[Madame Dirt]

Typcial day involves way too many meetings / talking about the work we need to get done, but having no time to do it cos of all the meetings / talking!

The most painful task is that our MS Outlook ‘inboxes’ are always full, meaning we can’t send emails until we clear them. SO frustrating. I can spend the whole morning – in between meetings – dealing with this.  Again – it takes me away from DOING work.

At the moment, most of my time is taken up by Councillor requests.  They are Number 1 priority, really important, but, again, take us away from the ‘doing’ of our allocated projects.

Im finding the open plan office frustrating at the moment. and all the interruptions.  feel like I can never get more than 7 mins to focus on something.

Tasks which could be made easier / less tedious are often IT related.  We have no real backup from IT with ACAD, Corel, Photoshop, etc.  Having never 100% mastered these programmes (I graduated in 1997 & was a gardener by trade first so no real computer nouse), I have to revert to simple sketches / whatever can demonstrate stuff in the quickest possible manner.  Report writing, internal governance requirements, process process process stuff can really wear us down (hence my comment about trying not to become ‘bitter and twisted’.  eg Ive just lost 4 hours work – working from home on a sunday in prep for a scarey meeting tomorrow – cos my works remote access thingy just crashed. gotta fly and get an 8 yr old to a party now!

Thats another thing – juggling parenthood!  🙂

[Madame Dirt]

Well done Andrew – this could be a fun, yet helpful forum!

Coming from a local govt / civic projects (in Australia) perspective, here’s my two bobs worth:

Get ‘face to face’ when things get tricky (like Mark mentioned);

Build relationships with other professions (artists, structural engineers, civil engineers, archeologists, community development experts, horticulturists, landscape & civil contractors, maintenance staff, etc etc) so you have a network of ‘go to’ people / collaborators;

Be part of the solution not the problem, by constantly advocating for change / funding / best outcomes.  Build relationships with decision makers and funding bodies.

Stay inspired by doing stuff you love (day seminars / camping / whatever) and try not to become bitter and twisted.

Employ designers / design trained professions in senior roles / ie as decision makers.  ie we should apply for these roles and make change that way.

I could go on forever!  But I’ll spare you  🙂

[Author]

Posts