’m ready to blame the admin (and I am) but it’s worth ruling out the other explanations first.
And quite frankly, when I put myself through this exercise I couldn’t rule out other explanations. So, it's clear that I need to make some adjustments. I’ll start over the next few months by writing fewer posts about each book until I feel a little better about my process.
Until then…
Thanks for reading.
Tim
In the next month of… True On Average…
1. Who knows, or cares, if Heineken is racist?
2. Let's talk about government healthcare... again.
3. There's leftover admin from December?!?
