Well, first full day, anyway. Slept pretty well last night, all things considered. No trouble falling back asleep after the middle-of-the-night bathroom break. Count it as a win.
Today was meetings from 8:45 until 5:30, with a break for lunch, then work from 6 until just now (~10:30) with a break for dinner. I was supposed to talk with R but he got sidetracked and then asked an hour ago when I was planning to be done. I said, in effect, as soon as possible and that I hadn't yet eaten dinner. He stopped after that. Not sure if because I made it clear that I was tired or because he got distracted. It's hard to be polite with him sometimes.
Despite their length, the meetings today were actually really productive. The folks around the table had never sat down together before to discuss what's going to be a fairly complicated piece of the project - starting up a mobile money system in very rural areas - and there was a lot to discuss. Mark, who's in from Geneva to help facilitate this piece, did a very good job keeping things on track and moving along. We finished exactly at 5:30, as planned. More to go over tomorrow and there will be lots of questions as we get into the nitty-gritty details, but today focused things well.
I am the kind of person who does better on a tight time schedule. I dislike stringing work out and am much more productive when things are compressed with lots of intermediate steps. Actually, that last bit suggests a maybe-obvious but heretofore-unthought-of-by-me strategy for improving my working habits: Lots of very rigid intermediate deadlines. Food for thought.
Also, I'm reading some more Borges, a collection called "The Maker" that consists mostly of very, very short stories - a page or page-and-a-half on average, I'd say. Here's an example, called "Argumentum Ornithologicum":
Time for some benadryl, some more Borges, and sleep. Hoping to talk to C tomorrow morning.
Today was meetings from 8:45 until 5:30, with a break for lunch, then work from 6 until just now (~10:30) with a break for dinner. I was supposed to talk with R but he got sidetracked and then asked an hour ago when I was planning to be done. I said, in effect, as soon as possible and that I hadn't yet eaten dinner. He stopped after that. Not sure if because I made it clear that I was tired or because he got distracted. It's hard to be polite with him sometimes.
Despite their length, the meetings today were actually really productive. The folks around the table had never sat down together before to discuss what's going to be a fairly complicated piece of the project - starting up a mobile money system in very rural areas - and there was a lot to discuss. Mark, who's in from Geneva to help facilitate this piece, did a very good job keeping things on track and moving along. We finished exactly at 5:30, as planned. More to go over tomorrow and there will be lots of questions as we get into the nitty-gritty details, but today focused things well.
I am the kind of person who does better on a tight time schedule. I dislike stringing work out and am much more productive when things are compressed with lots of intermediate steps. Actually, that last bit suggests a maybe-obvious but heretofore-unthought-of-by-me strategy for improving my working habits: Lots of very rigid intermediate deadlines. Food for thought.
Also, I'm reading some more Borges, a collection called "The Maker" that consists mostly of very, very short stories - a page or page-and-a-half on average, I'd say. Here's an example, called "Argumentum Ornithologicum":
I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer--not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc.--is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.Love that.
Time for some benadryl, some more Borges, and sleep. Hoping to talk to C tomorrow morning.
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