Happy Sunday to you!
The upcoming week is going to be a little shorter for me, as I had decided to take Monday off and have a nice 3-day weekend. Reflecting upon it, it was probably a wise idea for me to take the extra day—I’ve been having some difficulty with coming up with something to write about this week. I just can’t seem to concentrate. Perhaps I’ve spent all of my concentration during the week in meetings and tackling some challenges at work, and the extra day will be just the tonic I need to begin a new week.
I also need to do a better job at stepping out of my old role of desktop support and into my current role of IT policy and compliance. This is the job that I am in, and I must be more proactive in introducing myself as such, as well as ensuring that others introduce me in that regard as well.
I had initially planned to write about something else entirely—something related to security, but as I started writing this, well…
This Got Me Thinking
Along these lines, I also need to develop a method of note-taking that works for me, and to actually stick to it. With the help of ChatGPT, it helped me to realize that because I am largely driven by emotion and empathy, my note-taking should also revolve around it. I am no longer able to split my concentration like I used to, and I’ve found that when I try to take notes, I try to copy down everything—almost verbatim—and I end up not hearing the discussion, as I’m too busy writing.
ChatGPT suggested that rather than to try to write everything down, I should focus on items that make me feel something. I tried it out for a bit, and you know what? It worked. Granted, I was writing down less and less, but what I was writing down, I was able to more quickly recall the discussion or events around it. I even used that method when I attended the Cybersecurity and Privacy Professionals conference back in May. I wrote down what made me feel something, and going back over those notes, I can more easily remember the discussions and presentations that invoked those emotions. Previously, even though I was writing down more of what was written, when going back and referring to exactly what I had written, I had no idea about the context or the meaning behind it. I had almost forgotten about it shortly after recording it.
I’m not sure of what the official name of it is (or even if there is a name for it), but ChatGPT called it the “spark method”. Simply put, rather than me trying to write down everything that was written down, I would focus on things that caught my attention, or stirred an emotion. I didn’t have to write down complete sentence or anything, but rather little “sparks” of what caught me. I could then expand on those sparks later on.
My other challenge? Sticking with a habit once I start down that road. You may know where I’m going with this—while I started out this new note-taking method, and it went great, I very quickly lost interest in it, and it has fallen by the wayside, unfortunately. It’s not something I want to be so dismissive over, as I felt like it helped me out. I really want to get back into that habit and try to make it stick. I am absolutely open to suggestions on how I can make that happen.
Finally, here’s a look back at what I wore to work this past week. I hope you enjoy them. If you didn’t know, each picture posted here links back to my Flickr album for each outfit, if you want to peruse all of the photos for any given day. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and have a great week ahead! I’ll likely be spending the extra day getting my new iPhone Air all set up. I’m very excited for it! ☺️
-Terry
September 15
September 16
September 18
September 19
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