Category Archives: learning

I recognise that I’m not good at moving outside my comfort zone, but every now and again I like to push myself, and my summer holiday last week was one of those moments.

So my husband and I spent our summer holiday on a 36 foot yacht sailing along the Dorset coast line with my parents- and sister-in-law. My husband’s family are long standing sailors and my husband is a Yacht Master and has wanted to take me sailing for at least nine years. Previous to this trip I had spent 2 nights on a yacht just a few months ago and visited the Southampton Boat Show a couple of times, so this was quite an adventure for me.

Here is what I learnt from my week sailing

• I prefer sailing with calmer winds and in the sun
• Other boats hitting you is scary
• Getting your bedding correct for the weather is important (a 5 season sleeping bag is unnecessary during summer; even a British summer)
• As a light sleeper ear plugs and eye mask are essential
• I can easily survive a week without internet access

Over six months ago I asked for advice on how to label the key on my keyboard where the letters had worn off. It has surprised me how many other people have the same problem with their keyboard. I thought I had just bought a cheap keyboard, but maybe cheap keyboards are becoming more common, or perhaps we are using our keyboards more often. After thinking about it for some time and reading the comments left on the earlier post I have now solved the problem and my newly labelled keyboard looks like this.

First I used adhesive stickers to label the keys about a month ago and in most cases they have worked with no problems, and have not moved across the keys or come off on to my fingers. However, over the last few days one corner of the E sticker has started curling slightly, therefore I have now coated each key with a layer of clear nail varnish.

If you are going to varnish your keys

• make sure there is plenty of time for the varnish to dry
• cover the whole of the top of the key and ensure you use enough varnish to get a smooth surface

Do you know how you would react if a fight happened in front of you?  It is not something that I’ve ever thought about because I’ve never even seen a fight.    However I was unfortunate enough to find out on Saturday after an ‘incident’ in a local shopping centre when a group of boys started a fight with my husband.

My first reaction was disbelief and shock that this could happen during the afternoon in a busy location; then I felt helpless because I didn’t know how to stop it.  However when one of the boys punched my husband and then moved towards me I instinctively grabbed him!  I’m still shocked by this behaviour and I don’t remember what I did afterwards.

So having been involved in my first fight, I’ve been wondering about how I will react if I find myself in a similar situation in the future.  One thought is I will be more mentally prepared, but I suspect that I will actually be less likely to get involved because I’ve had time to think about about the worst things that could happen.

Have you had any experiences like this?

Stephen at HDBizBlog has suggested working together to help achieve something great in 2008. In fact, its not just Stephen, Phil Gerbyshak and Aaron Potts are at it as well, and that is only the people whose blogs I subscribe too.

Of course working together is a great idea because you can achieve a lot more with supportive, motivating and helpful people around you. However, I don’t find it easy to work with other people. Not because I’m a poor team player (although in a recent Belbin analysis it was my joint lowest score), but because of two failings.

The first one is I rarely know what skills I can offer other people. If someone is having problems at work I will offer IT support, suggest websites, books, lend CDs and DVDs, listen to them and provide my thoughts. But, that is all in response to what I hear around me; when I think of my skills to offer with no prompt I can’t think of single one that is useful.

As I’ve know I’ve already said a couple of times October and November were busy months for me and although I was not writing on my blog I was learning interesting things about myself. Here are the seven key things I learnt:

1. If I have not planned my day before my first meeting I never finish the planning and the day is never as productive
2. Storing paperwork in context based folders is great for identifying work I can do when I am travelling
3. When I have a lot of incoming work I start being reactive , even if I have planned my day, and in combination with point 1. this can cause my day to go in many directions
4. Working late is not so bad if you are with other people and you can have a laugh together
5. Despite already being busy, the organisation and productivity skills I have learnt over the past year meant I could pick up some urgent and interesting work from other people without too much additional burden
6. It is motivating to work on new and exciting projects

Tomorrow is the final of the Rugby World Cup when England will play South Africa, defending the title they won in 2003. Four years ago the English team went to the world cup number one in the world, having beaten their opponents 15 times in the previous 16 Tests. This year, the preparation has been slightly different, ranked 7th in the world and having lost 14 of their last 19 Tests. Their chances in the tournament are described on the BBC website as

Semi-finals would be laudable given their decline since 2003. But getting out of their group will be tough enough, and a quarter-final could be the end of the line.

However, they have defied expectations and have reached the finals, hopefully to make history as the first team in Rugby World Cup history to win in successive tournaments.

Here are some of things we can learn from the English rugby union team

Statistics don’t predict anything – Going into the tournament, England were ranked 7th in the world, but by wining games against Australia and France both ranked above them they have moved to 3rd in the world

This morning when I left the house I had to relearn how to drive, which as you can imagine was a surprise at 7am. 

I am currently away with work as I am presenting at a two day exhibition.  I’m not keen on driving long distances, so I normally travel by train when

I’m away with work, however due to the location of the venue, the hotel and the lap top and banner stands I had for the presentation it was much simpler to drive. 

When I got into the hire car this  morning, I discovered it was an automatic transmission rather than the manual I had requested, and in my thirteen years of driving with a full licence I have never driven an automatic before.  I wasn’t too worried though because I have heard it is much easier to drive an automatic compared to a manual,  but it wasn’t all smooth as there were several long term habits that got in the way.

It should be simple, two feet and two pedals, but when you are used to three pedals it is confusing.  When I first set off this morning I kept using the brake thinking it was the clutch, so the journey was a bit jerky to start with.