Letter From a New Job

This is the beginning of my third week at my new job and wow I'm overwhelmed. But that's as it should be - if I weren't overwhelmed it would be a sign that I wasn't paying attention. I joked about it on Twitter at the end of my first week:

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— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

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— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

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— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

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— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

I still feel that way, for the most part - just a little less brain fried. One of the benefits of feeling overwhelmed is that it's making me go slow. There are lots of tired clichés attached to new jobs, but one of my favorites is that it's a marathon not a spring. I have a lot to do and I need to give myself the time to do it. Another benefit is that going slow gives me time to absorb and really think about things like the ramifications of our collection development practices and how we staff the circulation desk. Going slow also gives the staff time to get to know me and (I hope) trust me, so that if and when I do make changes, they'll realize the change is coming from a place of understanding the way the library has run up until now.

Another way the "marathon and not a spring"cliché plays out is that things take time. As long as you think it's going to take - even if you're really pessimistic and/or circumspect - it will probably take longer. In my first director position, it took me three years to finally realize one of my earliest ideas: getting a link to the library in the top navigation on the school's website. Sure, somethings came quickly, but it's my feeling that you should count on things taking forever long and making promises accordingly. Going slow allows me to have the energy to keep working on projects.

Despite my expectations that things will take forever, I'm trying to get myself up and running as quickly as possible - and a lot of my expectations have been crammed into my first three months because of the book I'm using to guide myself through onboarding: The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated and Expanded. This book was my pathfinder the first time I was a director and it did not steer me wrong at all. In fact, the biggest mistakes I made at my last job were when I ignored the books' advice. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's especially helpful if you are taking on a leadership position for the first time, but I know it helps anyone in a new job.

And that's me - a new job. Still has that new job smell! My biggest goal right now is what I'm calling the Three Ps: People, Processes, and Projects. I've started by trying to learn the 3 Ps of the library. I'm sitting down with every single person who works for my department and am discussing things like how often they want to meet with me and where they see opportunities for the department. Also on the agenda is learning about how we handle purchases and birthdays and information sharing and... and... and... Intermingled with those is learning about ongoing and upcoming projects - we're migrating to a new version of our OPAC/LMS soon; and we have to do something called a Functional Area Review; and we're hiring a part time reference librarian; and so on. I'm hoping for a few easy and early wins, so I can build momentum and start to give more back to the institution than they are giving me.

I know this post is somewhat disjointed, but that's what being new in an administrative position is like - so many things to learn and think and do all at once. This means self-care is even more important. The impulse to Get. Stuff. Done., and at any cost, is strong. But I'm making myself take lunch pretty much every day (although my lunch hour today got eaten up with a visit to the DMV). I'm trying to make local friends - had lunch with the director of the public library in town, using MeetUp.com, and socializing with people I knew before moving up here. I asked about and got a mentor who has worked at my new college for a while. I've also reached out to people I know who are directors at SUNY schools and other community colleges - including one person who's recently made the same transition from liberal arts to community college! - to make sure I have people who can help with the professional self care.

More than anything else, I know I need to be patient with myself. And I know I got this.

What Did I Do? Keeping Track of Accomplishments Without Going Crazy, by Tyler Dzuba

We librarians are great at helping others but we can be terrible at helping ourselves, especially when that means talking about our own accomplishments. We do a lot of important things (right?), and they’re hard to track. An extended reference question here, a printer jam there, a report drafted and edited, a book budget spent: the odds and ends don’t always fall nicely into memorable boxes. Come performance review season, it can be impossible to remember what precisely it was that we spent all our time on.

Keeping track of my work sounds mundane, but it’s seriously one of the most valuable gifts I give myself. There’s no better feeling at the end of a tiring day than knowing I’m tired for lots of good reasons. It’s not just for my private benefit: telling my boss what I do is so much easier when I have a roadmap to what I need to say. And best of all, it helps me zero in on what’s important to me and my career. If I’m spending a lot of time on something, it’s either something I’m passionate about and need to cultivate, or something I’m tired of and need to cut.

It’s possible to reconstruct a surprising amount of my activity from email logs and archaeological digs through The Piles of Stuff™. Even so, not a fun way to spend Friday afternoon. So in August 2012, three months into my first professional job, I decided to make a better system.

It boils down to keeping a private, daily log of what I worked on that day. Think Library Day in the Life, but for my eyes only. (Sound riveting yet?)

Your mileage may vary, but five priorities rose to the surface as I started designing my methods:

1. It needs to be frequent. It’s no fun to forget on the 20th of the month what you did on the 2nd.
2. It needs to be fast! If it took me a long time to add something to my logs, I’d never keep up with it. A spur-of-the-moment rapidfire process works really well for me.
3. It needs to be private. It’s not unheard of for me to throw in something like “Wrote passive-aggressive email to [name very redacted], the jerk” or “Had freakout session in office.” If it’s going to be quick, I need the freedom to just write out what actually happened, unfiltered. Bonus: when I’m trying to figure out why some project took so long, these personal notes become super helpful. Why couldn’t I get my act together that week? Because I was holding an unproductive grudge against [name very redacted].
4. It needs to be flexible. I experimented with a bunch of scripted formats, but a blank page seems to be best. Sometimes, I write little narratives. Sometimes, sparing bullet points. Remember, it’s all about making notes that will be useful to you when you look back at them months or years later.
5. It needs be a part of my normal workflow. I already did a lot of notetaking in Evernote, so that’s where my daily logs live. If you live by pen and paper, that works too.

With all that, I’ve settled on a system that works beautifully for me. I made a new notebook in Evernote just for this. Every day, I make a new note with a bullet-point list of things I did. Sometimes I editorialize, but usually it’s just a laundry list. Then at the end of every month, I use the Merge Notes feature to make an indexed list for that month in one note, ready to summarize for performance reviews or to analyze for my own devious purposes. It takes no more than 5 minutes a day, and it’s behind a password so I know that it’s for my eyes only. Clean, simple, and endlessly helpful.

And being the nerd I am, I’ve spent some time automating it. (Relevant xkcds. You’re welcome.) Now, I just press CapsLock+J, and a little dialog box pops up on my screen to ask “What did you do?” (See the picture above. [Editor's Note: Click the picture to see a larger version.]) All the rest is taken care of behind the scenes. I don’t have room for details here, but get in touch or ask in the comments below if you want the gory version. For the adventurous and Mac-centric, start here and here and here, and be creative. I can’t help as much with Windows, but AutoHotkey will get you a fairly long way. Godspeed.

When I started my job, remembering what I did from week to week was tricky. Now, two years in, I can tell you what I did on November 5th, 2012 (mostly reference questions and fighting with link resolvers. Very little gunpowder, it seems.), and I can rest easy writing a self-evaluation about what I accomplished over the last year.

What about you? What have you found helpful in keeping track of what you do all day?

Tyler Dzuba is the head of the Physics-Optics-Astronomy Library at the University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries. Twice an alumnus of UNC-Chapel Hill (BS, MSLS), he’s glad to be in cooler weather for a change. He is passionate about citation instruction reform, early-career leadership, personal information management and the tools for it, and coffee. Tyler is serving as the inaugural chair of the New Professionals Section of the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA), a division of ALA. (Ask him about it!) He would love to chat further about keeping track of accomplishments by email (tdzuba [at] gmail) or on Twitter (@silent_d).

Room to Think

A friend of mine recently introduced me to Onion Talks. As you might guess from the name, they are an Onion-y satire version of TED Talks. Before anyone else brings it up, yes... I have mixed feelings about The Onion (everyone still remembers their horrible tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis, right?), but then again I also have mixed feelings about TED. Be that as it may, my introduction to Onion Talks came at a point when Barbara Fister's "Some Assumptions About Libraries" was still fresh in my mind. Fister's ideas about libraries and knowledge and learning culture resonated. I'm supposed to be a knowledge worker, but I rarely feel like I have enough time to explore my own ideas - with the obvious exception of this blog - since so much of what I do lately is administrative (bills don't pay themselves).

Back to my friend and the Onion Talks. Imagine me sitting there, with Barbara's post still running around the back of my mind, watching this:

Again, ideas and thinking and knowledge creation and all, but from a very different perspective. Did you catch the slide that popped up at the 1:49 mark? "Ideas Are An Inneficiency"?!?! Compare that statement to Fister's "Libraries are not, or at least should not be, engines of productivity." It was almost a physical shock when I saw that slide. Immediately after I was done watching the video, I filed it under "too true to be funny," and tried to go on my way. But I couldn't... that video has stuck with me, so now I need to do something with the turmoil it caused.

It all comes back to room to think. I'm always trying to read more and do more and be more efficient and pack more into my days. Some of that is a byproduct of my job. Since I'm the director at a library that is understaffed and, like most academic libraries - especially at small, liberal arts colleges - underfunded, it's not like I'm going to be able to block out time just for thinking. Instead, I'm going to have to try to do things more intentionally. Slowing down on occasion to examine my underlying assumptions and goals for my daily activities is one way I can do this. Letting go of my MUST READ EVERY AWESOME THING ON THE INTARWEBS mentality is another.

I'm not sure where this will all end. This intention to give myself room and permission just to think may crash and burn the first time I get a panicked faculty member coming to my office because s/he NEEDS this or that from me for an accreditation or a grant application (for the record: this has never happened where I work now), but I'll never find the space if I give up looking for it before I've begun.

Just think... an Onion Talk (combined with something that Barbara Fister wrote) is making me seriously reexamine my professional practice. Who'd'a thunk it?

What I'm Reading Lately

So, I had a conference paper due yesterday. And with all that has been going on for me lately, I was working on it up until almost the last minute (it was due at Midnight, and I submitted it at 9:39 pm). As a result, this week's letter is really just a collection of things I've been reading lately that have me thinking.

This is actually a re-read, but I have fallen off the Getting Things Done wagon, so I'm revisiting this book. Just look at the subtitle to get a feel for why I'm reading it.

The Arena Flowers Twitter Feed - An Explanation is also on my radar. If you aren't aware of what they're doing on Twitter, go look now. They truly understand social media, and everybody out there who does library marketing should pay attention to what Arena Flowers is doing.



Resiliency, Risk, and a Good Compass: Tools for the Coming Chaos is something I've known about for a while, but it came up recently while I was working on an article. I need to revisit Joi Ito's rules of innovation more often.

Okay, that's it from me for now. Back with more about ACRL next week.

Shuffling Priorities, Or, How Will I Ever Get Everything Done?

Creative Commons licensed picture by hockadilly.

My personal life, off the 'net and outside of work, has taken up the majority of my attention and time lately. Now that things are returning back to normal [insert the superstitious gesture of your choice], I'm facing the daunting task of shuffling my priorities and getting my To Do list back to a manageable state. This reshuffling is made even more problematic because it's the beginning of the academic year, with all the attendant responsibilities this time brings. One further complicating issue is that I've renewed my commitment to keeping my stress low since part of what kept me out of work was a nasty strain of penicillin resistant strep throat - something that probably wouldn't have hit me as hard (if at all) if my stress levels & amount of sleep had been where they are supposed to be.

So, how am I going to manage all this? To be honest, I'm not 100% sure, but here are things I know will enter into it:

• Hard deadlines will be considered first. Class sessions can't be reschedule just because I'm feeling overwhelmed and need a moment to catch up. Likewise with meetings where I'm on the agenda, but where I'm only one of a large group.
• Projects that impact my community, particularly first semester freshmen, are also a high priority. Even ongoing projects that fall in this category will be placed higher on the list than most of what I have to do, since we are a teaching/student focused college. Things I'm doing that are for members of my faculty are also very important, since by supporting the faculty I am supporting the students.
• Library-specific projects, things I've promised to my coworkers, will come next. It's okay to put some of these on the back burner, but I don't want projects like revamping maps of the different floors of the library to fall completely off the list.
• Personal work projects will come last. That article I'm planning to write about the email focus groups I run? On hold for the foreseeable future. Same goes with catching up on my professional reading. I hate that these kinds of projects are always the first thing to be set aside when crunch time hits, but I have to leave something out for a while and the needs of my community have to come first.

So there's my basic approach, all spelled-out. I still have to go through the process of applying this plan, figuring out the specifics, but so long as I keep my higher-level priorities straight, I know the specifics will fall in line.

How about you? How do you set work/school priorities?

My Summer Plan of Attack

I've never been secretive about how much I like the academic calendar. The ebb and flow, the cyclical nature of the work, means my job almost never gets boring. Because the regular school year just ended - graduation was on Saturday - I'm faced with another change because the summer schedule has taken over. I know the relief and enjoyment of peace and quiet will soon give way to abject terror as I think about all the summer projects I want to complete. Summer break really isn't that long, no matter that it seems like forever at this end of it. All of this means it's time for me to sit down with a pad of paper, a pen, and a calendar so I can plot out the next three months.

Before I go much further, I want to acknowledge that I learned a lot of this from a friend of mine who is a member of the foreign languages department at my college. I have tweaked this to make it fit my circumstances, though, so here is the general process I will follow:

1. Write down every "to do" for this summer, both personal and professional. This list will include everything from writing a new marketing plan for the library to cleaning behind the refrigerator at my home. Even the seemingly insignificant things (I really need a new litter box, for instance) will still take time and effort, so onto the list they will go. Also, I make sure to include at least a couple of just-for-me things.
2. Estimate how long each item will take, then multiply that by 1.5. Knowing whether something will take me hours or days helps me schedule them. Things always take longer than you think, so I try to accommodate that in my planning process. This way, if I get sick or have something assigned to me at the last minute, I'll still have time.
3. Figure out all the steps for each item. "Creating and finalizing a wayfinding plan" is on my summer list, but that's not one discrete step, that's the whole project. Instead, I will write down things like, "inventory existing signs" and "update map of 3rd floor."
4. Establish priorities. Sometimes this will be setting priorities for myself. For example, even though it will go on the list, I doubt I'll have time to learn how to play guitar this summer. Sometimes prioritizing will mean talking to my coworkers and my director. Depending on the project in question, I may even need to take the needs of our parent institution into account. (Actually, reexamining priorities is a regular part of my work flow.)
5. Comb through the list for things to cut/put on a back burner. I don't know about you, but I am always more ambitious than is good for me. Step 1 is supposed to be a brain dump, getting everything on paper to clear my thoughts for later steps, so this will include things that aren't as important and/or that can wait.
6. Map it out on a calendar, with hard deadlines. My process makes it so that writing it down before entering it into my Outlook calendar helps, but you might feel more comfortable starting with an electronic calendar. Even if I have to assign the deadlines myself, I do. It's easy to put things off if there isn't a set date attached to the project.
7. Find a way to ensure accountability. Sometimes it will be a promise to my boss. Sometimes it will be a friend. Sometimes it will just be a note on my refrigerator that reminds me of something I want to do. If I don't find a way to hold myself accountable, it becomes way too easy to let it slide until the end of the summer.

This is the second time I've planned my summer this way, but I got so much done the last time I followed this process that I'm actually looking forward to it this time. It's important to remember that this is a reiterative process - new things come up and old things become less important. Another warning: you will likely feel overwhelmed as you look at the big, brain dump list, but that's normal and to be expected. Finally, it's not a cure-all. You still have to follow through with the plans you make. Regardless, it's served me well in the past because I know, at the other end of the summer, I will have conquered much of my "to do" list. I'll be a "To Do List Commando."

How about you? How do you handle it when you have a lot of unstructured time at work and lots of things to accomplish?

When to Say Yes, or "Another Committee? Are You Crazy?"

I'm writing this the day before the first meeting of a new committee on which I'll be serving. Yes, I'm already on three campus-wide committees (one of which hasn't met in 2 years - it's my favorite), two library committees, and a partridge in a pear tree. Yes, I am the same person who told you to avoid death by meetings and to avoid burnout. On the other hand, as my director told me, you've got to know "which hill you want to die on," and the idea behind this new committee is important to me - both personally and professionally - so I volunteered, despite my busy schedule. 

It will get in the way of other projects, but I asked myself some questions about this committee, and knew it would be worth the hassle. What questions did I ask? Well, since you insisted, here they are:

1. Do you have a choice? One of my current committees must have a librarian. If I hadn't accepted the committee assignment, my boss would have been the one to fill the gap. That's what's known as a no-brainer, so I'm on the committee.
2. Do you have time for it? If no, can it wait? Some of my projects are "Summer Only" because of how all-consuming they can be. Similarly, I've passed on committees that were interesting because I knew they'd take up too much time.
3. Would it be politically advantageous? Non-library search committees are a pain and tend to obliterate even dreams of free time, but helping another department by being their token outsider is never a bad idea. That goes double when it's an administrator asking for my help.
4. Will it look good on your resumé and/or annual report? I detest public speaking when the audience is made up of my peers, but I've started doing it regularly because it looks good. 
5. Even if you otherwise wouldn't need to be involved, ask yourself is it important to you or just so interesting/fun that you feel you have to? Refereeing late night dodge ball is hard on me since I'm normally in bed by 10 PM and the event always starts at 9:30, but I always volunteer because building relationships with students outside of the library is important to me. And trust me, watching undergraduates take dodge ball that seriously is always a fun time.

If I can't come with good answers any of the above, I say no. This is more difficult than sounds, but it's necessary sometimes. So choose your yeses wisely, otherwise this could be your epitaph:

What about you? How do you pick which projects you'll pursue?