Drive

I'm reading Drive by Daniel Pink, about what motivates people to do what they do, whether work or games or anything else in life.  The basic premise is that the kind of motivation that has worked reasonably well for most of civilization's history through the Industrial Age, namely the promise of extrinsic rewards for doing work such as salaries, benefits, promotions and so on may be less effective in motivating today's employees.  Smart organizations are recognizing that people are also motivated by intrinsic drives, which includes not only rewards of profit but also our needs for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Building on the work of Meyer Friedman the San Francisco cardiologist who developed the Type A/B language to describe personality types who were more or less prone to heart disease in his practice, Pink has defined Type X and Type I to describe the motivations of people in their jobs and other pursuits.  There is a self-assessment tool online here, where you can find out what type you are.  I was not too surprised to find out I am a Type I, motivated more by intrinsic drives than extrinsic rewards.  Perhaps that is why I am not rich.

Here is something that motivates me.

There is so much going on right now: settling in to a new contract that takes me out of my home office once or twice a week; managing the back office for Rob's store where the usually busy summer season is doing greater volume than the previous three summers; co-writing a journal article; and getting ready to start in a new writing group next week.

Meanwhile it was time for the Catfish swim once again.  Having done reasonably well in a light field last summer, I had some hopes of placing this year but the front end of my age group was clogged with masters swimmers who can swim the distance in a thin slice of my time, so no go.

Before...

After

Parents

She is 85. He turned 90 last week, and they just celebrated 63 years of marriage.  No further words needed.

Cancer Sucks

A friend I worked with a long time ago and admire to this day - Kate - has cancer.  She is only 42.  She was a world level athlete in her younger days, playing softball for her home country - a country she cheerfully and self-deprecatingly admits is not a powerhouse in world softball. 

I tried to hire her a few years ago, before cancer struck for the first time.  I think it was hard for her to say no to me for a variety of reasons.  Looking back on it I'm glad she did say no, because she is so much better off having stayed put. 

A couple of years ago we spoke on the phone and she told me she had just been diagnosed with gastric cancer, much more commonly found in older men.  She had been dissatisfied with the diagnostics for what they thought was an ulcer, and pushed till she got a diagnosis.  She was scared but determined.  After months of chemo and surgery she was declared clear of cancer.  Her hair grew back, her color was good, she looked fit again.

Until this past January, when tests revealed that her margins were not so clear after all.  Back into treatment, daily radiation this time, to be followed by more chemo.  She decided to put together a team to walk the Relay for Life - 24 hours walking the community track to raise money and awareness to fight cancer.  I decided to join her team and walk.

After over 10 years' involvement with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training, visiting cancer patients in hospital, sitting at bedsides, attending too many funerals and - thankfully - occasionally a wedding, I admit I've pulled back sometimes from the work of befriending a cancer patient.  Even this year when I felt I should be contributing more to Kate, I was buried in the enormous challenge of taking care of elderly parents. 

So the Relay team was my apology - my feeble way of saying "Here is what little I can do".  I walked for 90 minutes.  I walked around the track whose infield was covered with tents and EZ-Ups, full of people wearing t-shirts with their team names, some professionally done, others marked with Sharpies, all in honor of someone they love who has - or had - cancer. 

There were hundreds of people slowly walking the track, hundreds more in the infield area in support.  From my own athlete days I took off as though it was a workout, pacing myself, counting laps, projecting how many miles I could complete in 90 minutes.  (The answer is 4.5.) 

As I walked in the setting sun of mid-summer evening, people began putting out hand decorated luminaria all around the inside and outside edges of the quarter mile track.  Gangs of kids pulled around wagons filled with nuts and bolts to weigh down the bags, and as the sun sank lower the candles inside were lit.  I walked and thought how each of those hundreds of luminaria bags represented a person; a person who was loved by someone at that track.

Rob came and walked the last 30 minutes with me. 

Cancer picker the wrong diva.

Ice Cream

I recently got a new counter-top ice cream maker (pictured here with my espresso machine, another story for another time), whose arrival allowed me to retire my parents' hand-me-down ice-and-rock salt machine.  Theirs was a serious ice cream maker with a rich history, having sat out on the back porch many an afternoon  producing homemade ice cream for all the family gatherings of recent years.  This little fellow, on the other hand is strictly an indoor operator who makes up to a quart of ice cream in the kitchen while you do something else - no ice, rock salt, or mess. 

My first effort was this blackberry cabernet sorbetto, which tasted as fabulous as it looks here: a deep, complex blackberry flavor tempered with the reduced red wine (I opened something generic for this - couldn't quite bring myself to cook down a good cab), and sweetened with simple syrup.  I took this to my friend Mary's surprise birthday party and it was a big hit.
 

 
Next came a mango sorbet, shown below.  This one was delicious initially on the tongue but had a slightly bitter aftertaste.  I used the green and red mangoes we get from Mexico.

 


Last night I tried a gelato, cooking the milk/cream/egg yolks/sugar base in the morning and letting it chill through the afternoon.  When I was ready to make the gelato, I stirred in a tablespoon each of ground coffee and unsweetened cocoa powder and some vanilla, and let that mix for about 25 minutes.  Then I poured in 4 oz. of chocolate chips and chopped almonds.

Oh yeah.

Now What Indeed

Now that I have been in this "new routine" for several months, I had hoped to learn something about myself in the process.  When it all started in February - quite unexpectedly - I hoped when the dust cleared to finally have time to write, to think, to develop content for my classes, to reflect - all without the arbitrary confines of having to go to an office and kow-tow to the wishes of others.  The hours and days stretched before mefree of the confines of working hours and external expectations for only the second time in my post-college life.

Or so I thought.

The reality has been much different.  The lack of structure, instead of freeing up creative juices, staunched the flow. Unused to creating my own productivity, I struggled to mark achievement.  My Mennonite work ethic said "work before play" and since I could not identify accomplishment, I could not allow myself the "rewards" of creativity - writing, photography, even exercise. 

So what I learned about myself was not what I expected.  I learned that I need some structure to feel productive: structure, not necessarily stress.  I have started to learn how to define structure and success and units of work for myself.  A blog post, a well-written email, some student papers, preparations for dinner - any of these can trigger the "we have worked, now we can eat" response from my growing up.

And now that things are getting a little better, I really hope that I can share more often.  I have some things to say.

In the meantime, here is a photo of me and my brother Jean Loup.  He is several years older than me.  I only hope my hair goes his color.

Slide Decks Everywhere

This week will have much more variety, as I will be out at meetings each of several days: a RAPS meeting on biosimilars Tuesday evening; a lunch meeting with an alliance partner (I hope) Wednesday; the BayBio panel discussion Thursday morning; and a meeting at UCSF on early development of oncology agents Thursday afternoon. So before all this driving around starts, I need to make my slide contributions to the two panels I am on for the Partnerships meeting in April.  Plus, finishing up taxes in time for the student financial aid applications due March 1.  And I need to read the writing assignments from my GCP class.  I am exhausted and it is only 9 AM.

So to kick the week off, here is a seaweed spaghetti photo from San Simeon Beach at sunset.

Friday

My nascent home office routine has hit some bumps. Each of the past two mornings has dawned with plumbing problems in the back of the house, which means the master bathroom. Les the plumber, who is also our neighbor, is crawling around under the house even as I write this and wonder what exactly is wrong with our 50+ year old pipes and how much of my finite bank account it's going to cost to fix it.

Finances

I found this via Astia's newsletter. Astia (blog here) is an organization that supports female entrepreneurs and women-led startups, coaching their executives and helping them find investor and angel funding.   LearnVest is an Internet startup whose founder dropped out of Harvard business school and raised $1.1 million to fund her personal finance management service for women. It looks like the target audience might be younger women, and first timers in the world of managing finances straight out of school, but I can never pass up a good personal finance website.  They always have useful ideas. 

More Time Management

I just ran across this website about email management, closely linkable to time management.  There is a lot of information about the scope of the problem, and a whole lot more about solutions. 

For instance, having your email client auto-detect and push your email out to you every time a new message comes can distract you and cause you to lose your focus for at least a minute, or longer if you respond immediately.  If you are the easily distracted type (like me) and you have as many as 5 email addresses  (also like me, yes I know what you're thinking, but I actually need all those.  Don't I?), you could be distracted 60 times an hour or more, or 500 times a day, or 2000 times per week.  Not very productive, even for someone with master multi-tasker status as I claim for myself. 

One solution I've been trying when I'm away from the computer is to limit the number of email addresses I pick up on my BlackBerry - three.  At least it is a start.

Time

One thing I've noticed is that time is just as difficult to manage at home is it was at the office.  I've gained back up to 2 hours in commute time, and I used to chafe at the thought of all the things I could get done with that time otherwise lost behind the steering wheel.  Now I start the day with a list of things to do, and I end the day hours later with an equally long list of more things to do.

One urgent need I have is to get organized.  I have absorbed boxes of files from my office, plus many boxes of photo albums and other stuff that somehow ended up here from my parents' recent move to assisted living, and all of it needs to find a home.  The task is huge, and will take a lot of focus to get done.

This morning has been all about conference preparation: I am lucky enough to be a panelist in a therapeutic breakfast next week on clinical trials abroad, and this will be a reunion of sorts with some colleagues I have not seen in a while.  I also managed to schedule two conference calls for the separate panels I am on for the upcoming Partnerships in Clinical Trials conference in Orlando in April, and I was barely able to distinguish  which panel and call was which. 

The photo is of the Golden Gate Bridge peeking through the fog - a very common site here year round.

Monday

Not having anywhere to go on a Monday morning takes a little getting used to.  I wasn't sure how I would establish a new routine. There wasn't much time to ponder this though, as my phone rang at 7:00 am and the morning sort of started all by itself.  I've spent 90 minutes gainfully employed as a consultant, written a letter of introduction for a student of mine, confirmed my participation as a panelist at a BayBio breakfast next week, and had two phone conversations with my partner in India.  All while Rob made breakfast and coffee. 

This Is For Real

I had a momentary loss of resolve today when my severance check arrived in the mail.  There was something sort of hopeful about having one check still coming, and actually having it actually in my hands, and knowing that is the last paycheck I can expect for an indefinite time, put me back on my heels a bit.  I felt a sudden urge to call up all the headhunters in my contacts file and put myself on the block for any reasonably paid position.  I didn't, at least not yet - today is Saturday. 

Not helping much was the actual amount of the check, about 60% of the total amount in my severance agreement - much less than I had hoped.  I had increased my exemptions as a final act at work, hoping to get as much out of my severance as possible, so I was a little shocked at how much was taken out, or more to the point, how little take-home pay I actually, well, took home.  My first inclination was to fire off an email to payroll, but I decided to do some research first.  I found this answer on allexperts.com, which seemed to be credible and cleared up the mystery.  Companies can choose how taxes will be withheld in severance checks under $1,000,000 (mine qualifies): either by the aggregate method where normal rates apply and which can be influenced by changing withholding as I had done, or by using a flat rate of 25%, which is impervious to such shenanigans as I tried to pull with my W4.  (It is illegal to claim more withholding allowances than you are legally entitled to.  I am sure I knew that on some level.)  I am not sure what would influence a company to choose one method over another, since they have to pay the entire amount one way or the other.  The only entity immediately affected by the choice - the severed employee - is of course the one who has no say in the proceedings.

Are you done yet?

 

Charley patiently waiting for all this work to be done so we can go for a walk.

Headcount, or No?

Two early conference calls this morning - Google Voice wouldn't dial the number, Skype would.  Some confusion about which headset is which.  I really need to organize the cables around this desk. 

After I was laid off and started to emerge from the shock of it, I began to sense that this could be an opportunity to expand my horizons and develop my own consulting business.  A headcount opportunity, while attractive, would put my own business ambitions and interests on the back burner again.  A head hunter called with a job possibility, and his call was an unexpected test of my resolve - would I jump at the chance for a steady paycheck, even at the cost of my own emerging interests?  It turned out, for today at least, the answer is no. 

Day 1

Boxes packed, the car loaded, goodbyes said.  Driving home from the office for the first time in the post-employee era, on a chilly February afternoon.  A small severance in my pocket, a rainy day fund in the bank, several people who rely on me for support, and a fledgling consulting business that dearly needs some of my attention.  A slightly bruised ego at being laid off, yet after all I've been through in the past several months, I am looking forward to some time to think, to plan, and to organize.

There is no time to think about what to do first, because there is a 3 hour GCP class to teach and then a quick pack for a long-planned but almost forgotten long weekend getaway to New York City with Rob.

Flash forward one week.  Home from New York, I am establishing a new routine that for only the second time in my life does not revolve around traveling to an office to log time.  Coffee and breakfast, read what passes for a newspaper in this town, walk the dog, then settle down to work email, make contacts for Anhvita, look for consulting work.  Take lunch to Rob at the store, do the banking, pick up groceries, do some more writing and  emailing, start dinner.  My to do list is as long as my arm:  taxes, email contacts from recent conferences,  update curriculum for my spring classes, make business development contacts, work on pieces for my writing group.  Somehow I need to absorb all the boxes I brought home from my recent job back into my home office.  I want to re-do the office and reduce the clutter.

I found an excellent blog about being out of work by Max Gladwell, here.  He talks about how the professional blog - not this one which is intended to be personal - can become Resume 2.0, that by blogging regularly about one's industry, you can actually set yourself apart in a way that the traditional resume will never do.  I am inspired to invigorate my Two Decades and Counting blog.  On the list for tomorrow.

I leave you with a photo from the trip to New York, a view of Central Park from the Mandarin Hotel on Columbus Circle.