Week two of our commanders-in-chief off gallivanting the globe. You know in those movies where the mom leaves and for about four hours the kids run around the house eating all the sugar in sight, jumping on the beds, and wreaking general havoc before coming to the sudden realization that they actually kind of miss their mom?
That was us in the office this week, minus the sugar and jumping on the beds.
Mostly we just missed our bosses.
It was still good getting to function as a lean and mean team of three/four/five (depending on the day), and we had a couple meetings that felt really professional and productive (not even joking). However, all good things must come to an end, and I’m happy that we’ll be a complete team again this week.
What I’ve been creating:
Email lists
Last week I mentioned the event that we’re hosting in October. This week we (myself and my coworkers) finalized the email invite lists for the networking event in the evening and launched the email sequences.
A guest list
Mere moments after sending the first email, we had our first RSVP.
It was quite the emotional moment for all parties involved (well, mostly me, but the excitement was eventually contagious enough).
There’s nothing quite like seeing the fruits of your labor materialize in front of your very eyes (even in the very small way that is an online event RSVP).
What I’ve been learning:
- Take the time to set things up well in the beginning before launching a new project so that you don’t have to do double/triple/quadruple work going back over the same parts multiple times.
- Always overestimate the amount of time you think it will take to complete a project because it’s better to be pleasantly surprised at your speediness than to be unfortunately disappointed at your lack of speediness. Under promise, over deliver — Praxis really was onto something all along.
This week in New York City!
- I saw someone urinate in public for the first time.
- I discovered the High Line, a walking path along an old railway line that’s been converted into a thin, long park high above the city streets. It reminded me of McBroom’s Wonderful One-Acre Farm, but opposite.
- I attended a gifts and strengths workshop on Saturday put on by the church I’ve been attending. It was interesting to see how my strengths have shifted since the last time I took the strengths assessment. Responsibility is now #1 so you should all be pleased to hear that my firstborn gene is alive and well and over-compensating.
This week in Praxis!
For our weekly workshop this Monday we were graced with the presence of the one and only Amanda Kingsmith. Amanda is the module one advisor at Praxis, and is a world-traveling, remote-working superstar.
She offered a ton of super valuable, actionable advice about what it takes to excel in a remote role. I thought it was applicable to regular work as well, so I was grateful for the opportunity to learn from someone who’s utterly mastered the art of Staying On Top Of Things.
One of my main takeaways from the session was the importance of building consistent, productive morning and evening routines. This is something I’ve been avoiding the significance of for a long time, and this was just a really great push to actually start getting a system in place for happy, healthy, and productive mornings and evenings.
Random Win of the Week!
I caught a typo in a piece of correspondence regarding details for the event we’re hosting. If left unaddressed, we would have pulled completely wrong contacts to invite to the networking happy hour.
I brought it up to our contact at the partnering organization, and he confirmed that there was, in fact, a typo in the URL. And then he said, “Good catch, eagle eye!” and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt prouder than I did in that moment.
That’s all.
Oh, also:
I’m planning on resuming my daily blogging after my random I-Just-Stopped-And-Never-Re-Started hiatus the past couple weeks. (Gotta start building those good routines!) That’s all for real now.
Have a good week everybody.