Atlanta: the class, the city… the heat!

The workshop I attended in Atlanta was great. It was very participatory and the group we had really worked well together. It was also very nice to put some faces to the names I work with often, as well as meeting some of my management team for the first time. The problem with good classes is that I typically come back the head full of ideas I’d like to implement, and I’ve really got to pace myself in order to avoid becoming a workaholic. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day…

The building location is quite nice as well. I like how the cafeteria in the Hillside building overlooks a river and some forest. Both sides of that cafeteria has glass walls, to provide a great view of the surroundings. I even saw a little lizard taking a sun bath near the window! Besides that I didn’t have time to visit much the city, between networking with other IBMers, a few business calls and trying to get some rest. It didn’t help that I like to walk around and the heat wave was a little discouraging to any physical activity.

On one morning, the USA today was showing red (for the heat wave) across the country and even all of southern Canada was hit (except for a little area near Sudbury, if anyone knows where that is). I’m now back from class trying to put those newly discovered principles to good use. My first order of the day (last week) was to actually stop doing a lot of things I do today.

The way I see it, in order to do great things and essentially innovate, you need time. And time is something I don’t have, since so many of the projects I’ve helped over time are in maintenance mode now. I’ve decided to let someone else get some experience while I try and focus on my next big things. Even when you have very high productivity and efficiency, it helps to not have to be at 150% all the time; the brain needs some rest to function properly. I keep forgetting, sometimes…