I’m not sure I have the ability to start a meme…

…and now the meme has made it to Shelf Check.

It’s interesting that I’ve received more comments this week than any week ever. As I wrote these long posts I wondered who could possibly be interested in my boring life, but then I realized how much I enjoyed reading all the other posts. So while our own lives may seem boring and uninteresting there is pleasure in being a virtual fly on the wall in someone else’s world.

I’ve received a few comments and emails asking me how I do it all. So I thought I’d share my secret with you. I don’t!

I’ve prioritized my life: family, career, education. I try to only be in the office 8-hours a day. When I’m not at work and my kids are awake I’m with them–physically and mentally. I maximize the precious time I have with them and do not multi-task. They get my undivided attention. Once they go to bed it’s time to focus on left over work from the day, career-related tasks, and school.

That sounds like a lot, but here’s what doesn’t get done. I don’t have as much time to hang out with my friends. We don’t watch TV. We don’t even have cable. I don’t cook or clean. My husband does the shopping and cooking (we eat a lot of take out). He does the yard work and some of the house cleaning. But seriously, the house is a mess, the yard is full of weeds, and even though Bree Van De Camp is my hero (I used to watch TV), I’ve accepted the fact that my house will not look like that for another 17 years.

I’ve found that the more I do the more energy I have and the more I am able to do. The law of inertia.

I’ve also found ways to maximize my time. I listen to audiobooks when I am in the car. During the school year when traffic gets bad I work 7-4 to avoid rush hour and wasted time in traffic. This also allows me to spend more time with my kids. I count my blessings that I work for a library that allows a flexible schedule like this. I have great child care which lets me to focus on work at work and home at home. I try to plan ahead so I can group tasks by time and proximity. For instance if I need to vacuum and do a load of laundry, I start the laundry first and vacuum while the laundry is going. It sounds simple but it really helps to save time when you plan all your tasks this way.

Speaking of tasks, I use Outlook to remember everything. Any random thought that has an action goes into Outlook Tasks, so I don’t have to keep thinking about it. Then tasks are categorized by how the action gets done (@work, @home, @computer, errand, someday maybe, waiting). I can then sort the tasks and get all the @computer ones done in one sitting, all the errands done together, and so on.

When I plan my day, I drag the highest priority tasks from the task list to the calendar so that time is allotted for each task. It sounds like a lot of work, but once you get accustomed to this way of doing things and see how much time you are saving you will wish you had been doing this for years.

I highly recommend the book Take Back Your Life. This book was life changing for me in managing my time. If you’ve been reading my posts this week, you already know that I am taking this to the next level with TROG (Total Relaxed Organization Guru). Kevin Crenshaw sent me a copy of the book and software to review so I’ll be blogging about that over the next month.

It has been a pleasure sharing my week with you. It’s 2am. Both kids now have fevers and have been waking up crying every 15 minutes. The saga never ends. But in the end that’s what the journey is all about!

8:30am

• Wake up. Get dressed. The usual. Plan to go in a little later today because it’s going to be a long day. If only I’d known what was to come.

9:00am

• Leave for work.
• Remember that I need to research taking the bus because gas is not going to get cheaper.

9:20am

• Arrive at work.
• Last night I had a chance to read the first few chapters of Total Relaxed Organization: The Field Guide. Am inspired and ready to get caught up on the hundreds of message piled in my inbox since ALA.
• Start processing email. Delete. Delete. Delete. Respond. and. so. on.
• Print name tags for a workshop.

10:38am

• Receive an email that Main Library has been evacuated while simultaneously hearing a knock at the door telling me we need to evacuate the building.
• Don’t grab anything because it’s never a good sign when a building is evacuated and the fire alarm has not been set off.
• Find out that a suspicious package was found on a nearby street and the bomb squad has been called in. Several buildings evacuated as a precaution.

Photo from Charlotte Observer. Read full story here.

11:00am

• Waiting.
• Ask nice police officer nearby about the body I saw yesterday (interestingly enough in the same area where the package is). He tells me it was natural causes. They think it was a heart attack. Sad for the person but relived that it was not a crime.
• Make mental note to work on lowering my cholesterol.

12:00pm

• Wishing I had grabbed my wallet when I left so I could go get lunch.

1:00pm

• Getting really hot.
• Wishing I hadn’t worn black today.
• Wishing I had a bottle of water along with my laptop so I could connect to wireless and get some work done.
• Seriously though…I did get a chance to catch up with coworkers I rarely get to see or talk to. Despite the fact that we were all stuck outside for just over three hours, everyone was in good spirits. We even started collecting books for customers who wanted to turn them in.

1:50pm

• Get the all clear to go back in the building.
• Briefly check email. Nothing urgent.
• Grab my wallet and go get a sandwich for lunch.

2:15pm

• Smell smoke on my way back in the building. Realize that the fire alarm technicians are testing the fire alarms. Never a dull moment.
• Back at my desk. Eating. Catch up on twitter, friend feed, email.

2:30pm

• Respond to emails about new training system and decide to call the contact person.
• Call my boss at home to see how he is doing after surgery and to ask a few questions that can’t wait.
• Begin an email to upper management about training.

3:00pm

• Create a report of training attendance and no shows for the current year and previous five years.

3:30pm

• Complete the report and email. Send.
•  A knock on the door. I have a reference question…what park nearby is good for kids and has a train? Being a member of the mommy mafia, that’s easy! Dan Nicholas Park.
• Complete a draft of another email and send for review.

4:00pm

• Realize I need to start getting ready for ASTD meeting tonight.
• Make sure my calendar is up to date.
• Synchronize my PDA/phone.
• Check my mailbox, pack up the things I need to bring home.
• Fix hair.
• Receive a chat message with a subtle reminder…”can you please resend your document.”
• Call WebJunction about my August webinar.

4:40pm

• Time to go. Update my out of office response.
• Drive to South Charlotte for ASTD meeting.

5:30pm

• Arrive at ASTD meeting. 30 minutes to network. Then an hour-ish for dinner. Then an hour program.
• Meet a theatre employee of ImaginOn, which is part of the library (It’s a small world!). But wait! She also knows my husband, and knows my BFF who is ironically named Lori Reed. Yep spelled exactly the same. (It gets very confusing in chat and on Facebook.)
• Meet some instructional designers from Time Warner Cable. Talk with them about what their jobs are like and what their graduate programs in IST were like.

6:45pm

• Announcements begin. Somehow I volunteer to run for a board position for next year.
• Program begins about elearning–what we are doing that’s wrong and what we can do to make it better. More about that in a later post.

8:30pm

• Program over. Last minute conversations over. Drive home.

9:00pm

• Arrive home to total darkness and peace and quiet. The entire house is asleep except the cats.
• Check email again.
• Start writing this post.
• Begin my application for a training program at the state library.
• Respond to email about MaintainIT webinar I’m doing next month.
• Collaborate with the brilliant trainer Paul Signorelli via Google docs on a project we’re working on together. It’s actually kind of cool. I never realized we could both work at the same time in the same doc and see each others updates. Note to self to use this more at work.

9:30pm

• Son wakes up screaming. Husband gets him back to sleep.

9:45pm

•  Son wakes up screaming. Husband gets him back to sleep.

10:00pm

• Son wakes up screaming. Asks for mommy. Husband brings him downstairs.
• He feels hot but does not have a fever.
• Hold him for a while andtake him back upstairs to bed.

10:15pm

• Repeat.

10:30pm

• Repeat. Decide it’s time to invoke the mommy mafia.
• Type up a quick post listing symptoms.
• Within minutes receive responses ranging from ear infection to growing pains.
• Give son ibuprofen and cough medicine as he now says his mouth and throat hurt.

11:00pm

• I’ll spare you how many times this goes on. You get the point. I imagine it will be a looonng night.
• IM with Paul some more. Random topics. It is so great to have this network of trainers all over the country!

1:30am

• See a comment come in from another amazing trainer Marianne Lennox. Last night I convinced her to write a day in the life post. She has done a photo journal of her day and I think it is the best day in the life post so far! Marianne you need to start a Flickr meme.
• Writing a summary post
• Calling it a day. Root canal scheduled for 9:50 in the morning.

7:00am

• As usual can barely drag myself out of bed. Today is different though. (TMI Warning!) I’m actually so sick to my stomach that I throw up. I feel slightly better. Shower, get dressed, feed the fish, feed the cats, scoop the cat box, leave the cat puke for my husband to clean up. Everyone is still asleep and I leave for work.

7:30am

• Leave for work. Listen to NPR and hear story about how Wikipedia needs to start earning revenue but content posters will not post content if there are ads. Wish I could go to the library in Alexandria to take a tour.
• One block from the Main Library notice four police cars and the sidewalk is roped off. Make the mistake of looking and see a body under a blood soaked sheet. Luckily? Is that the right word–anyway as a former EMT this does not phase me but it is disturbing that it is where I walk every day.

8:00am

• Arrive at work and look for news about the body. Nothing, and security doesn’t know either.
• Feed my fish.
• Open email–Outlook and Gmail.
• Respond to more emails about focus groups that we are conducting.
• Receive an email from a colleague that makes my day. Apparently she was so excited about a time management article that I forwarded her that she stayed up all night emptying her Inbox. Yay for GTD!
• Read and respond to comments and emails from last night’s post.
• Look through Wowbrary to see if any new titles have been ordered on learning, training, or time management.

9:00am

• Begin the daunting task of entering August training into a new system. Since this is the first month of using it there are lots of extra steps…add classes, add trainers, add sessions.
• Decide we need to rewrite our learning objectives to make them measurable.
• Get stuck on the term patron versus customer and what should we call them.
• Realize that to add a class I need to know what room in a library it will be in. Call libraries to ask what room training will be in.
• Receive a phone call from a staff person who cannot figure out how to order toilet paper with our new supply system. I’m not the SME on this, so I refer her to the accounting department.
• Keep entering the data for classes. Get timed out from the system every time I get interrupted. Note to self to schedule uninterrupted weekly appointments for this in the future.
• Email Kevin Crenshaw who left a comment on Monday’s post about a company called Priacta and a product they have for time/email/project management  program called Trog (Total Relaxed Organization). I’ve downloaded the free trial of Trog but really need the book to help me get started using it. Ask for a copy of the book so I can review it and blog about it.

10:30am

• Attend a web conferencing session with another library system to learn about the web conferencing tool they are using and how it works compared to the tool we use (Wimba).

11:00am

• Write down a list of major priorities on a sheet of paper so I can begin to prioritize my time for the next month.
  • Leader of Customer Service Champions/Trainers Team
  • Leader of Online Resources Trainers Team
  • Member of Unified Services Team
  • Leader of Unified Services Training/Core Competencies Sub Team - need to recruit members to this team
  • Move training to the new system for August and communicate this to everyone
  • Contact WebJunction to add a list of trainers and classrooms to Wimba
  • Develop training and train managers to use Wimba for meetings
  • Develop training and train other trainers to use Wimba for training and contact vendors to see if it would be more cost effective to outsource this
  • Develop standards for staff training
  • Find a tool for staff to share and collaborate on training handouts across the system
  • Recruit new trainers for Online Resource Trainers Team and to help with Technology Training
  • Create storyboards for HR portions of New Employee Orientation videos
  • Create and edit a screencast about our new security database
  • Plan an afternoon at Main Library for librarians visiting from NewJersey
  • Create and implement a “Training Council”
  • Find a way to track online training that has been completed
  • Create a new form and procedure with deadlines for training requests
  • Create a blog to communicate with staff about learning opportunities that are not on our training calendar (i.e. at other libraries)
• Receive phone call to confirm my root canal on Friday. “Yeah, sure. I’m looking forward to it. Sigh.”
• Receive an IM from my husband asking if I have lunch plans.

12:00pm

• Lunch with my husband. It’s great to have adult conversation and not talk about kids.

1:00pm

• Back to work. I notice the police are still on the corner and the sidewalk is roped off.
• Check email again.
• Prepare to go to a 2pm focus group.
• Print name tags for the focus group.
• Receive a response from Kevin Crenshaw that yes I can review the book, Total Relaxed Organization: The Field Guide. Print the book so I can begin reading it tonight. Thank you Kevin!

2:00pm

• Attend a staff focus group to gather information to contribute towards our strategic plan for 2009-2012.
• Because I printed name tags I was concerned that the group was large, and was happy to see that the facilitator broke us up into four smaller groups.
• Our staff are amazing. If you give them a chance to brainstorm and put them in a room together, they can solve the problems of global warming, the Carolina drought, homelessness, and just about anything else. Pleasantly reminded of the “wisdom of crowds” that one of the Michael’s talked about at our library a few years ago.
• Add the PLCMC Forum Blog to my RSS feeds (which I haven’t checked since a week before ALA).

4:00pm

• Check email again. Call my colleague who emailed me at 3am to make sure she is still awake. She is and we have a pleasant brainstorming session about blogs.
• Respond to emails I received after ALA from other libraries.
• Respond to a MaintainITProject request to interview staff from our library about public computers.
• Post a link to a job we have open and info about the Tech Summit on ListServs and discussion boards that I am part of.
• Try to find someone to fill in for me at orientation next month as I realize I have triple-booked myself. Able to reschedule the other appointment.

5:30pm

• Drive home. Normally I have to pick the kids up early on Wednesday so my nanny can get her family ready for church, but my husband gets off work early so I stay late today.
• Make two stops on the way home to pick up wire hangers courtesy of members of the Mommy Mafia. Never in my life thought I would fill up an SUV with hundreds of wire hangers but need them to hang clothes for a consignment sale. Whatever I don’t use I’ll share with other members of the Mommy Mafia.
• Since I am old enough to remember the days before MapQuest am thankful for MapQuest so I can easily get to these places to pick up the hangers.
• Until I realize that MapQuest was not aware that it sent me down a street that has been converted into a dead end.
• Resolve to buy GPS with money I make from consignment sale.

6:30pm

• Arrive home to…a screaming baby and an affectionate 4-year-old. Wait is this the Twilight Zone? Yesterday was the opposite.
• Snuggle on the couch with my 4-year-old while he tells me about his day. He tells me he thinks Cameron will grow up to have a mole on her face like me. Then wants to know when he will be grown up.
• It’s a miracle both children eat all their dinners and take baths without incident.

7:00pm

• Baby goes to bed. Husband takes son for a walk. I get on the computer.
• Try to find out if anyone from Mommy Mafia knows what happened this morning.
• Respond to a few posts about mommy cliques (yes they are real) and about people talking on cell phones in bathrooms. Someone posts a question about library fines and I switch hats and ask for her number so I can call her tomorrow.

7:30pm

• Husband and son are home. Son has fallen and skinned both knees and an elbow. Mommy provides first aid, ice cream, and kisses…all is well with the world.

8:00pm

• Back on the computer. Writing this post.

9:00pm

• Chat for an hour with Marianne Lennox about everything under the sun.

10:00pm

• Start to write a blog post for a company I blog for.
• Check my Friend Feeds and see a post about Uncontrolled Vocabulary a live, web-based show for librarians. Decide to join in just in time for a discussion of p, o, r, n. Interesting discussion about whether there is a difference between removing an item from the collection versus not buying it in the first place.
• Chatting again with Marianne Lennox. Create a new acronym. LOLSOMDC. Most correct guess wins a prize!

11:00pm

• Finished my other post.
• Back to my post here.
• Finished this post. Off to take pain medicine so I can sleep (root canal remember) then off to bed.

I realized after reading other library day in the life posts that I neglected to explain what my job duties are. Right now my job is in transition from focusing primarily on technology training to coordinating the training, learning, and development of 550+ staff members. This change happened just a few weeks ago, so I am still in the process of developing a needs analysis–what does our staff need training in? But I’m also looking beyond that into what should our learning process look like? How do requests for new training get submitted and implemented? Who makes the final call on what gets done or not done, and how do we prioritize the needs?

When you think about staff development, what is the underlying goal? Instead of WIIFM (what’s in it for me) think about WIIFO (what’s in it for the organization)? Why does the library need my position?

The bottom line of any training or learning function is to improve the performance of the organization by improving the effectiveness of the employees. Yes there is value in lifelong learning. Yes we know that by providing staff with enrichment opportunities we will improve morale and decrease our turnover. But ultimately any position in any business has a bottom line. In the for-profit world training is often one of the first departments cut or reduced in tough economic times. Therefore in addition to providing added-value it is important to provide a bottom line value.

So on to my day…

7:00am

•  Woke up, showered, dressed, and ready to get out the door before anyone else in the house wakes up.

7:30am

• Make sure I have my yoga clothes and mat for class tonight. Can’t find my keys. Look everywhere. Finally found them on the hook by the back door rather than on the hook by the front door. I have no idea how they got there. Suspect a 4-year-old involved.

7:40am

• Morning commute with a stop at Chickfila. As always impressed by the consistent amazing customer service. Run through the mental list of things I need to do.

8:15am

• Arrive at work. Feed my fish.
• Open work email and Gmail account.
• Respond to a blog reader who is interested in becoming a children’s librarian or school media specialist.
• Received several emails and comments from vendors regarding yesterday’s post about needing to find the right tool for time/email/calendar/project management.
• Receive several emails about focus groups that I have placed on the training calendar but I am not coordinating so forwarded them to the appropriate people.
• Rescheduled the location of a meeting next week due to a conflict with another meeting scheduled in the same place.
• Emailed back and forth about dates for upcoming training and finally resorted to a phone call. (Sometimes the phone is the best option!)
• Chat with Stephanie Zimmerman for a few minutes to see how her Outlook training is coming along.

10:00am

• Stopped by the Communications Department for a meet and greet to welcome the new Public Information Specialist.
• Had a group discussion about time management and what people use. Most people present use paper lists. One person uses the Outlook task list. Interesting to hear how other people do things, but that is why you are reading this, right?

10:30am

• Look at my bag of yoga clothes and realize it’s the last day in the semester. Call East Carolina to find out what happened to my application to be readmitted (I had to take a few semesters off when I had Cameron.)
• Found out that they need copies of my current transcripts to make sure I am in good standing.
• Print out and complete the form to have my transcripts evaluated.
• Receive a phone call from an employee who is having a problem but does not want to discuss it officially.
• Send out an email reminder about a meeting next week.
• Edit minutes from a meeting that happened last month. Create a list of action items and due dates. Email to the group.
• Prepare for a team meeting that will take place later this week.
• Receive a phone call from my husband that our nanny needs us to pick up the kids by 3pm Friday.
• Call nanny to check in and she asks if she can be off on my husband’s next day off–which is next Wednesday. (This is the only good thing about him working weekends.)
• Send an ecard to a coworker who is having a birthday. Happy birthday Kim!
• Try to complete an application for a state library training program but the Web site is down.
• Work on a draft of an email about a change in our training software.
• Add names to a list of accounts to create for Wimba Classroom.
• Registered for ASTD meeting on Thursday and emailed other people in our library who might be interested.

1:30pm

• Meet a coworker in the lobby so we can go to lunch and a seminar on social media and marketing together.
• While I’m waiting assist two customers at the Circulation Desk.
• While I’m waiting get approached by an employee who needs training created for staff for a new procedure and system that their department wants to implement by the end of the month (in two weeks). Ask her to email me the details. This happened last month with two other departments and I had to work 12-hour days for a week to get it all done. Note to self to communicate with departments the need to plan ahead for training and not wait until the last minute. This reaffirms to me that I need a project management system so I can prioritize these requests and map out a time line.
• Go to lunch and talk about…work.

2:45pm

• Arrive early to this seminar and glad I brought my bag with me as they need ID to let us in the building.
• 2-hour seminar given to staff at an area business on social networking and marketing. Very inspiring and informative. I took 8 pages of notes (which I’ll transcribe in a separate post).
• Walk back to work.

5:15pm

• Leave work to go to my yoga class. One of the few required courses left to finish my undergraduate degree.

5:45pm

• Arrive at class, turn in my final paper, and find out there is no actual class tonight as the instructor has a pinched nerve in his neck. Relieved as this means I get to go home and see my kids before they go to bed (if the 4-year-old even goes to bed). This 8-weeks of Tuesday and Thursday night classes has been so hard on my family. On Tuesdays I leave before my kids wake up. I get home after they’ve gone to bed. The next morning I leave for work before they get up. So after Monday night they don’t see me until Wednesday night. I’m so thankful the rest of my classes can be taken online.

5:50pm

• Commute home and traffic is extra bad because of the time and the route home from school.

6:30pm

• Arrive home and I’m the first one here. I have the house to myself. Total silence. Relaxing.
• I eat some veggies left over from the party and check my email.

7:00pm

• Husband arrives home with the kids. 7pm is the 1-year-old’s bedtime and she still needs to be fed and changed. She’s tired and grumpy.
• After Cameron devours two bananas and starts throwing cheerios at me I decide to give her a bottle of milk to settle her down. Enjoy the 10 minutes we spend gazing into each others eyes and feel sad that she will soon be too old to take a bottle in a month or so.

7:30pm

• Wrangle Cameron into her pajamas. Give up on trying to snap any snaps. Put her in her crib and she screams for 30 seconds then falls asleep.

7:45pm

• Go downstairs and open a wine cooler left over from the party. Find my husband negotiating with our son about when he will eat his dinner. Ian refuses to eat his PB&J so I put it in the fridge. The two go outside to play soccer. I have a few minutes of peace.

8:00pm

• Start a load of laundry.
• My son wants to know if he can say, “holy cow.” I tell him it’s probably ok at home but not at “school” (what we call his nanny’s house). Ian says “holy cow” about 50 times before we have to intervene and tell him it’s not ok to say it all the time.

8:15pm

• Husband takes son upstairs to go to bed. Son suddenly decides he wants to eat dinner. He comes downstairs and tries to negotiate juice or milk rather than his sandwich.
• Now he wants to know what words he is not allowed to say. I tell him I’ll have to think about it.

8:30pm

• Son has eaten his sandwich, had milk, and goes upstairs to bed. My husband takes his laptop upstairs and lays down on the floor in his room. Ian will not go to sleep if one of us is not in the room.
• I am downstairs writing this post.

9:00pm

• I am almost finished with this post and need to go put the clothes in the dryer. I also need to figure out where my husband put the mail so I can pay the bills, iron, eat dinner, read daily sheets from the nanny for both kids and see if she needs extra clothes or supplies.
• Look over my task list that I created yesterday. I completed about half the items on the list today. Mental pat on the back. Need to add items to the list so I can sleep tonight.
• Trying to imagine what the night would have been like had my 2-hour yoga class not been canceled.

Last week I posted about the Library Day in the Life meme where we are blogging about what we do all day in our various library positions. In addition to blogging about my work at the library I am including my work as a mom. Why? Because I think it helps other moms know that they are not alone in the challenges of working full time outside the home and for those who are thinking about having children, it helps to let you know what you are getting in to.

7:00 am

• Managed to drag myself out of bed, and had a really hard time this morning. Yesterday we celebrated my daughter’s first birthday and that was exhausting.



• If you’ve been following me on twitter and Friend Feed you know that I had 1/2 of a root canal last Wednesday (I get the next half this Friday) so I’ve been on pain medication for a few days now. I’m also still having morning sickness…at least it is not all day sickness. No I’m not pregnant, but I don’t know that I will ever feel fully recovered from my last pregnancy.
• Spent a few minutes with my son–getting him some milk and putting on a Diego DVD. Daughter and husband still asleep and when he gets up he’ll take them to our nanny’s house. (My husband works 12-9 on Mondays.)

7:30am

• Leave for work. Commute very light when school is out.

8:00am

• Arrive at work. Here’s a picture of my office:
  
• Read, respond, and process email. I only have 24 unread messages. But I have 249 read messages that need to be dealt with. I follow the GTD methodology and try not to use my inbox as a task list. The problem is I am so busy that I never get a chance to process all of the old email. I get a little derailed by a particular email and decide a phone call rather than a reply is in order.
• Feed my fish.

9:00am

• Log into Peoplesoft and enter information about each library location we have, the meeting rooms available, and the capacity of the rooms. This takes a while because there are multiple forms with subforms so I can’t just tab through.

9:45am

• Prepare for a 10am meeting and check my mailbox. Yay I got reimbursed for my ALA expenses already. Thank you finance staff, and now I can pay my nanny on time this week.

10:00am

• Meeting with other library staff involved in a project I am working on.
• Meeting was supposed to be one hour but ended up lasting just over two hours. We got a lot covered and I feel good about the direction we are heading in.

12:30pm

• Lunch with a friend/coworker.

1:30pm

• Check email again. This ends up taking two hours because each email requires more steps than just a response. For example: updating training calendar, helping a staff member with a Word problem, forwarding and recomposing emails to be included in an all staff memo about training opportunities, updating calendar with new appointments.

3:00pm

•  Close my email and decide to get work done on transferring notes from flip charts to Word so I can send out minutes from a meeting. As I start working on this I think about all the other tasks and assignments that need to be done for this team and decide to research project management software. I try some free web-based tools but the good ones seem to want money up front. I download and install a free trial of Microsoft Project, but then realize each project lives in a separate file. I need a master planner of all projects so I can group similar task. Finally decide to try using a Firefox addin for GMail that helps process mail using GTD.The extension does not work on my PC. I realize the time and give up until I get home.

4:00pm

• Make a few phone calls to update key people on the outcome of the earlier meeting.
• Make a to do list for Tuesday.
• Feed my fish again.
• Update my calendar.
• Sync my smart phone with Outlook.
• Sync my iPod so I can listen to new podcasts on the way home.
• Check email again and research ways for staff at multiple locations to share and collaborate on training documents.

5:00pm

• Drive home. Very little traffic. Realize I don’t have my cable to connect my iPod to the car stereo. Almost fell asleep on the drive home. Determined to get quality sleep tonight.

5:30pm

• Arrive at my nanny’s house to pick up my two children. I forgot my checkbook so I can’t pay her until tomorrow. Her daughter smacks my daughter and I wonder what will happen when my daughter is old enough to smack back.

5:45pm

• Arrive home. My son wants to open the rest of my daughter’s presents. They both open them. Two of the dolls she received giggle and it makes her laugh harder than I have ever heard her laugh.
• As they play with the new toys I fall asleep in the chair.

6:30pm

• Wake up and decide I need to feed my kids. My son, four, refuses to eat anything. My daughter eats a handful of cheerios, some chicken, and fruit.

7:00pm

• Bath and bedtime for kids.
• My daughter goes right to sleep.
• Try to play trains with my son but he wants his Daddy so we go downstairs to call him at work.

8:00-11:00pm

• My son’s bedtime is at 8 and he still refuses to eat. I make him a PB&J anyway. Turn on the Wonder Pets DVD, and try to get some work done on the computer.
• Write a blog post about ALA.
• Remember that tomorrow is my last yoga class and I have a paper due. Begin writing a one-page essay about the benefits I have received from yoga.
• Start writing this post.
• Bounce between blog post and yoga paper while occassionally checking gmail, FriendFeed, and Flickr.
• Realize how much of my day is consumed by email.
• Too tired to play the Wii game my husband brought home to try out (quality control).

Notice I did not get any cleaning done. My husband will have to clean up the mess from dinner when he gets home. That’s our deal when he works nights.

If you want to join in the fun visit the LibraryDayInTheLife wiki for info. This is open to any library staff and you can start/finish any time.

This afternoon I had the first half of a root canal done. When the assistant read my patient information sheet and saw the word “library” I heard the phrases that I’ve heard countless times before , “It must be so great to work at the library. It must be so quiet. You must get to read so many books.”

Check on the first one. The library is the best place in the world to work. Quiet? She admitted she has not been to the library in a few years. Reading? I can’t even tell you the last fiction book I read, and I don’t know many staff who actually have time to read on the job.

Even my son thinks mommy and daddy go to work and read books all day. I’ve heard before that books are our brand, but it is so not what we are all about anymore.

Yesterday Bobbi Newman wrote a post on her site Librarian by Day with the idea of what if we could all write posts detailing a day or week in the life of a librarian. Not only is this a great way for us to see what our colleagues are doing and how they spend their days but it’s a great way for students who are interested in the library profession to see what we really do.

A few of us picked up on this via FriendFeed and Twitter and the idea has taken off.

If you are interested in sharing your day/week in the life:

1. Add your name to the list at the Library Day in the Life Wiki. The invitation code is: library.
2. Add your name, your job title (so we can see what you do at a glance) and a link to your blog.
3. Next week* start blogging.
4. Tag your posts with librarydayinthelife.
5. Later you can go back and edit the wiki to change your blog link to a link to your tagged posts, e.g. http://librarytrainer.com/tag/librarydayinthelife/

* The dates are a suggestion so we can have a communal feel to this endeavor. If the dates don’t work for you, you can start any time. I’m hoping that this will continue as an ongoing project for the library community.

Hats off to Bobbi for the great idea!