Day 2: Time Management and Personal Branding

Day 2 of PLMI has been instructional and incredibly useful. Kia's presentation on personal and library branding was great! I was telling her over lunch how helpful it was in the simplest ways....so many times I recognize abstractly that I need to work on my brand or image, but I just don't know where to start or exactly how to formulate the plan and implement it effectively. So, having someone so adept in that area come and lay out even the simplest basics is hugely helpful. Formulating both my brand and that of the Library is definitely on my to do list. I have a general idea of what I want to express, it is just knowing how to do it.

I was reading Lani's blog earlier and she made a really important point about what we learned from Kia today. She pointed out that she is not the person she was five years ago and will not be this person in five years. This is really important because we have to recognize that we are ever changing people and our goals and visions will change, and we absolutely must be open to embracing those changes.

Our work on professionalism was great today as well. However, in examining one of the most vital traits in a professional, that of time management, was profoundly useful for me. I have realized for a while now that I needed to get a hold on my time at work and be more efficient and productive, especially with a baby at home that I feel I never see. Being so new to my position and my library I really had to hit it hard and create immediate results because of the particular situation we were in. Well, that hard work has paid off, and as I was telling Heather today, I am now in a trasitional period of management and leadership. I had begun to explore ways to keep track of what I need to do and how much I was actually accomplishing, but still felt I needed a more structured approach. I am really looking forward to trying out the Pomodoro technique and am hopeful it will work for me. I think, like most of us, I will struggle with saying no and forcing myself to complete one tast before beginning another. One of my biggest downfalls is email. I recognize that I allow myself too much time and attention to email, when I really should limit myself to particular blocks of time in the day. I am also a proponent of an open door policy for my staff and my customers, but lately I have been forcing myself to close the door and alert the staff to limit their knocks to only those things that cannot wait. Being the beginning of the fiscal year and budget time, this was more easily done out of absolute necessity. I really like to encourage the free flow of ideas between my staff and I, and worry that telling them to wait until I finish what I am working on will be a difficult thing to do. But, sometimes we have to take a step back and contemplate the bigger picture and force ourselves to do those things we are uncomfortable with for the benefit of the greater good.